Update from Jude Pittman

I keep intending to get my Blog ready and posted, but there's always something getting in the way.  It seems for some reason my role as publisher for Books We Love is always getting in the way of my passion for writing mysteries.  Once again today finds me unprepared and playing catch up.

What's going on with Amazon?  Anyone have any ideas.  Seems like they've deserted the book world in favor of deploying drones, and of course who could miss Bezos' shining head and beaming smile as he basked in the attention of Hollywood.  Star struck I guess, no more time for those measly ebooks after he's already managed to force the price down so low that authors can barely afford to keep their software current.  Oh well, onward and upward.  Looks for our Books We Love books everywhere, no longer KDP exclusive you'll find us on Kobo, Apple, Smashwords, Overdrive, anywhere you find ebooks you'll find Books We Love.  So enough about the publisher side of things.

As you might have noticed Jamie and I struggled quite a bit with branding our new series that we're writing together.  Readers have been telling us that the story is so seamless they can't tell two authors are writing.  Probably as a result of Jamie and I struggling together with all the mysteries of publishing for the past 8 or 9 years.  In any event, we started with Kelly McWinter, who those of you that know my Deadly series will recognize as the lead character in all three of those books.  Both of us felt that Kelly would be easy to work with so we started out with the title "New Directions" for our new series, "McWinter Confidential" but after a couple of months we both realized that the title just didn't fit the book and we decided we needed to make a change.

That's s where the advantage of being a publisher came in, since we had to do the work ourselves we could change the title and re-release the book.  I won't mention what Michelle said about "once again" changing one of my covers.  She gets a bit touchy mid-week after dealing with hordes of teen students, but we did get the new cover, and of course we put a note in the description to warn readers who had already purchased New Directions that the new book was the same one only now called "To Kill A Songbird".  We tried it first  with a pseudonym (Jayme Lynn Robb) but decided it was too complicated to have yet another name, so we went back to using our own names.  It's not for sale right now, that's because we're waiting for Michelle to speak to us again and change the cover...LOL). 

Anyway, that's where we are with the new series.  Both of us love the "To Kill A Songbird" title and the theme for the series, now we're busy thinking about book 2, which is going to continue with "To Kill A Ghost", McWinter Confidentia, Book 2,

Now if I could just get myself focused and motivated on my Sisters of Prophecy series, I'd get the next book in that one written finished.  Book 1, Katherine, is available in all markets, so if you're interested in a book that's a mix of mystery and romance with a paranormal twist you might enjoy "Katherine" the first book in the Sisters of Prophecy series.  If you do and you like it, maybe you can give me some thoughts on what you'd like to see in Irene, which is half finished and just waiting for me to get back to visiting those characters

Any authors out there reading this.  What does it take to get you motivated to start writing again after you've let a manuscript sit for several months?  Any tips.

If you'd like to read Katherine, now is a perfect time.  It's on Sale at Smashwords for their Readers Week, and it's only $1.50 to purchase.  From now on you'll be seeing my links to Smashwords where you can purchase the book in any format you like, and I'm just a bit ticked off at Amazon so not too interested in promoting their links anymore.  However, if you prefer, it is available there, for $2.99, until they discover that it's on sale at Smashwords and they'll lower the price too. 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/702520

That's my ramblings for today.  Happy reading everyone.  Jude