Now Available: 'Doppelgänger' (New Month, New Book, New Sale!)

Finally saw the back of February, and here we are! Seriously, for a short month, it always feels so, SO long, living out every minute of it. Good riddance. 

We are now staring a new month with a new book plus a book sale via my Payhip store. So behold, ladies and gents, Doppelgänger is now available for purchase online in e-book and print formats. Again, here's the blurb:

An impoverished young teacher loses his job when the informal ragged school where he works shuts down. A much-needed stroke of luck, however, brightens Alec Herridge's prospects when he stumbles across a frame-maker's shop and is offered a job. This puts him squarely in the path of an enigmatic and wealthy family from France—expatriates whom gossips whisper about. Something, they say, has followed mother and son to England, and day servants complain about a heaviness in the air whenever the family is at home. 

It's a dark energy that turns its attention to Alec now that his new job requires him to work closely with Marguerite and Théo LaSalle. It also appears to him as a silent lookalike of Théo, its presence marked by whispers in a child's voice. Urging, pleading, desperately reaching out to Alec for help. 

Folklore defines doppelgängers as heralds of ill fortune, but Alec soon discovers there's much more to Théo's double than a warning. That whatever horrible secrets the LaSalle family believes were left behind in France aren't the kind so easily explained away. That something has, indeed, followed them in exile and now refuses to be ignored or forgotten.

Go here for my Payhip store, which is the most direct way folks can support me. But if you prefer to go elsewhere, this is the Books2Read page for it. Links to the print book might take a day or two to update, so keep checking.  

Now here's an incentive for supporting me directly through Payhip (sneaky, sneaky me, I know)...

I talked about how I never put up the books in my Grotesqueries collection for special sales because they're already dirt cheap (many publishing gurus actually advise against doing this because this price point doesn't entice readers the way $2.99 does, but I have my reasons for sticking to things). Well, I changed my mind at least for my Payhip store.

I'm running a BOGO sale to promote my new book, and it involves the entire Grotesqueries collection. So if you buy a copy of Doppelgänger from my store, you can snag a free copy of ANY book from the same collection. The sale runs through the entire month, and it'll be the only sale for March. And, yes, it's only going to be at my store. 

So, yes -- if you purchase the book, I hope you enjoy it, and do leave a review to help it get some traction. Thanks for the support! Woohoo, new book! 

EDIT: If you tried to check out my store sometime yesterday (Feb. 28), you'd have seen the book already set up and available for purchase. Unfortunately, Payhip doesn't allow for pre-orders, so I might as well get that page live before I go to bed. So, hey -- that's one more incentive to buy direct! 😁

New Links and Other Fun Stuff

Okay, so Bookshop.org finally has my e-books listed in one handy page: over yonder, please, for the main page. Use the filter to get to the format of your choice. 

Again, these pages will take you to the online store fronts of small, indie bookstores, which I hope more and more people will support. 

I've hit my stride with The Shadow Groom and am back to the same mental place where I lost myself when I was working on The Twilight Lover, but rather than turn to Blackadder for my inspiration this time around, we're looking at -- of all things -- KPop Demon Hunters (a Netflix film). At its core, it has a real bonkers premise that's also bolstered by a crap ton of ridiculous moments, and I'm here for it. But it also does a terrific job exploring issues of shame and self-loathing without (from what I can see from scattered clips online, that is) undermining those issues with all the color and frenetic movement of a lot of scenes.

And the songs don't help (I mean that in a good way, of course). 

Ironically, I no longer have a Netflix subscription, but I might just re-up for a month if only to watch this movie as well as a couple more that's in their catalogue. I only know about this film through Youtube's algorithms because I've been watching reaction videos to Oscar nominated films, and YT decided to dump a bunch of reaction videos to different clips and songs from KPDH. 

I clicked on one. Then another. Then another. 

Now I can safely say I will be referencing this movie a lot in the future gallery page for The Shadow Groom. Why? Because I'm eating up all the absurdity and the color and the fun vibes of KPDH and using them for inspiration to keep my energy levels up as I power through the chapters. I'm currently hitting the 10K-word mark, and it's been such a fun ride so far. 

And if fans of the film and its soundtrack were to ask, I'm putting the two most subversive songs performed by the the antagonists at the top of my favorites. I mean, come on -- these are great villain songs, one couched in pure bubblegum pop packed with double entendres, the other pretty much being all out on sucking up people's souls. 

I mean...

Damn, "Soda Pop" is so catchy though "Your Idol" is No. 1 with its creepy visuals and its haunting melody (or haunting EVERYTHING about it -- just *chef's kiss*). At any rate, I'm posting these two here so I can go back to them down the line when the time comes.

As an addendum, I'm going to be offering a sale in March, and by that I mean it's in tandem with the release of Doppelgänger, so do watch this space. 

D2D and Bookshop.Org (Yay, Expansion!) -- Also a Writing Update

The most recent news in indie publishing involves Draft2Digital partnering with Bookshop.org for distribution of indie e-books via independent bookstores. 

😄

That means readers can now buy books by self-published writers (who use Draft2Digital) from small, independent bookstores -- not only in print formats, but in digital as well. My print books, for instance, are already listed on Bookshop.org, and I made sure to use that link for my main print store on my navigation menu here and at my Payhip store. 

And now I happily submitted all 49 books on my backlist to Bookshop .org for their digital storefront. And this means readers don't have to go to the bigger and more corporate stores like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, etc., for their books in either format.

If I were to limit my reach, I'd delist my books from the big stores and stick to this one, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. Libraries are also a no-brainer. This is something to think about down the line if I want to do some major spring cleaning, especially if my sales channels tend to number less than five despite the ever-widening distribution Draft2Digital is determined to go for (and kudos to them for being aggressive about it).

In writing news, I've already detached myself from Doppelgänger and have begun putting together the character and place list for The Shadow Groom. I already have the first chapter mapped out in my head (and my notebook), and I'll be diving into that tomorrow. Normally I'd be worried about pacing myself, but with my new work schedule, I can breathe more easily, and it'll be no problem catching up on the brief lag with my occasional extra days off. 

The book will be like The Twilight Lover in tone and setting in that it'll be a romantic comedy set in a fairy tale-ish place. I'm also leaning pretty heavily on trope reversals so that the more traditional family unit is bizarre and wild while the more eclectic family unit is more prim and conservative. So we're going to be back to having fun with family dynamics and how they influence our lovebirds. 

So yeah -- first step done, tomorrow will be devoted to the first chapter and Errol's family.  

 

'Doppelgänger' Gallery Page Now Up

Just a quick post here, ladies and gents -- the gallery page for Doppelgänger is now live. However, there are no links to the bookstores yet because the book might be uploaded for preview and pre-order purposes, but the final version is still being worked on. 

So head on down to this page for some tidbits on the book.  

'Doppelgänger' Blurb

Oooh, man, I'm so excited about this book. Now granted it started out completely different, but that version of the book hit a brick wall, and I just had to set it aside and start from square one. And let me tell you all, it was the right decision to make.

And as I continue to work on edits now (revisions are done), I guess it's time to share the book blurb:

An impoverished young teacher loses his job when the informal ragged school where he works shuts down. A much-needed stroke of luck, however, brightens Alec Herridge’s prospects when he stumbles across a frame-maker’s shop and is offered a job. This puts him squarely in the path of an enigmatic and wealthy family from France—expatriates whom gossips whisper about. Something, they say, has followed mother and son to England, and day servants complain about a heaviness in the air whenever the family is at home. 

It’s a dark energy that turns its attention to Alec now that his new job requires him to work closely with Marguerite and Théo LaSalle. It also appears to him as a silent lookalike of Théo, its presence marked by whispers in a child’s voice. Urging, pleading, desperately reaching out to Alec for help.

Folklore defines doppelgängers as heralds of ill fortune, but Alec soon discovers there’s much more to Théo’s double than a warning. That whatever horrible secrets the LaSalle family believes were left behind in France aren’t the kind so easily explained away. That something has, indeed, followed them in exile and now refuses to be ignored or forgotten.

I was originally planning to have it out in April or May when I still had the six-month calendar to work with. But with my day job schedule changing (and it starts this week), I find I'll have just the perfect amount of wiggle room to continue with the more challenging 4-month release dates.

This book's release will now be on March 1 -- not a lot of time left, but that's because of the problems I had that required me to start over. Plus I did take nearly a full month's break as well during the holidays to rest the brain cells. So it's going to be a tight final stretch, but I can do it. My energy levels and motivation are very high this month, and it's going to work out. 

And, you know, this turned out to be a book that ended up being very close to my heart. I've also said this about some of the books on my backlist before, but while I'm proud of everything I've written and published, this is one of the select few that really, truly felt good working on because everything in it means something to me.

Anyway, there's the blurb, and I'll be posting more updates on the book as we get closer to the release date.