1920s - StarDance Press

1920s, publishing, writing

Glamours & Gunshots Release Date

August 8, 2018 elouisebates

Friends, I am so pleased to be able to announce, at long last, that Glamours & Gunshots, the next book in the Whitney & Davies series, will be released August 30, 2018!

glamours_and_gunshots_final — Maia Whitney has held men as they died before, but never in peacetime, and never in her aunt’s front hall. But this death is only the beginning. Someone is stealing magic and life from England’s magicians and using them for his or her own gain. No one is safe, not even Magical Intelligence Agent Lennox Davies, whose targeting by the parasite brings him his own set of challenges to work through. Though she is only an apprentice, Maia will not sit back and wait for others to bring about justice, and teams up with Len as she did once before. Using a blend of magical skills and detective work, together Maia and Len dig deep into a case that has its roots buried in the shadows of the past … and could leave one of them magic-less forever.

I am so, so excited to share this book with you all. Sequels are notoriously hard to write, and this one was a doozy, but at last it is ready and I can’t wait for you all to read it.

Because I’m just that excited, I have put both Magic Most Deadly (Book 1) and Magic & Mayhem (short story collection) on sale for $0.99 each at Amazon from now until Glamours & Gunshots publishes. Click on each title to be taken to their respective pages! If you haven’t begun the series yet, now is the perfect time to dive in! They are great end-of-summer reads, if I do say so myself.

Three more weeks to go!

1920s, Books, publishing, writing

Glamours & Gunshots Cover Reveal

May 26, 2018 elouisebates

Here it is, at long (really long) last!

You ready?

You sure?

Ok, here we go

……

The cover for Glamours & Gunshots, Book 2 of the Whitney & Davies series, is here!

…….

As with Magic Most Deadly and From the Shadows, the cover was designed by the brilliant Amanda McCrina, who is also an author and whose novel Blood Oath is coming out in June. Isn’t it stunning?

I don’t have a definite release date yet, but it will be either late summer or early fall. I’ve been working on this story for so long, and I can’t wait to share it with all of you!

1920s, Books, publishing, writing

Winner!

May 21, 2018 elouisebates

The giveaway is closed, the entries have been tallied and a winner has been drawn, and it is …

Congratulations, Hilma! A signed copy of Magic & Mayhem will be coming your way shortly!

For those of you who missed out on a chance to enter or entered and didn’t win, have no fear, I plan to hold more giveaways in the future. Especially with Glamours & Gunshots coming out so soon.

And speaking of Glamours & Gunshots, the cover reveal for that book will be happening right here sometime this week, so stay tuned for that!

My thanks to everyone who participated in this giveaway, and for those of you who left reviews without wanting to be added to the contest. I appreciate you all!

1920s, Books, fiction, publishing, writing

Giveaway Time!

May 11, 2018 elouisebates

Hello friends! It’s been a long time since I’ve done a giveaway, and I think it’s time I changed that.

m&m_cover

The Prize: A signed paperback copy of Magic & Mayhem, my newly-released short story collection (if you already have M&M, contact me and we can work out a substitute of one of my other works).

The Rules: Between now and next Saturday (5/19), leave an honest review on any or all of my books on Amazon and/or Goodreads (links below).

Come back here and leave a comment with a link to your review(s).

Each review is one (1) entry into the giveaway. (Four books, two places to leave reviews, means you could potentially have up to eight entries.)

On 5/20, a winner will be randomly drawn, and on 5/21 they will be contacted about how to claim their prize.

The Reason: Glamours & Gunshots, Book 2 of the Whitney & Davies series, is coming out this year. THIS YEAR. Hopefully even this summer, though let’s not get too carried away.

I would love to stir up a lot of interest for this release, and one way to do that is by having enough reviews on my other books for potential readers to take note of the series and consider purchasing the new book when it comes out. Reviews are an author’s lifeline! Without them, our books tend not to show up in searches, they don’t get featured anywhere, and we lose so many potential readers.

Extra Stuff: If you have already left a review on all of my books but would still like to enter the giveaway, that’s fine, too–send me a link to them and you’ll be entered. Winning does not depend on the quality of the review–even if it’s one-star because you really didn’t like it, BE HONEST. All I’m looking at is that a review has been left, not its content. This contest is open to international participants as well as US!

Easy links for reviewing:

Magic Most Deadly — Amazon and Goodreads

From the Shadows — Amazon and Goodreads

Candles in the Dark — Amazon and Goodreads

Magic & Mayhem — Amazon and Goodreads

To go over the rules one more time:

Between now and 5/19, leave a review on any or all of my books on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

Come back here and leave a comment with a link to your review(s).

Each review is one (1) entry into the giveaway.

On 5/20, a winner will be randomly drawn, and on 5/21 they will be contacted about how to claim their prize.

Prize is a signed paperback of Magic & Mayhem. (this is negotiable if you already have a copy and would like one of my other books instead)

Go forth and review, share this post with all your friends-and-relations, and good luck!

1920s, publishing, stories, writing

Magic & Mayhem, Available Now

April 7, 2018 elouisebates

Here it is, friends! Free on Kindle for this weekend only, here is Magic & Mayhem, four short stories set in the magical England of this Whitney & Davies series!

m&m_cover

4 exciting new short stories set in the magical England of the Whitney & Davies series!

The Third Thief: Maia Whitney has returned home for her sister’s wedding determined to stay aloof from family dramas. Alas, the disappearance of a valuable and possibly cursed bracelet alters her plans. Can this magician’s apprentice solve the crime and save her sister’s wedding from doom and disaster?

Many Magical Returns: On Susannah’s seventeenth birthday, she learns why her mother has always insisted she never use magic in front of Uncle Ernie. Escaping her uncle’s greed and learning magic on the run are tall orders, but one thing is certain: this is a birthday Susannah will never forget.

Passion & Practicality: Steady, sensible Evelyn has always looked after and protected her flighty, feather-brained older sister Violet. So when Violet accidentally kills a man, of course Evelyn is going to take the blame. But her former fiancé Henry, now working for the magicians’ Domestic Protection Agency, has other plans.

Masks & the Magician: Who is the mysterious woman? Is she the Grand Duchess Anastasia, as she claims, or a fraud? The English magician calling himself Merlin has his own ideas, but untangling truth from lie is a difficult task in this mission. When everyone wears a mask, who can be trusted?

I’m so pleased to finally be able to return to Maia and Len’s world, to revisit old friends in some of the stories and meet new ones in others, and to give glimpses into the wider world of England’s magicians. I hope you enjoy them as well!

Get your copy now!

1920s, Books, publishing, writing

Magic & Mayhem Release Date

March 27, 2018 elouisebates

And we have a date!

Magic & Mayhem, the Whitney & Davies short story collection, will be available on April 7! That’s less than two weeks away!

4 exciting new short stories set in the magical England of the Whitney & Davies series!

I had so much fun writing these stories–two featuring our intrepid detectives from Magic Most Deadly, two with brand-new characters. I am also thrilled to be able to include a sneak peek at Glamours & Gunshots, the next novel in the W&D series.

Mark your calendars for April 7th to receive this next installment of the Whitney & Davies series!

(And might I suggest, if you haven’t read the first book in the series yet, now is a good time to start? It’s only $2.99 on Kindle–an astonishingly good deal for an 80,000 word book. You certainly can read and enjoy Magic & Mayhem without having read Magic Most Deadly, but it will be twice as delightful if you have already been introduced to Maia, Len, and their cohorts.)

1920s, Books, editing, fantasy, goals, publishing, writing

Magic & Mayhem

March 19, 2018 elouisebates

A long time ago–in 2013, which is about 200 years in book publishing reckoning–I published Magic Most Deadly, a fantasy-mystery set in England in the 1920s, described by one reader as “Dorothy L Sayers with magic” and another as “Agatha Christie meets Diana Wynne Jones.” It featured a reverse Tommy and Tuppence pair, where the woman was reliable and practical, ruthlessly logical and devastatingly honest, and the man was impulsive and intuitive, a dreamer and an incurable romantic. Together, they used magic and their own wits to solve the mystery, defeat more than one enemy, and forge a firm friendship.

It didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but it did garner a small fandom, and I immediately set about writing the sequel.

And learned the truth of all the statements about second books being so much harder than first books.

It was so hard, in fact, that I finally abandoned it to work on a project-from-my-heart, the recently re-released From the Shadows. With that one finished, I went back to the next Whitney & Davies book.

And promptly hit a wall again. And again.

With the release of yet another non-W&D book this December, the mystery novella Candles in the Dark, my readers might be justified in thinking I had left behind this world, and these characters, for good.

I am here today to tell you that is not the case.

No, this isn’t an announcement of the sequel, although I am in the line-editing stage of that and hope to have it out to the copy-editor soon. What I am announcing is an in-between project, something to both remind readers of this world (and possibly introduce new readers to it), and tide them over until the sequel does come out.

It is …

m&m_cover

Magic & Mayhem, a collection of four short stories set in the Whitney & Davies world (one each featuring our intrepid protagonists, two featuring brand-new characters).

And that’s not all! Magic & Mayhem also includes the first chapter of the sequel to Magic Most Deadly, titled Glamours & Gunshots!

So, my faithful friends who have stuck with this blog and this writing journey of mine for the last five years, your patience will have its reward at last. Four short stories and the sure promise of the next novel in the series.

I don’t have an exact release date for Magic & Mayhem yet, but it will be out soon, and I will update here as soon as I have more solid information.

In the meantime, back to editing I go …

1920s, Books, characters, fantasy, goals, writing

Magic in Disguise: Progress

April 27, 2016 elouisebates

I have passed the halfway point on Magic in Disguise!

This book has been more exhausting than any I’ve ever worked on, published or unpublished. I started it immediately after publishing Magic Most Deadly, which was released September 2013. Since then, the plot has changed about five times, and I took a long break to work on From the Shadows instead, as well as starting Rivers Wide (which is currently in the beta-reading stage), and have discarded many, many drafts.

This one, though … this is the one that’s going to stick. The last draft was close, gave the skeleton of the story, and this one is making sense of it and filling it in. I think I had a couple femurs in place of humeri before and was missing a patella or two, but I’m getting them all sorted now.

How’s THAT for a metaphor of story-writing?

This book takes place in London 1925, when Maia has been apprenticed to Aunt Amelia for a little over three years. The London setting means we won’t see the return of certain characters such as Merry and Ellie or Julia and Dan (though we might get a cameo for one of them …), but never fear, Maia and Len and Becket are all present, as is the indomitable Aunt Amelia (for at least part of it). There will also be some new characters introduced, such as Helen Radcliffe, a young lady magician who has become good friends with Maia and gets caught up with great enthusiasm in their current investigation. The threat this time is more personal, with danger entering Aunt Amelia’s house and attacking Len, but the stakes are no less high for that. This book also delves a little bit deeper into the magic system itself, giving more spells, potions, and other ways of practicing magic while Maia learns how to control her ability and attempts to not blow too many things up in the process. And, of course, we get to see the relationship between Len and Maia grow and develop, but whether or not that includes romance I’m not telling!

It’s fun to write, even while it is exhausting, and I am getting to that point where I am eager to finish it so as to find if others will find it as enjoyable to read as it has been to create. We’ve got a long way to go still, but little by little, slowly but surely, it is coming.

1920s, goals, Life Talk, seasons, writing

The Best-Laid Plans …

April 21, 2016 elouisebates

The kids are on spring break this week. I was going to let them play outside every day while I wrote, and wrote, and WROTE, and finally made more than crawling progress on Magic in Disguise. I was going to serve the easiest possible meals, and forget about housework, and be antisocial. Carl is working on his final papers for the semester, so we could have been hermit writers together.

It’s Thursday. I have not written ONE WORD in the MS all week.

Sigh. And Alas.

But on Monday we did get to do this, so it’s not all bad.

Just, you know, not productive.

And now I’d better get back to all the chores that are calling my name and, inexplicably, must be taken care of instead of writing. Why DO dishes need to get washed and laundry done so frequently, anyway?

(Carl, needless to say, is almost finished with HIS paper.)

1920s, editing, publishing, writing

A Change in the Wind …

February 12, 2016 elouisebates

Literally (it has suddenly remembered it’s winter here in New England, and along with the delightful snow we are enduring some not-as-delightful bitter cold. Not to worry, though, it’s supposed to pop back up to the mid-40s on Tuesday), and metaphorically as well.

I hesitate to talk too much about changes to my writing plans, simply because if I talk about them and then change my mind again, people will get confused. These changes, however, I’ve been mulling over for quite some time, so I think it is safe to reveal at least one of them to you all.

Here it is: I’ve been referring to the magical detective stories – Magic Most Deadly, the upcoming Magic in Disguise [working title], and any future books to come – as the “Intelligent Magic” series. It seemed a clever name when I thought of it, tying in Len’s Intelligence work to the magical aspect.

Except … I think now it was a little too clever. So I thought, well, I’ll have Maia say something specifically about it, or Aunt Amelia make a nasty crack about the need for intelligent magic instead of magical intelligence … but it didn’t work. It just never fit.

So, I have scrapped the “Intelligent Magic,” and have gone to what I should have done in the first place: Whitney & Davies. After all, Dorothy L Sayers’ detective novels are simply known as the Lord Peter Wimsey series; Agatha Christie’s works are divided into the Poirot novels, the Miss Marple books, and the Tommy & Tuppence series; we have the Cadfael series, the Inspector Alleyn series, the Mrs. Pollifax series … etc. Naming a cozy mystery (with magic) series after your main protagonists is not only common sense, it is continuing the tradition established by the greats.

So, Magic Most Deadly is now Book 1 in the Whitney & Davies series … and if I ever get through these revisions, we should get Book 2 before too much longer!

And on that note, I should really get back to revising … making some significant changes there, too, but I’m not ready to talk about them until I know for certain they will stick. Au revoir, friends!