When newspaper columnist Pauline Gray agrees to help a retired schoolteacher write her memoirs, she has no idea it will lead to murder. Someone doesn’t want old memories stirred up … and they are willing to kill to keep the past a secret. Now it’s a race to uncover the truth that the murderer is so desperate to keep buried. It will take all Pauline’s ingenuity to solve this case before the killer strikes again—and this time Pauline herself might be the victim …
I am very happy to be able to announce a release date for Secrets of the Past, the third and final Pauline Gray novella. It will be available in ebook form on March 1, 2022. You can preorder it now using this link: Secrets of the Past
I am hoping that the paperback will be available on March 1 as well, but I can’t make any promises with that.
This book was one of my most challenging to write, and one of the most rewarding. I can’t wait to share it with readers! This is a bittersweet release for me–I am pleased to have brought Pauline’s journey to completion, and a little sad to say goodbye to her. I hope all of my readers find satisfaction in how this final mystery works out.
You can also add Secrets of the Past to your Goodreads list here, if you like.
I will update once I have a set release date for the paperback as well!
In my last post I said I wasn’t sure when the next Caledonia book was going to come out … but that doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun with research, anyway.
I never did physics in college, so most of what I put into From the Shadows was very much seat-of-my-pants, desperately looking stuff up as I thought of it, hoping to technobabble my way through. That only goes so far, though, and so I am hoping to equip myself better for future books.
Besides, the more I know, the further my imagination can roam … who knows how many creative possibilities are out there that I haven’t been able to grasp simply because I don’t know about them?
So when I found Physics of the Impossible and Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku, I knew they were just what I was looking for. Especially since the entire premise of From the Shadows is based on the idea of parallel worlds, and they are traveling through space at faster-than-light speeds, with alien planets capable of sustaining life along their way … yeah, those are definitely some impossible physics right there. Like I said, these books are just what I need for future sci-fi stories.
I have a couple of books I was already reading when these arrived, so I’m hurrying to get through them, and then … it’s physics time!
I often hesitate to post about upcoming books and publications, because so often life ends up turning my plans upside down–or the book refuses to be written–or the prior book takes longer to be written than planned and so this book has to be pushed off yet again–and so on and so forth. However, I also do like to keep my readers informed as to what they can expect, and so with the qualifier that these plans are very, very loosely held, here is what to look out for in 2022, and possibly beyond.
Secrets of the Past. The third and final (at least for now) Pauline Gray novella will be coming soon–possibly even this month, though a March publication date is more likely.
Death by Disguise. The third novel in the Whitney & Davies series, following after Glamours & Gunshots. (The current chronological order of the series, for those who are curious, is: Magic Most Deadly, The Third Thief*, Masks & the Magician*, While Shepherds Watch, Glamours & Gunshots, Death by Disguise.) My original plan for 2022 was to have this published by April. Substantial rewrites are making that look less and less likely, but I am still intending to publish it this year, just most likely later than the original goal.
Another collection of short stories in the Whitney & Davies collection, these to feature some of the smaller cases the team solves between Glamours & Gunshots and Death by Disguise. This collection is tentatively titled Sorcery and Suspicion, but we’ll see if the title lasts throughout the actual writing and organizing of the stories!
Those three books make up my publishing plans for this year. I have not forgotten about the Caledonia sequel I hinted at however many months ago (either here or on one of my social media sites, I can’t remember now where I talked about it). That story is still proving recalcitrant, and since it is more important to me to get it right rather than publish it fast, I’ve stopped trying to set a publication date for it. It is still happening, just … not very fast.
I also have two more Whitney & Davies novels planned, and my hope is to publish one if not both in 2023. After that … who knows? We shall see where the muse strikes!
Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions about the upcoming books, or an urgent request for a story that you are hoping to read, or a character you’d like to see featured in an upcoming story, or if you just want to talk about the books! I always enjoy chatting with my readers.
*found in the short story collection Magic & Mayhem
At long last, it is time to reveal the cover for the third (and most likely final) Pauline Gray novella. Are you excited? I am excited to show it to you!
This is the fifth book cover I’ve designed (I’ve done all the covers for the PG mysteries, as well as the cover for Magic & Mayhem and While Shepherds Watch), and while I’m not planning on taking up graphic design as a career any time soon, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed developing my skills in this area. I’m also indebted to my husband Carl and my editor A.M. Offenwanger, both of whom have a far better artistic eye than I do and who both always offer valuable input on the cover before I declare it ready.
So now, without further ado, here is the cover for Secrets of the Past.
Old Secrets Cast Long Shadows …
When newspaper columnist Pauline Gray agrees to help a retired schoolteacher write her memoirs, she has no idea it will lead to murder. Someone doesn’t want old memories stirred up … and they are willing to kill to keep the past a secret. Now it’s a race to uncover the truth that the murderer is so desperate to keep buried. It will take all Pauline’s ingenuity to solve this case before the killer strikes again—and this time Pauline herself might be the victim …
This has been one of my most challenging stories to write, and I am looking forward to at last being able to share it with you all–soon! I don’t have a specific release date yet, but it should be sometime in February or, at the very latest, early March.
One more adventure for Pauline, and this one the most difficult yet! We can only hope she survives it …
Whisked from her troubled, solitary life to a spaceship centuries in the future, widowed folk musician Riss Waldon must first figure out how she got there, and then if it’s possible to get home. Before long, she is visiting strange and deadly planets and meeting new alien races, and forming friendships with the crew. Even as they strive to discover a way for her to return, she wonders if it possible to step out of the shadows of her past life and stay here. But when the well-being of the entire crew rests on her shoulders, she isn’t sure she’s up to the task. What if she fails them? All she can do is try …
From one sale to another! I decided impromptu today to run a “Black Friday” sale for From the Shadows. From now (Nov 23) to Dec 1, the ebook of From the Shadows is only $0.99 at all digital retailers.
Click here to get your copy of the story readers have dubbed: “science fiction for people who don’t like science fiction.”
*****
What people are saying about From the Shadows …
“The inner and outer journey of Riss is a riveting tale of a young woman who comes out of the shadows of her past, and finds her way on new horizons.“
“Although [this book] has a fun futuristic space backdrop, it’s really a quiet story about one woman’s journey from grief to embracing a new life and her own potential.”
“This story makes me feel the way I feel when reading Jane Austen, L.M. Montgomery, or the Mitford books. It’s a lovely book to curl up with on a blustery autumn evening or a lazy Saturday morning. I didn’t want it to end!”
To my surprise and delight, Amazon has noticed the lowered ebook prices for the Whitney & Davies series and has obligingly dropped prices on the paperbacks as well–which is something I’ve heard about happening to other authors, but have never experienced myself before now. This is entirely Amazon’s doing, and I have no control over how much or how little they lower the price, or for how long it will last, and they don’t actually bother to inform the authors about this to begin with, so when I say, hey, if you want a paperback you should get it now, that’s not just me being all salesperson-y, that’s because I genuinely don’t know how long they’ll keep the prices lowered.
I don’t know about you, but this sure seems to me to be a great time to get in some early Christmas shopping!
(Disclaimer: if you’ve been around this website for a while you know that I prefer to promote sites other than Amazon for buying my books. Alas, only Amazon is providing these prices right now, so I am reluctantly bowing to corporate rule and promoting it. Believe me, if I could offer you these prices through Bookshop.org or your local indie bookstore, I would!)
“Of all the ghastly holidays, Christmas is the worst!”
When apprentice magician Maia Whitney’s plans for a quiet Christmas with no obligations toward anyone are disrupted by a friend in need, she resigns herself to yet another holiday filled with indigestion and artificial cheer. Things look up when her friend and fellow magician Len Davies joins the adventure, but Maia is still far from feeling merry or bright.
Len would go with Maia to the ends of the earth, but this crumbling manor in the remote Yorkshire countryside tests even his goodwill toward man. He doesn’t object to the ghost supposedly roaming the halls, but he wishes he knew just what has his host’s young sister so scared. To top it all off, he can barely spend any time with Maia, as she is so busy helping her friend.
Will ghosts, curses, cads, and thieves ruin this Christmas for everyone? Not if the intrepid duo of Whitney & Davies has anything to say about it! It will take all their magical abilities and ingenuity, but they are determined to make this a happy Christmas for all.
*****
Today is the day! Christmas comes early for all you lucky readers, because While Shepherds Watch is published today! Click here for links to Amazon, iBooks, B&N, Kobo, and more.
I honestly had so much fun writing this novella. It reminded me of all the reasons I began writing the Whitney & Davies series in the first place–the sheer delightfulness of these characters, and the enjoyment of adding a magical twist to a traditional British mystery. I wrote it when I ought to have been working on any number of other writing projects–the third Pauline Gray novella (so close to being ready for publication, guys), the next Whitney & Davies novel (set in Cambridge, no less!), the next collection of Whitney & Davies short stories (all plotted out, just not written), the next adventure for Riss & co aboard the Caledonia (my heart’s children!) … but I threw all those out the windows and just wrote for fun, and as a result, I have this lovely Christmas gift for all of you.
And that’s not all! Click on the following titles to take advantage of a Whitney & Davies sale, because every ebook in the series is on sale for $0.99 this week to celebrate the new release.
Happy reading, friends, and be sure to spread the word (and Christmas cheer) about While Shepherds Watch and the Whitney & Davies sale! I can’t wait for you all to share in this new adventure with Maia and Len.
Today is the day! I am so excited to be able to share the cover for While Shepherds Watch with you all, as well as the story’s description.
I feel as though I should create a huge build-up, but to be honest, I don’t really go in for that sort of thing, so let’s skip right to the reveal, shall we?
Without further ado … While Shepherds Watch
“Of all the ghastly holidays, Christmas is the worst!”
When apprentice magician Maia Whitney’s plans for a quiet Christmas with no obligations toward anyone are disrupted by a friend in need, she resigns herself to yet another holiday filled with indigestion and artificial cheer. Things look up when her friend and fellow magician Len Davies joins the adventure, but Maia is still far from feeling merry or bright.
Len would go with Maia to the ends of the earth, but this crumbling manor in the remote Yorkshire countryside tests even his goodwill toward man. He doesn’t object to the ghost supposedly roaming the halls, but he wishes he knew just what has his host’s young sister so scared. To top it all off, he can barely spend any time with Maia, as she is so busy helping her friend.
Will ghosts, curses, cads, and thieves ruin this Christmas for everyone? Not if the intrepid duo of Whitney & Davies has anything to say about it! It will take all their magical abilities and ingenuity, but they are determined to make this a happy Christmas for all.
❆ ❆ ❆
While Shepherds Watch will be released on November 2 in paperback and ebook format, and the ebook is available for pre-order now. There’s also a Goodreads page for it already, so if you are a Goodreads user and want to add it to your TBR, click here.
I’m so looking forward to sharing this story with you all! Some holiday magic coming your way, November 2!
Friends, I am so excited to be able to share this news with you. Not only is the next Pauline Gray novella being released this autumn/winter, coming on November 2 is a new Whitney & Davies story!
I’ll be releasing more info about it soon, including the cover and back blurb, but for now I can tell you that it is a Christmas story, novella-length (I originally conceived it as a short story, but, well, it grew), featuring Maia and Len, and it is set between Magic Most Deadly and Glamours and Gunshots.
The title is While Shepherds Watch, and here is at least a little teaser of the cover:
So set your calendars for Nov 2!
I hope to be able to set this up for pre-orders this week, so that you can be extra sure to get yours in time for Christmas, and if I am able to do that I will let you know. Stay tuned for paperback info, a full cover reveal, and the back blurb soon!
And be sure to check in later this month for info about the third Pauline Gray novella’s release date! All kinds of exciting stuff happening here at StarDance Press this season.
Canton, N.Y. is a small town tucked between the Adirondack Mountains and the St. Lawrence River. It is home to St. Lawrence University as well as SUNY (State University of N.Y.) Canton. The Grasse River winds its way through the town, as well as numerous streams and brooks. The park in the center of the village has been there–if not as long as the town has existed, then pretty darn close. It shows up on every old map I’ve seen, and I’ve looked at a lot of them.
It is my hometown, where I was born and raised, and it is also the setting for the Pauline Gray mysteries. All the characters in the Pauline stories are fictional, but I have done my best to keep the setting as authentic to Canton in the 1930s as possible. The photos and memories posted on the Historian Town & Village Canton Facebook page has been one great resource for this; family has been another.
In the end, though, nothing beats poking around the town in person for inspiration and authenticity. For all that I spent my formative years there, there’s a lot of the town I never explored growing up, and so now I take advantage of any trip up to visit my folks to drive around and re-familiarize myself with the landscape.
(I am embarrassed to admit that all the way up until the final proofread of Candles in the Dark, I had misplaced the street where Pauline lives to the other side of the village–even looking at a map hadn’t helped me properly orient it until I actually drove down it and said, “Whoops.”)
On this most recent jaunt to the north country, I corralled Carl as my chauffeur so I could focus on the landscape and not on the road, and we set out to figure out which street looked the most promising for the setting for a murder. It didn’t take long before we found it, on the road that leads to Morley (readers of Candles might remember that Morley is the home of the mill that was the setting for that murder). It was a beautiful day, with the sun shining and all the fields shining greenly in the sun thanks to the frequent rains this month, a light breeze blowing … the kind of idyllic day in the country people dream about but rarely get to experience. Just right for a mild little adventure.
My specifications were fairly simple: it needed to be by the river, fairly lonely, not frequently traveled, and beautiful. Off Rt 27, we found the exact right side road. Don’t you love it when that happens?
All these houses are far too fancy for my fictional house that is the heart of this story, but they certainly provided plenty of inspiration as well as admiring gasps as Carl drove very slowly past while I took frantic snapshots out the windows.
Back on Rt 27, we stopped by St. Mary’s Cemetery to poke around a bit–ostensibly for research purposes, but mostly because I have a hard time resisting the lure of old gravestones. So many fascinating stories hidden behind the names and dates and epitaphs!
Both so young–obviously the twelve-year-old even more so, but the twenty-three-year-old as well.I never think about Canton being a hot spot for immigrants, but there certainly were a lot of Italian and Irish names here in the Catholic cemetery.What a full and adventurous life Patrick must have had! I bet he had stories to tell his grandchildren.
I got the lowdown on the different roads (and what they would or would not have been called in the ’30s) from my dad when I got back to the house, which made for the perfect cap to the day.
Sometimes research looks like hunching over a computer or old books, poring over details to make sure yours match, and that has its charm (though it’s best if one remembers to take frequent breaks to rest one’s eyes and stretch one’s back), but this sort of research has to be my favorite. A beautiful day, a drive through the countryside with my husband, followed by a chat and reminiscing with my dad. It doesn’t get much better than that!
