Coming Soon: Commoner By Choice

The most difficult part of the birth of a new book is the waiting. You wait for it to be accepted by a publisher, you wait for your edits to come back, you wait for your reviews to come in, and you wait, agonized, for the day it's released.

I'm at that stage now. Everything is finished--I hope. But my release date isn't for two months yet. All I can do for now is try to get folks interested in reading Commoner By Choice, the tenth book in my "Behind the Ranges" series, when it does finally come out.

I've already introduced you to one of the characters. Demon is a mule, hardworking, even-tempered, patient. His photo has been on my website for a while, and I even let him be my profile photo on Facebook. He's on the book cover too, but all you see there is his backside, a pretty distinctive one, as he is an Appaloosa mule.

Book cover? That's right. I've got a cover! It shows the magnificence, the ruggedness of the mountains Micah King and Eliza Jane Dollarhide travel through on their desperate escape from the man who believes Eliza has stolen his inheritance, and will kill to get it back. Micah is there, too, astride Jezebel. And that's Eliza on Demon.

Two months! That's 62 days. On one hand, I wonder if I'll get everything done before 16 February, and on the other I dread how slow that time is going to pass. Just as it always used to in the last month before Christmas, or the final few weeks of a school year.

To fill the days a bit, I'll be posting an excerpt along about the first of the year. Even better, the ebook version of Commoner By Choice will be available for pre-order at Amazon, KOBO, and the iBookstore from New Years' Day or thereabouts.

I'll also be working to finalize the print version, for those of you who still like the feel of a book in your hands. It will be available around the middle of February, but I can't promise it will be the same day as the ebook release. I'll let you know.

Maybe those sixty-two days aren't going to drag as much as I'd feared. Sounds like I'll have plenty to keep me busy.

Be sure and check my website and my Facebook page for updates between now and 16 February, when you will hear from me again. At some to-be-announced point I'll be giving away some free e-copies of other "Behind the Ranges" titles. You could be a winner.

In the meantime, I invite you to view my annual holiday postcard--another antique--at my Gladhaus website. This one dates to sometime around 1912 to 1917, but without a postmark I can't pin it down to a definite year. I just know approximately when the sender was likely to have sent it to my great aunt.

Holiday cheers!

Jude