Back from Vacation

Okay, before I write my post I'd just like to note that I'm excited to see that my cat-shifter romance, Puma, is now on sale in paperback on Amazon! Though it's not officially on sale until August 4. Anne Cain did the lovely lovely cover.

---------

I'm back from vacation and brain dead. There's also a very cute cat stalking the clover in our front yard. These two sentences are not much related.

I actually find it harder to be online during the summer, there are so many distractions! I'm curious if internet use decreases in July and August or not. Or if it's just me. September is the month to hunker down again and focus on the jobs, and I tend to be more online then. (And read less.)

So I did some reading on vacation and that was a lot of fun. Among the books I read were a selkie romance (Sea Lord by Virginia Kantra), historical fiction about slavery (The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, published as Someone Knows My Name outside of Canada), alternate history with dragons in the Napoleonic wars (Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik), fantasy of manners (The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner) and a historical romance (Broken Wing by Julia James).

Often I'll read romance only, but then I'll suddenly want to break out of that reading pattern and pick up quite different sorts of books. What have you been reading this summer?

Jean Marie's Magical Maryland Roadshow

Okay, so it's not all mine. But I will be on the road in Maryland this Saturday, September 13, as part of a double signing with seven Washington DC-area authors at Fort Meade's Main PX and the Columbia Borders. And it should be magical.

Four of the authors are fellow Samhain writers--D. Renee Bagby, Dana Marie Bell, Melissa Schroeder and Eve Vaughn. Also joining us are Stephanie Burke of Ellora's Cave and Anthony Stevens of Lyrical Press.

We'll be signing at the Main Fort Meade Post Exchange from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Our signing at the Borders located at 6151 Columbia Crossing Circle, Columbia, MD 21045, will run from 2-4 p.m.

Of course, there will be giveaways and prizes at both locations. More importantly, at the Fort Meade PX, there will be a very special book to buy: Here Be Dragons (ISBN 978-0-8095-7331-8), a collection of thirteen short stories about the weird and wonderful fan convention known as Dragon*Con written by some of today's top science fiction and fantasy authors. For reasons unfathomable to anyone but the editor, I'm included in that number. Plus, the copies I'll be selling--and signing--at Fort Meade have been autographed by Jody Lynn Nye and our fearless editor Bill Fawcett as a tribute to our men and women in uniform.

I don't even know if I'll be able to sell them at the Borders later in the afternoon. The book hasn't been officially released yet. It isn't scheduled to appear in most stores until November, and the print run is very limited.

Here Be Dragons is special on a number of levels. In addition to stories by Jody, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Susan Sizemore, Todd McCaffrey and me, the collection features the Robert Asprin's last story, finished the day before he died. Ironically, Bob's story doesn't boast a single alien, dragon or elf, just real people doing what comes naturally at Dragon*Con--which can get a lot stranger.

Our Maryland signings, even with me hanging around, will probably be mundane by comparison. But you never can tell. Hope you'll join us and find out.