It’s the first day of Spring and it is definitely time for a newsletter!

Spring is my absolute favorite season, especially here in my new home state of North Carolina. I never saw wild deciduous trees bloom in my native southern California. I had beautiful, flowering jacaranda, crepe myrtle, and Chinese orchid trees in my California backyard, cultivars imported centuries ago from exotic locales, but no native blooming trees. I don’t know the names of them all yet, but right now, the forests in central North Carolina are exploding with blossoms of pink, violet, and white.

New beginnings don’t begin to describe my life right now. I am deep into promoting my upcoming debut historical fiction novel, Hatfield 1677, and trying to understand entirely new (to me) publishing expectations such as “blog tours,” “launch parties,” and “Pre-order campaigns.” 

Also, because I can’t seem to ever just relax, I am “querying” my work in progress, Echoes, another historical fiction novel. Querying is the crazy pursuit of literary agents, to whom authors send a query letter and several pages of a manuscript, along with other assorted randomly requested information such as an author bio, comparative titles of similar works, etc. The odds are about like the lottery, but a lot more work.

Then there’s a contest for a five-book contract with a reputable UK publisher. Very tempting, but requires writing to a specific brief: an orphan arriving at a Gothic mansion and uncovering a mystery. Although I normally don’t outline my work, and I’ve never written a Gothic mystery in my life, I’m giving that a go as well.

Hope springs eternal. Especially in spring. And I did find a four-leaf clover last week…