Kate Flora: New Year’s has passed, and we’re hard at work in the New Year. We thought we’d take this opportunity to share some of the books we’ll publish in 2024, and projects we’re working on that haven’t yet found a home. As for me? I don’t have anything in the pipeline yet, but hope that in the months ahead, Unleashed Love, my romantic tale about a matchmaking dog, will find a home. I’m also hopeful about a thriller currently titled The Senator’s Daughter, although I hope to find a better title with the help of my Facebook friends. Now it’s back to work on the next Joe Burgess, although I’m getting pressure to write a new Thea as well. We shall see. Inspiration has a way of sidetracking the best laid plans. Who knows? It might a children’s book, cowritten with my cousin, about a car nut named Ben and a mouse named Carby. Stay tuned.

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: Continuing a “retirement” project I started last year, I’m turning the last of my romance novels published in the years 1989-1997 into an omnibus e-book (and possibly a print-on-demand trade paperback as well, if it doesn’t end up being too expensive). These books needed some revising, not to set them in the present day, but rather to get rid of the worst of the wordiness, some rather purple prose, and a few cringeworthy lines of dialogue from my “heroes.”  This collection, titled The Maine Quartet, should be ready for me to publish through Draft2Digital sometime in February. Along with the four novels set in Maine, it will also contain a bonus short story, “The Boston Post Cane.” When that’s done, I have more reprint projects in mind. I want to do a thorough revision of an early historical romance, Firebrand, and bring it out as a “new” novel with a new title (probably Treacherous Gifts). I did this last year with another title, turning Winter Tapestry, a romance, into Death of an Intelligence Gatherer, a mystery. I’m also toying with the idea of producing new print-on-demand editions of my entire Face Down series, set in the 16th century. I already did the hard part on those when I collected them into three volumes for new e-book editions.

Maggie Robinson: If I ever finish editing, I hope to release two 1920s-set cozy mysteries into the 2020s–Lady May and the Memoir of Death, and Lady May and the Master of Deceit. The heroine is a woman “of a certain age” and quite close to my heart. The series also features a Scotland Yard detective anxious to retire, Lady May’s widowed niece Lady Alice, Lady Alice’s three-year-old son Tommy, a disreputable dog, and several dead bodies. Something for everyone! And I’ll continue to plug away on my turn-of-the-20th-century Maine island murder mystery.

Matt Cost: I have two books slated for publication this year. Pirate Trap will pub on March 27th. It is the fifth book in the Clay Wolfe/Port Essex Trap series. Clay and Baylee are hired to search for a long lost treasure and things immediately get more complicated. Pirates, motorcycle gangs, and sex doll manufacturers round out the mix. City Gone Askew will pub on July 31st. It is the second book in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series. 8 Ballo is hired to investigate a death, a missing Roman Legion Standard, and gets drawn into investigating shady practices being run by Carnegie Institute regarding the eugenics movement in 1924 Brooklyn. The sixth book in the Goff Langdon Mainely Mystery series, Mainely Mayhem, is done and awaiting a pub date, which may be fall of this year, or spring of next. Write on.

Jule Selbo: 8 DAYS, A Dee Rommel Mystery has been out for 6 weeks now and reviews (from Kirkus to the LA Times Book Review to other sites/blurbs and Amazon reviews) have been great and I am so grateful. BUT!!! A hundred pages into 7 DAYS now, that familiar fear is setting in. Will I be able to make this work as well at 8 DAYS? And 9 DAYS and 10 DAYS – the other Dee Rommel Mysteries.

Last Saturday I spent a few hours at the Waldoboro Library talking with mystery readers (and readers of other genres) about writing and characters in my books.  They braved the cold, were served tea and we had a fabulous time in the beautiful space.  The energetic Ann Leamon (lead at Waldoboro Library – and non-fiction writer) put the event together and she’s planning on doing more of these in the future.

The attendees were interested in mysteries and historical fiction so I got to talk about Dee Rommel as well as my mystery/romance that takes place in Florence Italy and the two historical fiction biographies I’ve written.

I am doing some book clubs in the Portland/Yarmouth/Falmouth area soon and an event in Freeport in April that I’m looking forward to also – I’ve heard that group of readers are voracious!   LOVE the SNOW, LOVE the COLD.  HAPPY JANUARY!

John Clark: I’m part of two critique groups, one in person, one on Zoom. They are giving me valuable feedback on (I’m Not) Singing the L.A. Blues and Thor’s Wingman,  both YA novels with paranormal and mystery themes. I have an historical short mystery story to submit for this year’s competition. I plan to go back to the twenty story starts I posted in two MCW blog posts (one recently, one in 2022), and turn as many as are practical into short stories. Already, two became full length books and another a Christmas story that was posted on YA Outside The Lines. Stay tuned for progress reports.

Maureen Milliken: I’ve got some exciting news for a change. At least, exciting for me.

The publisher of my three-book Bernie O’Dea series is ramping down operations, and handed back the rights to the books (short version), and I’ve taken the opportunity to republish under my own imprint, Nevermore Mystery Press. Look forward in the coming months to posts on how that all works.

I wasn’t ready to give up on the series, and readers certainly aren’t. I frequently get asked when the fourth book is coming out, and I can say with confidence that DYING FOR NEWS will be out this summer.

In the meantime, the first three books in the series, COLD HARD NEWS, NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS and BAD NEWS TRAVELS FAST have all been republished with new covers, new edits and some updated writing. I am very excited about the new versions — both the look and the content. (Another post for another day: The importance of finding a cover designer you really like, communicating with them and committing to pay for covers that will help your books sell and that you can be proud of).

I published on IngramSpark, as well as Amazon KDP, and that, too, will be a post for another day. Another post for another day will be the vagaries of republishing already published books on Amazon, with new ISBNs (required since the old ones belonged to my publisher), which is not going as smoothly as I hoped.

I will say this about it, though: the COLD HARD NEWS print edition is somehow attached to the old version, which normally would be great, since that means the reviews are still there, but it’s not visible to anyone but me since the old version has been unpublished.

On the other hand the COLD HARD NEWS ebook, as well as the two other books are easily found, but have no reviews.

Which brings me to: Anyone who is willing to do an honest Amazon review is welcome to a free ebook or print version of any of the three books (though with CHN just an ebook, since I don’t know how that’ll work right now with the print version). Please contact me at mmilliken47@gmail.com or through the contact form on my website, maureenmilliken.com  if you are interested. I will gift you an ebook, or be happy to ship you a print version.

Aside from all this blah blah blah, I’ve very excited about DYING FOR NEWS and getting back to the series. I’ve put aside the non-series book I’ve been slowly laboring over for several years, but that’s still in the works at some point, too.

more “Butt in Chair…..

Sandra Neily: Even though AI gives me the heebie-jeebies, I tasked ChatGPT with enough info to give my third novel a better name. I really like what it spit out: “Deadly Harvest.” Now back to the genuine writing of it. It will get published this year and I will also (using FindA Way) bring out an audio book for my first novel, “Deadly Trespass,” and I plan to do more of the following: ski, see more of the grandgirls, fly fish, and go camping (in the Casita) with Bob. I think, with me, the outdoors seems to win out over the typing. Sigh.