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Yesterday I posted about the prerelease angst I was feeling. It seems Karma chose to offer me hope, because while I was setting up a promo for Leaving the Tribe, I found reviews of some of my other books that I'd never read before.

It's SO nice to know there are people who get me.

Coco on KIDNAP.org: Lighthearted and amusing. Robin has accidentally become a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and corrupt, and giving to the selective poor. Collecting more misfits into her merry band,...

I have confirmation from my publishing buddies that Leaving the Tribe is ready for publication. In some ways that's comforting, but I'm a worrier by nature. I once had a publisher who put up the wrong file and published the book. (Thank goodness it wasn't my doing, because I'd never have recovered.) A reader contacted me and said, "There are places all through the book where words are crossed out and sentences have been reworded."

Oh, yay.

Needless to say I quit that publisher. Even a cursory...

I've been finalizing the files for Leaving the Tribe, which releases in 6 DAYS!, or so the website screams at me. Combing files for those last few errors is nerve-wracking, because when I find a mistake in one, I have to correct it in all four files, Amazon print, Amazon e-book, D2D print, and D2D e-book.

In the process, however, I found that D2D offers pre-sale promotion prices to readers, so I signed the book up for one. As of now, it isn't only Amazon users who can get the deal. D2D serves...

As Leaving the Tribe's release date nears, the world and my own story scare me more and more. What will happen when this administration is gone? Will the country choose wisely? Will they find some sort of common ground? Will they find a candidate who won't take advantage of precedents set, like ignoring the Constitution, refusing to allow Congress to make law, and treating the opposition with disrespect and even treasonous harassment?

Those are the questions that prompted the book. Though the...

The last few days before a book launches are torture for me. I worry about what I've done wrong. I fuss over wording and just about everything else. I know it's ready, but it's hard to let go.

Then I ask myself, "What did you just read?" It was a "suspense" novel so ridiculous, so right down silly, that I almost didn't finish. The plot was so complicated for a while that I looked at the reviews to see if it was just me. Nope. Others, even those who liked it said they were "a little confused...

Take a look at the picture. That was supposed to be postcards that I send to hundreds of libraries when a new book comes out. The plan was to streamline the process... But no. When they involve technology, my plans seldom work.

Here's the background: To get printing like this done, I've always gone to an OfficeMax that's 50 miles from me, waited while the guy prints my stuff, and then trundled back home with my postcards. Lately they've been so busy that I can't always get the work done on the...

Pre-order Leaving the Tribe yet? It's $2.99 until release day, when it will revert to my normal e-book price, $4.99

https://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Tribe-Peg-Herring-ebook/dp/B0DLH8MW3Y

:) Does it look more exciting as a real link? ;)

Pre-orders are rolling in, which means there's reader interest in Leaving the Tribe. I think most of us wonder where we're going as a nation, and my imaged adventure is only one of many possibilities. I don't want to believe that life will be horrible in 20 years,...

The 18 Day Challenge was too much for me. I forgot to post yesterday.

But here's the good news: my street team LOVES the book. (They are women from their mid-30's to mid-60's.) In fact, one of them asked when the sequel will be out.

Wait.

Sequel?... Nope, it's too early to even think about that.

What I am thinking about is the final stuff for publication. If you're interested, read on. If not, just click HERE to pre-order Leaving the Tribe.

When I set up a book for sale, I put the cover and a...

I've challenged myself to post about Leaving the Tribe every day between now and release on April 18, so here we go.

Let's start with Milla, who begins the narration. Granddaughter of the leader of the Woods Tribe, she's about 13. Though well-behaved and very intelligent Milla, like many kids her age, can be pulled into doing things she knows she shouldn't. Her decision to go with her older, sneaky cousin Mary Ann is the inciting incident of the book. Milla sees something she was never meant...

I have a new book coming out on April 18th. I'm not a great promoter. I've done author interviews, ads on Facebook, and ads on book-selling sites, but I've never seen any increase in sales from those things. So I've challenged myself to an 18-Day Blast on this blog, which I intend to make fun and interesting as well as sales-oriented.

First the book. It's called Leaving the Tribe, and it's speculative women's fiction. (All that means is that it's about a possible future and focuses mainly on...

Sometimes a book just insists on being written down. I've never attempted dystopian fiction before (That's a book set in the future where things aren't great), but the story of Milla and Zalea was so appealing to me that I did a new thing.

I'm pleased with the story for two reasons. First, it's an absorbing tale of women in a possible future world, searching for what they want from life and not giving up until they find it. Along the way they have many good moments of discovery, heartwarming...

Yesterday's Murder is a book I began a looooong time ago and never finished. I was writing series for two different publishers, and while I loved the idea of a woman waking from a long-term coma and finding her life was completely changed, I simply didn't have the time to give it the work it deserved. A year or so ago I stumbled on the file, read through it, and thought I'd like to work on it again. Of course, the world had changed a bunch since I started, so there was massive updating to be...

Aunt Marge is women's fiction and suspense, with touches of Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne, Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel, and other classic tales that are close to gothic in mood.

Grumpy people abound in literature, from Ove in A Man Called Ove to Minnie Jackson in The Help to Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Why they are grumpy and how/if they overcome that is a gold mine of storytelling possibilities. Aunt Marge is a woman we often don't like. Putting Gwen, a vulnerable...

The Trouble with Dad again demonstrates my conviction that a series has an arc that rises and comes to a logical conclusion. The story that began with KIDNAP.org and continued in Pharma Con has come to a point where two things can happen: I can keep making up capers for Robin and her amateur hoods, or I can end the series. As you can probably guess, I chose the latter.

Our parents define us in many ways. Some serve as examples, and we strive to be like them. (I was lucky enough to have two...

Friendship is an important theme in women's fiction, and Deceiving Elvera focuses on one of those pairings that's accidental and unlikely but nevertheless firm and long-lasting. I've been lucky enough to have several of those in my lifetime, the kind that take up even after long stretches without contact. Whenever you meet, you're back to where you were at twelve or twenty or forty, sharing stories and enjoying the feeling of being with someone who "gets" you.

Writing a book requires different...

The second of the Kidnap Capers is Pharma Con. This one took a great deal of research, and I learned a lot about the medicine we are offered in this country. Since I wrote the book, it's become a bigger and bigger issue, and our current HHS secretary has some interesting ideas that seem to come from nowhere. I don't even want to be a health care expert, but if I had to fix things I'd be every bit as qualified to do so as RFK is, and I would not take the path he's taking.

That said, medicine is...

Some books have to be chalked up as disappointments, and FAKE is one of them. I love the story, love the ways the characters' telling of their views lead the reader into an understanding of both their crimes and their motivations. Those who have read it seemed to like it too, since the reviews are positive. One person commented on the "great" cover, the wolf in sheep's clothing that represents the main character, Kip. But nothing much happened with sales.

When I'm being philosophical, I can...

My history of my writing is getting closer to modern times now, and my interest has turned to women's fiction. Pretty much all of my life, I'd had a story in the back of my mind of sisters who love but don't understand each other. This is real life, and I've always been fascinated by how siblings relate to each other. We share more with them than with any other humans: genetics, timeline, proximity, and experiences. Yet as adults we often fail to understand each other in the most basic ways.

...

Now is the time to tell of a couple of mistakes I made. I wrote a caper novel, a humorous telling of crime and mayhem. I loved the characters and what they were able to accomplish by fighting crime with crime. I titled it KIDNAP.org.

That was a mistake. Do you know what a computer does with a title like that? I do now. A search for it takes you to sites for human trafficking, not to fun little books about righteous rascals. I suppose I could do something about it, like change the title, but...

The Loser Mystery series, like my others, has a definite character arc. Loser begins with significant issues in Killing Silence and works through them a bit in Book 2, Killing Memories. In Book 3, Killing Despair, we learn how her suffering came about and who caused it.

While Loser isn't completely healed at the end of this entry, we can see that she is making progress. She may someday be fully back to being Beth, able to leave her Loser persona in the alleys of Richmond.

My publisher wanted...