Plague Nation Launch Party!!!

Plague-Nation-cover WHEN:  Tuesday, April 9th, 7:30pm PST

WHERE:  Mysterious Galaxy Redondo Beach
2810 Artesia Blvd, Redondo Beach, California 90278

I’m going to be traveling south and celebrating the release of my second Ashley Parker novel at the amazing store Mysterious Galaxy in Redondo Beach. They know how to do book events and I am so thrilled to be having the launch event there! I hope you can make it!

When the brain is too fried to come up with posts…

MFH-new-cover ... Post book covers!  Yeah, that’s the ticket! So presenting the cover for my new eBook version of Murder for Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon, my very first published novel.  I thought I’d try my luck with the eBook rights and dabble my toes in the waters of self-publishing with the help of the lovely and talented Judi Fennell, writer and format queen extraordinaire.

  I have been in a serious fog/funk/OMG, my deadline is past type mindset the last few months and posting has not been much of an option for my already overtaxed gray cells.  I also find Facebook makes me lazy; why write an actual post when you can spit out a few sentences here and there or share cute cat pictures? Bam!  Immediate gratification with little, if any, thought.

I think I fried my brain a little during the publicity blitz for Plague Town.  Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast writing posts and doing interviews for the book, and I’d do it again (I certainly hope to do it again for Plague Nation!) in a heartbeat. But between doing book events for Plague Town, writing Plague Nation, and dealing with a mangy Plague Dog at home… well, it’s been a Plague-filled time, with shape-shifting jaguar shamans thrown in for variety( Fixation for Ravenous Romance).

Did I mention I have a full time day job too ? Not too unusual for a writer these days. Very few of us have the life of leisure many people imagine belongs to published authors.  Hell,the writers I know fortunate enough to write as their day job don’t have lives of leisure because they’re too busy writing their butts off (there’s an image for ya) to make their deadlines.

Sometimes the writing comes easy.  My muse is close by, doing that thing that muses are supposed to do . Y’know, be all inspirational and help the words flow.   Most of this year, though, my muse has been off on vacation, no doubt knocking back copious amounts of champagne while lounging in the sun somewhere. So I’ve been hacking my way through an overgrown jungle of prose, plot and characters, trying to clear a path to the end of book two, with little if any help from my lazy-ass, champagne-o-holic muse.  And … I think I’m nearly there. 

I sure  as hell hope so ’cause when I’m too tired and frazzled to even post cute animal pictures, it’s definitely time for a change. 

Now I wonder if I buy a bottle of Veuve Cliquot if my muse could be tempted back to San Francisco from whatever tropical island she’s using as a retreat…  

Cover for Plague Nation (and my first post in, like, forever!)

Ain’t it pretty?

I have been away from my blog for months now, working on publicity for Plague Town, the first in my Ashley Parker series, and then working on the second book, Plague Nation, the cover of which you see before you in all of its eerie glory.  I loved the cover for Plague Town.  This one makes me even happier, what with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background and multiple zombies instead of one.

Writing Plague Nation has been challenging.  I have, according to my sister, classic “Second Book Syndrome.”  In other words, my first book has been really well received and gotten overwhelmingly positive reviews, and I’m afraid the second book will suck and no one will like it.  I guess this is relatively normal (the fear issues, not that my second book will necessarily suck!), but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.  

So… lots of second-guessing and angsting and agonizing over Every. Single.Word. Also lots of publicity work had to be done for Plague Town, much more than anticipated.  Which was lovely and fun and made me love the Titan marketing team so much that I’d marry all of them, but also took more time than expected.  I am not yet able to write for a living and have a full time day job, and I find I have this annoying need for eight hours of sleep every night in order to be functional at work and tolerable to my fellow human beings.  

Seriously, no one likes me when I’ve gone a few days without adequate sleep.  We’re talking signs against the evil eye and crosses held up to repel me.  It also has meant no spare time for blogging and a brain sucked dry of ideas for posts, like Xander in Starship Troopers.   But things are moving along now and I’m inclined to try and post once a week again and stop being such a whiny little bee-otch ’cause I am writing for an awesome publishing company (love you, Titan!) and I’m getting to write about one of my true loves: zombies!  

So stay tuned for Plague Nation, due out April 9th, 2013!