The Sunsets of the Summer of 2024

May 28th (A Really Big Bird)

As it has become a tradition around here, I'm posting the best sunsets of the summer of 2024. I make it a point to watch the sunset every day from my rocking chair in the garage - when there's a sunset to see. I photograph the best of them, though I walk fifty feet to keep the photograph clear of the power pole and lines. Otherwise, these are the views I see from the top of the hill.

Going through my photos, it actually was a fairly good year for sunsets. Nothing too gaudy, but enough good ones to fill this post.

June 5th A Curtain of rain

June 16th

June 25th

Here the sun is setting as far north as it's going to get. Even now, its started it trek back to the south. I guess I didn't get out of my rocking chair for this pic.

August 1st

August 17th

I probably should have cropped out that sliver of the water tower we share the hill with on the right, but oh, well... You can tell that I don't use AI to edit out the powerlines. These photos are the real deal.

August 16th 

Sept 5th 

By the the first week or two in September, the sun is setting nearly directly to the west, and it gets harder to see the sunset from my vantage pint.so I call it a summer.

Chateau Clare is a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

 

I've made it. I've written an #1 Amazon best seller! Chateau Clare is, at press time, the best selling book in the "low fantasy" category on Amazon, which is to say, fantasy with little or no magic, also known as "mundane fantasy."

Now, of course this doesn't mean anything. It is a well known fact that if you find an obscure enough category to place your book, you too can become an Amazon Best Seller. I will say this, I didn't place my book in this category, Amazon did. They've placed it in a number of categories that I assume they draw from the my suggested search terms and the blub, including low fantasy. I don't believe that was even an option in selecting listing categories. 

I'm sure you're wondering how many books do you have to sell to become a best selling low fantasy author. That number appears to be 15 US sales, and 17 free sales, which I can only presume come from Amazon's UK store. (Amazon UK won't show me the price, since I can't buy it from them with my US browser setting.) Amazon usually price matches my free sales on other stores for one of my titles in Amazon.uk and Chateau Clare appears to be the current one. 

Anyways, Fun and games! Just something to grab a screen shot while the getting's good.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 72)

 

Yes, another Cadfael mystery for this week. What can I say?  I'm lazy, and this is the second story in the omnibus version I read these stories out of, and well, it was on hand. I didn't have to scour my brain, or the library ebook collection to find something to read next. It was the course of least resistance. And well, why deny myself a good book?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Hermit of Eyton Forest by Ellis Peters   A 

(#14 in the Brother Chadfael Series)

Yes, once again, a wonderfully written story. If you've read all of my reviews, and haven't gone off to the library to pick one of her Cadfael stories up, this one won't likely push you over the edge. Clearly, you're just not interested. Fine. Be that way.

As I have said in the past, what bugs me most about mysteries, is that they almost always involve murder, as if that's the only mystery that warrants a book. And I've admitted that, for the most part, death, often murder, is a feature of these stories as well. However, one of her tricks is to postpones that death for several chapters as she introduces the new characters. This builds tension in the reader, since you don't know who's going to get it in the neck, much less why. Another thing she does is to sometimes give the reader a wider view of things than our "detective" monk Cadfael knows. As a result, we might know more than he does - usually about the innocent party suspected of the crime - so we, the readers, are on tender hooks, waiting to see just how Cadfael pulls the innocents out of the fire.

Also, as I have noted in the past, Peters often ties the death, or deaths, involved in the story to the greater events of the time - the English Civil War of 1140's  - so that you don't have the villager murdering villager other every other week, like you might in some mystery series. 

However, in this case, while there is some hints of this more far reaching  threads, most of mystery involves a grandmother intent on marrying her 10 year old grandson - a ward of the Abbey - in an arranged marriage upon the death of his father, in order to add several estates to her grandson's holding, as well as bring him back to his estate, so that she can keep him under her thumb, and rule the roost through him. The story is very much in the mold of all the others, with your innocents, the romance, and Cadfael helping the good sheriff Hugh solve the mystery, and turn a blind eye to some things for the sake of justice.

All these stories fallow one after the other in chronological order - several each year - but can be read out of order without too many spoilers, though there are references in some of them to previous incidents. That said, I am really enjoying reading them in order. I recommend it if you can swing it.

Chateau Clare is Out

 

Chateau Clare, my 2025 novel is now out and available at your favorite online bookshop.

The 413 page paperback edition is available on Amazon for $12.99 here Amazon also offers the $3.99 ebook here, and the $3.99 audiobook can be found here or here.

Both the ebook and audiobook are available for FREE in the online bookshops that sell free books, which is to say, Google here, Apple here, Kobo here, Barnes & Noble here, Smashwords here, and a host of other European sites. The FREE audiobook version of Chateau Clare is currently available on Google here, and will be coming to Apple likely sometime within this decade, or maybe even sooner. Hard to tell with Apple. We live in an age of miracles. Apple has published the audio version of Chateau Clare in just one week's time. I had uploaded the novel to all my non-Amazon retailers a week early to ensure that the book was on sale on 24 October, and so, if you want the audiobook version from Apple, you can find it here.

And so, with the release of my project 2025 novel, it is on to Project 2026. And with 26 months to get it out the door, I'm cautiously optimistic that there may be yet another C Litka novel out someday.

The Saturday Morning Post (No.71) Extra! Extra!

 

I currently have 81 reviews in "the can" so I'm going to have to post more than one a week unless I want to be talking about my 2024 books in March of 2025. Here's the first of the extra reviews.

Another Brother Cadfael Mystery this week. Well, it has been several weeks now since the last one. All I have to do is go to the book shelf to pick out the next one. So when I've nothing else on hand I do.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Rose Rent  by Ellis Peters   A-

In this mystery, the 13th Brother Cadfael Mystery, we have a grief stricken young widow who donated the use of her house to the Abby for the rent of one white rose from its garden every year. She comes from a wealthy craftsman family, and the house is of some value. As a result, she had many suitors, young and old, who would not only want to win her - but reclaim the house as well. Which could be done if the rose was not delivered on the specified day...

Some of those suitors may be willing to go far beyond asking her for her hand in marriage.

This is the 13th book in the series, and I've gone on and on about them, so if I haven't convinced you to give the series a try by now, well, you probably aren't interested in this book. And if you are reading them, I won't spoil this book for you, hence the short review. Still, if I care to play the critic...

This story was quite up to standard. However, it earned its "-" because, as in at least one other story in this series, I am  not convinced that the culprit would have had enough of a motive do what they did. And thus, the mystery element of the story is not as convincing as some of the other ones in the series. Now this is just my opinion as a writer, and as a lukewarm mystery reader. It doesn't bother me too much, since I read these books more for spending time with the characters, and their historic flavor, not for the mystery. As far as I'm concerned, they were written as mysteries for marketing purposes only.

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 70)

 

This week we have the sequel to Three Men on a Boat. It features the same characters as in that book, only maybe a decade later, as J and Harris are married and have children.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K Jerome  B-

The framework for this tale is a journey undertaken by Jerome and the two friends from Three Men in a Boat, George and Harris through Germany. They visit an number of German cities, and the Black Forest upon which Jerome makes some observations, or spins some humorous tale or two upon. He makes some observations about German society and its people, as they were in 1900. How accurate those observations are to day, is an open question.

I did find one observation telling. He was talking about the English tourist, who refuses to learn any other language. So in a foreign country, the tourist get what they want by spending money. The opportunity make money helping the English tourist drives foreign people to learn English. While this observation was somewhat tongue in cheek, I think there is some truth to it, as the English pretty much viewed everyone else as inferiors, and by and large attempted to adopt every country they owned to the English way. Indeed, India is the larges English speaking country in the world and today English is the lingua franca of the world.

The word "bummel" is a German word that Jerome only explains at the very end of the book, and can be considered journey that begins and ends at the same place and can take hours, days or weeks.

I enjoyed the book, with his dry humor and witty observations, a little less than Three Men on a Boat. It is, however, not a novel in any real sense, with no plot to speak of. Nor is it a travel book since most of the destinations are given little or no general observations, though some are used to describe certain aspects of German society. I enjoyed my time on my bummel, but having said that, I guess I've said it all.

Plans and Maps for Chateau Clare

 

Autumn Avenue, Ilse of Autumn

Since I find looking at maps or charts at the front of an ebook to be awkward, I generally don't put my maps and such in the ebook version of the book. To make them available, I make a blog page for them, pinned to the right column, which is what this is designed to be. I've posted all these before, along with some discussion of the story and how it came to be, which can be found Here  and Here.

However, here just the plans and maps. Clicking on them should bring up a larger version. They can also be downloaded and printed as well.

Chateau Clare floor plan

The grounds of Chateau Clare

A map of the city of Celora with the locations mentioned in the story.

The Gardens Avenue on a rainy spring evening.

A New Fantasy Journey - In Paintings - Maybe

 

Recently, I've been toying with the idea of producing a book of my paintings of the imaginary land of Cealanda. Beginning in 1992, I started painting a series of landscape paintings of an imaginary country which I named Cealanda. The premise of these painting was that I painted scenes which I encountered while roaming the ways and byways of this imaginary country. The reason behind this premise was that prior to these paintings, I often used old photographs that I found in books as the subject of my paintings. I decided that if I ever wanted to sell my work, it needed to be entirely my own work. I find painting from imagination far easier than painting from life, and it gives me far greater scope, hence the imaginary land, a device I took from the Austin T Wright's Islandia novel in which he created an entire fictional continent, from its history to its geology.

For the next decade I painted maybe 50 watercolor paintings a year, following the seasons on watercolor paper, though the first dozen or so paintings  I did in colored ink. Beginning around the early 2000s, I started using thin acrylic paint on what was marketed as watercolor canvas. I felt that watercolors on this canvas were too dull, and by using acrylic paint, I could, not only produce a brighter painting, but I could go back after the paint dried and apply washes to enhance the mood without "lifting" the paint, unlike with watercolors.

In the end, I have a collection of several hundred paintings that represent a wordless journey in a fantasy world of imagination that I painted over twenty years, getting better at it over the years. It has been a journey in several respects. There are no dragons, no sorcerers, no ring to rule all in Cealanda. It is a rather pastoral, common place world, but one that you can't get to except through your imagination.

A paper book printed in full color would be likely be very expensive to produce, but perhaps I could use it as a Christmas present... The more viable option would be to make it as an ebook. However, it would have to be published as a PDF version rather than as an epub, so that every page remained as I laid it out. A flowing epub book would be a mess. Being both in color and with the page aspect set in stone, it would have to be aimed at tablets and computer reading rather than your e-ink ebook reader or phones. Given the dimensions of these paintings, I might be able to fit only one on a page, if I wanted them large, or two if smaller. That, and the size and shape of the book is something I will have to experiment with someday.

As of now, this is just a long term idea that I've only recently been tossing around in my head. It will be some time before I get serious about it, if I ever do. Just something to do when I run out of things to do. Still, I do believe it would be fairly easy to do, as I have collected most of the paintings I would need in one spot on my computer, so it would simply be a matter of selecting the ones I want to present, out of the hundreds that I painted and then come up with something to say about them. Perhaps I could tie them together with a fictional travelogue as well. Who knows? As I said, it is just something I'm thinking that I might like to do. Still, thinking about it, and doing it are two very different things, so no promises. In any event, it would be a 2025-26 project, at the earliest. Time enough for you all to forget about it, if I find I'm too lazy to do it.

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 69)

 

This week we have another of those books written by women, mostly for women, I suppose, that I enjoy, liking both small scale stories, and period pieces. This one dates back to 1938 and it can be seen as a retelling of the Cinderella story. I read it in one day. My wife, who was between books, also liked it.

At the moment, these posts are running more than two months behind my actual reading. I like to have a backlog to ensure a weekly post, but the lag is getting a bit long, and reading a book in a day, does tend to increase that backlog. I may have to go back to posting the review of two books to catch up or just slot a couple into my Wednesday blog slot when I have nothing to say, instead of  just saying nothing. We'll see.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson  A-

This is a story about a penniless governess, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew, who at the start of the story, is at an employment agency and is given an address of a person wanting a governess. Standing before the block of flats, she prayed silently; 'Oh Lord! If I've ever doubted your benevolence in the past, forgive me and help me now.' She added a rider to her prayer, with the first candid confession she had ever made to her conscious mind. 'It's my last chance. You know it. I know it.'

The listing seems to be a mistake, because when she is met at the door by the lady of the flat, who was obviously dragged out of bed at 10:00 by the ringing of the doorbell, there is no child present in the flat - but there is a man, and not the lady's husband. But never mind... she's invited in, and is drawn into the hectic life of a stage actress and her bright young friends, and lives a new and wonderful life for a day.

Being lazy, I have links to two more complete reviews, if you want to know more about the story:

Strange at Ecbantan 

The Next 50

The entire story takes place within a single day. The pace is cheerfully breakneck, the characters charming, the situations, one after another, are little vignettes of the freewheeling life of young, theater people in pre-WWII London.

Winifred Watson wrote six novels, three were rural romances set in the previous century, and three were contemporary novels like this one. Henrietta Twycross-Martin wrote, in the introduction to the book;

"...they deal with the development and resolution of sexual and family tensions in ways that may flout convention and the law, but that allow women to survive and ultimately flourish." 

And she adds, having met the author when she was 93; "She said to me 'I have lived a very happy life'. And in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day she wrote a very happy novel."  It is.

A bomb in the London Blitz drove her out of her house and into her mother-in-law's house where she lived for six years, until they could get their own again. She said that she needed to be alone to write, and by the time she and her husband move into their own home, it seems like the urge to write had passed, and with the exception of a half finished, and lost ms of another novel, she didn't write again.

New Kobo Policy - $.99 Series Starters - Apple Audio Solution?

Some business housekeeping news this week.

I recently tried to find my books on Kobo's ebook website, and neither putting in my name, nor entering a title of a book, would bring up any of my books, despite the fact that they are distributed to Kobo from Draft2Digital. Moreover, if I went to  the "My Book" page on D2D's site, clicked on a book and then on the Kobo logo below the listing, it would take me to a Kobo page, or should I say an alleged Kobo page, for that book. Now this is probably a Kobo issue, however, I decided to take the opportunity to delist my books with Kobo via D2D in favor of uploading them myself to Kobo.

I debated about listing them at the same price as they are listed at Amazon. Kobo does not report the sale of free books to Draft2 Digital, so I don't know how many I've sold for free on Kobo. It's a case of "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?" sort of thing. Which is to say, not knowing how many, or if any, books I sell on Kobo, it is easy to give up those unrecorded free sales. I doubt I've sold very many, judging from the number of reviews they received. Once upon a time, I did list my books on Kobo myself, and in that case they did report how many free books you sold. It wasn't many, not worth keeping a separate account, so I went back to distributing them via Smashwords. This time around, I'm thinking that if I don' sell more than a couple free books a month, it wouldn't make a difference if I put a non-free price on from a sales point of view. They might be not only more visible with a price, but more attractive in Kobo's version of Kindle Unlimited lending library, so adding a non-zero price may be a plus

But on further consideration, I decided to see just how many I sell at free, and then make a final decision at the end of the year. If I can't give them away on Kobo, I might as well not sell them.

In another bit of news, I've lowered the prices of my series starting ebooks, which is to say, The Captain of the Lost Star, Sailing to Redoubt, and The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon to $.99, which is typical for a series starter, if not for free. I could try to make them perma-free, but The Captain of the Lost Star is exclusively Amazon at present, though I'm thinking that I will use that six book format for Kobo as well, but I don't  think it's worth messing with Amazon at present. I have two free books on Amazon.com and maybe a free book in some of the other stores, so I have free sample books covered already.  I'll just let that sleeping dog lay.

And finally I contacted D2D about the three books of mine that had not been converted to Apple audiobooks. I received a very quick response from Tara, who discovered that the problem was likely that the books in question did not have complete tables of contents. I never paid much attention to tables of content before, but now, I guess I better. In any event, I reworked the manuscripts so that their conversion process found all the chapters and reuploaded them. Hopefully this will fix the problem. We'll see. At least I received an explanation as to what may be holding them up.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 68)

 

This week we go back to the source. Last week I reviewed Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog.  Her story was a nod to Jerome K Jerome's most famous novel, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) That novel being available on Gutenberg, I downloaded it... And so once more we are on a small boat on the Thames. This time making our way up it from London.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)  by Jerome K Jerome  B

Though described as a novel, it is more of a fictional travelogue with a great many humorous anecdotes hung on the incidental narrative of a boating trip. The story, such as it is, describes a boating expedition up the Thames River in the late 1880's undertaken by three men, and a dog. The actual journey it is loosely based on the author's honeymoon, with his bride being replaced by George and Harris in the fictional journey. He wrote it right after they returned from their honeymoon. How much of the voyage outside of the actual river is authentic I don't know. What I do know is that many, many years ago I collected books on London, and I picked up a two volume set called The Thames Highway by Fred S Thacker, more or less under the impression that it would deal with the Thames of London to the sea. However it covered the entire length of the Thames - with maps. I never read it, as it was rather dry reading, mostly a list of this sites in great detail, but reading Three Men in a Boat allowed me to put it into use, tracing their progress on a series of maps of the river. You never know... Which is why you should never throw anything out.

Being a fan of clever, witty writing, I enjoyed this book and his dry humor, though, as I say, I can't really consider it a novel. Rather it was an excuse to tell a wide variety of humorous little stories on all sorts of subject. I believe humorous stories was the type of writing Jerome had been producing before writing this book. The book proved to be so popular that it has never been out of print, and though he wrote other books and plays, none were as popular as this one.

He did however, write a similar book some years later with the same characters called Three Men on the Bummel. This time they go on a bike trip through Germany. I downloaded that one as well, and will be reporting on it in a few weeks.

This is a famous book, and something of a classic. It's a nice light read, but nothing more that a collection of humorous stories and a glimpse into life in Victorian England.

Revealing My 2025 Novel Release Date!

 

A slightly revised cover

Are you weary of long, dark, and grim fantasy epics? Tired of evil priests, ruthless kings, sinister queens, knaves, and scoundrels—intricate palace intrigues and endless wars? Are you jaded by blood-soaked tomes of battle after battle, death after death? Need a break from accounts of disembowelment, torture, rape, and murder? In short, are you looking for a different sort of fantasy? Look no further.

Chateau Clare is a leisurely paced, mundane slice-of-life fantasy novel set in a post-magic, Edwardian-era sort of world. The stakes are low, and the company pleasant. In it, Lan Teya discovers he’s the heir of a once slightly sinister and powerful Great House—a scion of a family he never knew he belonged to. With his inheritance comes the long abandoned estate of his sorcerer ancestors—Chateau Clare. As the new master of Chateau Clare, Lan Teya reluctantly sets out to renovate it. In the process, he discovers not only its secrets, but also uncovers a great injustice suffered by his immediate predecessor at the hands of the other Great Houses—a wrong he reluctantly feels he must right. But at what cost?

Chateau Clare is a slow paced novel of everyday life in an imaginary, but semi-familiar world, filled with colorful friends, little mysteries, and a hint of romance. If you’re looking for heart-thumping excitement, move along, nothing to see here. But, if you’re looking for a nice, pleasant read, Chateau Clare may be just your cup of tea.

C. Litka is the author of sixteen tales of adventure, mystery, and travel set in richly imagined worlds. In Chateau Clare, he has written a novel of everyday life and little mysteries with his usual cast of colorful, fully realized characters. If you seek to escape your everyday life, you will not find better company, nor more wonderful worlds to explore, than in the stories of C. Litka.

That, in short, is my 2025 Novel, Chateau Clare. 

The paperback version of Chateau Clare is already available on Amazon for $12.99. I saw that it is, for some reason listed under the "Supernatural mysteries" category as well as the two categories I selected. This suggests that Amazon scans the blurb of each book, since it included the word "sorcery" in the description. Interesting. 

The Amazon ebook will be released on 24 October 2024 You can preorder your ebook copy on Amazon for $3.99. The audiobook version on Amazon will follow within a day or so, also for $3.99 

All the other ebook versions of Chateau Clare will be available for my usual price of FREE. Find them on Google, Apple, B & N, Smashwords, Kobo, and a host of other European ebook stores on or shortly after 24 October 2024.

The FREE audiobook version on Google will drop shortly after 24 October 2024. The FREE Apple audiobook version will, maybe, follow, sometime. There is no telling when, or even if, Apple will release it after I submit it. I'm still waiting on three books I submitted nine months ago to appear.

Some Author Notes:

I've come to realize that Chateau Clare represents a return to my original story concept of Some Day Days and A Summer in Amber, which is to say it's a light, romantic novel, period. I set those stories in the future simply to free myself of the constrains of a known time and place and the past and future that surrounds a historical time and place. Also, it frees me of all the research setting a story in the past with any realism involves. In this case, Chateau Clare is set on a different planet in the far future, but it is just a light, slightly romantic novel with a little mystery to drive the leisurely plot along. For marketing purposes I've slotted it in as general fantasy and cozy mystery, since I'm done with science fiction. The reality is that there is a minor science fiction base, but it owes next to nothing to science fiction, and can pass as mundane, or low fantasy. More or less.

I had fun dreaming up this story last summer, and writing it this spring. I did not consider what my readers might want when I wrote it, so that if it disappoints my readers, it's on me. I also did not go back and trim 30,000+ words off of the first draft, like I should, so readers might well find it way too wordy and boring. That's also on me. So if sales and rating suffer for all that, it's also on me. But that's a price I'm more than willing to pay to write just what I want, just the way I want it written. And well, unless Amazon makes me, I don't ask any reader to pay me money for my work because I do it for fun. On the flip side, I'm not going to work for nothing. I'm only willing to have fun for nothing, and thus, I write the books I, personally, want to write. I'm more than willing to trust that they will find a few readers who also appreciate them. I hope that this doesn't sound arrogant or condescending. All I'm saying is that I approach writing as a work of art, and expression of the artist's creativity, without commercial considerations. And because of that I understand that if you don't produce an appealing product, you can't kick if it doesn't sell. I won't.

So, with Chateau Clare I've gone back to my roots as a writer. I think I'll be staying there.