Daisy po polsku

by Carola

The first ten books of my Daisy Dalrymple series are coming out in Polish. This is the cover of the first, Death at Wentwater Court.

Cute, right? But wait... They're putting them out as compete boxed sets, each set with the cover of one of the books, and all with a clever and even cuter motif on the spines:

You may note that Daisy's last name has been dropped from the series title--because Poles can't pronounce Dalrymple, I wonder?

These three are all I've seen, so I'm just assuming the rest also feature the black cartoonish cat. To me, it brings to mind the Pink Panther, and the theme of the movies comes into my head every time I see it.

The odd thing is that, as far as I remember, there are no cats in any of Daisy's adventures. Me, I'm a dog-person!

Now that's more like it...


 Find Daisy (in English) on Amazon

And read about Cornish Mysteries release in UK here 
Amazon US  Amazon UK
 

99c for Kindle experiment

by Carola Dunn


My Regency e-publisher is experimenting with pricing on Amazon. She asked me if I'd like to find out what happened if one of my (36) Regencies was priced at 99c (UK 77p) instead of the usual $3.99. I said okay, and she chose A Lord for Miss Larkin, originally published in paperback in 1991.

 
No murder here, but there is an abduction so at a pinch you could call it crime fiction. What it does have is dogs, as you might guess from the paperback cover. The heroine has a Newfoundland, and three of her four eccentric aunts have West Highland Terriers. (The protagonist of my Cornish mysteries also has a Westie.) 


 

 http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Larkin-Valiant-Hearts-ebook/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Larkin-Valiant-Hearts-Trilogy-ebook/

This book is the first of a trilogy, so if sales go up, the second and third books may follow at the regular price--one can always hope!

The second book, The Road to Gretna, features an elopement--or rather two elopements that get entangled with each other--and an extremely troublesome kitten. 

The third, Thea's Marquis, doesn't feature any animals, but it does have a villain or two and it ends with a thrilling rescue...

 It will be interesting to see what the pricing does for the sales and whether any increase carries over to the sequels and even to the rest of the 36. We won't know for a month or two, when the numbers come in. Fingers crossed!


  

Pet Wisdom

 By Mark W. Danielson

For humans, life can be stressful.  Most of us have too many things to do and never enough time or money to do them.  But to our dogs like Maxx, waking up is blissful.  This is one reason we love them so much.

For us, life has been trying ever since we listed our Colorado house last spring.  Selling it quickly was a blessing, but building our dream home has been a challenge.  The recession made our loan process extremely difficult, and there always seems to be some new problem in seeing our plans come to fruition.  Add to this our sometimes inability to communicate via cell phones or Internet due to service-related problems and our frustration increases.  My job takes me on the road for a week or more at a time, which frequently compounds our problems, but all our little dog cares about is curling up to us on the sofa.  Regardless of whatever pressing issues we may face, Maxx always wakes up smiling, wagging his tail, telling us everything’s alright.  Thank God we have him.  No doubt, pets like him are why dog is God spelled backwards.  (Cat lovers forgive me, but this is a dog article.  Your pets are equally important.)

Having the holidays behind us gives us more reason to learn about love from our beloved companions.  If we could see the world as they see it, our problems would seem smaller and our happiness would be greater.  With 2013 upon us we should realize that most of our stress is self-induced, so we should do all we can to minimize it.  Let’s only worry about things we can control and take pleasure in the meaning of Christmas by treating people as we wish to be treated.    

Clearly, none of these things come easy to humans, but they do to our pampered pets whose only mission in life is to love and spread joy.  I hope your pet’s hearts touch each of you as we all welcome the new year. 

The minor mysteries of life

Carola Dunn

You don't need a murder to have a mystery on your hands. Here are a few I've encountered recently, or not so recently...

Where is the plug-in hard drive I so carefully hid from burglars when I went to England in Spring 2011? I put it somewhere safe. I was hiding it from burglars not from myself. 

How can a sock vanish utterly without trace between the bedroom and the washing machine. What about a pillow-case?

Why do chestnut-backed chickadees eat suet when black-capped chickadees eat only seed?

Why do black dogs--at least my black dogs--like to lie in the sun until they're so hot you can barely touch them?

And why choose the middle of a flowerbed to do her sunbathing?

Why don't slugs and snails eat snapdragons, when nothing else is safe from them?

How can I stop the Adobe Flash Player popup appearing every time I play a video? Actually, that's one I managed to solve, with the aid of an Adobe forum. A LOT of people were struggling with the same mystery.
 

Does anyone else hope all those little poor countries win Olympic medals? 

Is anyone going to notice if I use the word "outdoorsman" in a book set in 1928 England when the OED dates first use to 1938 USA?

Having caught two rats, have I eliminated the population under the house? The hole I filled remains filled. The dog seems to have lost interest.

What is this china pattern that I inherited from my mother? It has no mark on the bottom and replacements.com can't identify it.

 

And last, but not least, as it causes a lot of blood loss: How does a blackberry bush manage to put out new 6' canes overnight?

Signing all the way...

by Carola Dunn

I've spent the last couple of weeks dashing up and down I-5, to bookstores and libraries, talking about and signing Anthem for Doomed Youth. Trillian accompanied me on the California trip. She was welcomed into several mystery bookstores. Here we are at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego.


Book 'Em in South Pasadena and Mystery Ink in Huntington Beach are also dog-friendly.

More to come--I'm heading for Portland next Saturday to speak at Murder by the Book, and the following weekend it's Seattle Mystery (Sat. April 30 at noon) followed by B&N in Silverdale (Sun. May 1 at 1pm).

Next month I leave I-5 and take to the skies. I'm off to CrimeFest in Bristol (the UK edition of Anthem comes out just in time), and while I'm in England, I have signings at Hatchard's, the 200+ year-old bookstore in London, and Heffers in Cambridge. Recently Hatchard's featured some of my books in their window. The first 6 books in the top row are mine:


I feel as if I've become part of a historic monument! It's like a dream come true.