Blood, Love & Steel will be released soon. Sorry I can't be more specific, but book publishing is a test of patience. I'll let you know!
A friend recently found and shared with me a great article on the Dumas family, part review of The Black Count, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and part description of the the author Dumas's work and life. I highly recommend reading this article in the New York Review of Books if you consider yourself a Dumas-phile. Click here.
The book is finished and will be out soon. Won't that be grand! Thanks for all the great comments and good wishes about my Round One advancement in the Amazon contest. I'm happy to add it to the list of my accomplishments. ONWARD!
Yeah! Moments of success for writers are often infrequent, so I will savor today with vigor. Book One in the Musketeer Series was selected to move into Round Two of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. This is a wonderful development. I'm elated and giddy. I'm also realistic. Nevertheless, I will be happy with today's developments and put that in my pocket of "great days to remember." It should last me a while. All you Musketeer fans, time to root for my book to advance to Round One of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Blood, Love & Steel is a contender. The closing date for submitting a manuscript was yesterday. My book is among those competing in the Romance genre. I'll let you know around Valentine's Day if my "pitch" caught the judges' imaginations. If so, it'll be time for champagne. And Round Two. By the way, no fretting if the novel is passed over. The competition is open to 10,000. Slightly better than lottery odds.
On my reading list for 2013 is the new book about the father of Alexandre Dumas, The Black Count. It tells the story of Alex Dumas, who apparently inspired the Count of Monte Cristo and several other works by Alexandre. I've read a review that says the book gushes some about the father of the Musketeer creator, but Tom Reiss must have been taking cues from the novelist. Dumas was a romantic, so why not portray the father of the French icon the same way? Find more about the book by clicking on the image.
I may have mislabeled my book's genre. According to writer friends of mine who are "in the know," Blood, Love & Steel should not be considered true fan fiction. Fanfic is usually freely published on the internet and often pulls the characters into new worlds, which I don't. I leave my characters in their original setting, and I'm striving for the book to be available as a "published" work. Here's how WikiPedia defines fanfic:
"... broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator. Works of fan fiction are rarely commissioned or authorized by the original work's owner, creator, or publisher; also, they are almost never professionally published." Close. Oh, who's arguing? My book is a piece of historical fiction with strong romantic elements. That's the best way I can describe it. It could be categorized as essentially romance, but it really appeals to lovers of the classic work. Come on you Dumas groupies, you know you pretend to fence in the shower. After several months of putting together the trailer for Blood, Love & Steel, it is ready! I'm very pleased with the outcome. Many, many thanks to Eloise Farr in Asheville, NC, for her wonderful photos and to Trish Weaver, CM-Th., B.S., a certified music thanatologist in Portland, for her harp. Both Trish and Eloise provided the artistic foundation for the piece. I also want to thank Sally Lehman, a fellow writer, who's given me encouragement and helped tweak the trailer to make it perfect. Enjoy it. Share it. And with a little luck, the trailer will push the book closer to publication. Onward! PS-Any packages of celebratory chocolate will be consumed at once.
Yet another movie based on The Three Musketeers is on the way, a version out of Asia with some pretty cute actors and a new plot (of course). I tell you, the characters that Dumas set forth are far from dead. Hope fans of his adventure find my book.
The book trailer for Blood, Love & Steel, the sequel to The Three Musketeers, is in the final stages of production. The music was recorded in May, thanks to Trish Weaver, CM-Th, B.S., a music thanatologist in the Portland, Ore., area. The trailer also features the photos of Eloise Farr, http://www.eloisefarr.com/, who took some fabulous conceptual pics. I'll tweet a countdown of the release date as it nears, but it will definitely be finished by the end of summer.
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