1) First things first.

I have a free story for you.

It’s Fitzhugh Trilogy #0.5, a story of about 6,500 words.  Here’s the blurb:

Clarissa, the widowed Duchess of Lexington, has two great loves: the reticent and reclusive Mr. James Kingston and her faithful correspondent Miss Julia Kirkland, whom Clarissa has never met. 

Now both Mr. Kingston and Miss Kirkland are due to arrive at Clarissa’s house—and Clarissa is about to find out that nothing of either is as she has been led to believe…

And did I mention that it’s FREE? You can get it for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and your iDevice. You can also, if you’d prefer, download it as a pdf here.

Enjoy!

2) Phew, it’s been crazy busy.

I’ve been bouncing between various drafts of MY BEAUTIFUL ENEMY, the upcoming historical romance, and THE PERILOUS SEA, sequel to THE BURNING SKY, my YA fantasy.  Now THE PERILOUS SEA is all done—the galleys were turned in on April 3.  And I finished copyedits and final revisions on MY BEAUTIFUL ENEMY on April 22.

You may or may not know that MY BEAUTIFUL ENEMY is what I’ve long referred to as my martial-arts semi-epic.  Or more precisely, it’s the second half of it, the romance half.  The actual semi-epic spans nearly twenty-years and I am planning to self-publish the first half, which is less a romance than a historical YA.

My hope is to get it out slightly before MY BEAUTIFUL ENEMY–it is a prequel, after all.  But we’ll see whether I manage it. It is only half-done writing wise, and it doesn’t even have a title or a cover yet.  But it does have a webpage where you can read an excerpt. How’s that for priorities?  :-)

And if you haven’t seen the covers for my two confirmed 2014 releases, here they are.

3) Audio covers

I recently listened to THE BURNING SKY, in preparation for THE PERILOUS SEA’s galleys–I wanted to make sure that there were no continuity errors whatsoever.  And boy, I loved it.  I cooked tons, my house was spic-and-span, and I even pulled all the weeds from the yard.  :-)

Audio for LUCKIEST LADY happened super fast.  Tantor offered for the rights in the beginning of February, and by March it was already available!

This one is not out yet, but I figure it won’t be too long now, since we already have the cover.

4) Foreign covers

But of course.  :-)

Russian Beguiling the Beauty

Russian Ravishing the Heiress

Russian Tempting the Bride

Russian covers.  Instantly recognizable.  :-) And now two French ones.

French Ravishing the Heiress

French Tempting the Bride

The girl in French TEMPTING THE BRIDE looks a bit like Emma Stone to me. Now a few covers from the Far East.

Tempting the Bride Taiwan

I love the title for the complex Chinese edition of Tempting the Bride.  It is Lake Sahara, which is a wonderful allusion to David’s hopes and dreams.

Private Arrangements Taiwan

The title for the above is quite sexy, something along the lines of Bedchamber Tryst. It reminds me that I realized, years after the fact, that any romance with the word “private” in the title–unless it refers to a soldier–is basically signaling “here be nooky”.

Vietnamese Beguiling the Beauty

I can never find bigger images of my Vietnamese editions.

And now, last but not least, because it’s the first foreign cover for Luckiest Lady, I present you, Love something Knowledge something Marquess. (Alas I can only read Kanji and can’t extract the full title to put through Google Translate.)  :-)

Japanese The Luckiest Lady in London

And that’s it for this edition of the omnibus.  :-)