Jules Jones

Loose Id have been busy releasing their backlist through their distributors. And with perfect timing, the New year's Eve themed anthology A Kiss At Midnight has just gone up at Fictionwise. This is an anthology of three sf&f romance novellas, from myself, Emily Veinglory, and Ally Blue. Here's the blurb for mine. As usual, there are excerpts on my website, and short blurbs and excerpts for all three novellas on Loose Id's website.

First Footer

They say that how you spend New Year's Day will set the pattern for the rest of your year. Matthew Ryder was hoping not to be single by the end of the New Year's Eve party, but the blind date promised by his matchmaking friend never showed up. Still, there's always hope in the form of the old custom of First Footing. To bring good luck to the household, the first person across the threshold after midnight should be a tall dark man holding a lump of coal and a bottle of whisky, and in some places they still like to provide this service for neighbours.

A tall dark stranger does indeed knock on the door at midnight, and he's the man of Matthew's dreams. Intelligent, good sense of humour. Handsome too, if you go for fur, tail, and a very seductive purr. For the First Footer is a First Contact team member, with a bit of a problem. There's making a discreet landing in an uninhabited area, and then there's landing your spacecraft in a peat bog.

It's going to be an interesting year for Matthew...

My latest book, Lord and Master 2: Taking Work Home, is now also available at Fictionwise -- with a 15% discount in the first week. There's an excerpt at Fictionwise, but you can also find more excerpts and free short stories from the series on my website.

Loose Id has released another batch of books at Fictionwise, including Lord and Master -- with a 15% discount in the first week:
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/eBook52418.htm

It's also at All Romance ebooks, though no discount:
http://allromanceebooks.com/product-lordandmaster-4881-0.html

Volume 2 of The Syndicate is now available from Fictionwise having previously only been available directly from Loose Id. The short blurb:

On the spaceship Mary Sue, Allard's finally found a job he likes, colleagues he likes—and a man he more than likes. Just how far is he prepared to go for the man he loves?

And now for another round of obsessive checking of the sales ranking... My novella Mindscan was in this week's new Fictionwise releases, having previously only been available direct from the publisher. It'll have the 15% new book discount until next Monday. This one very definitely falls in the "political sf thinly disguised as romance" category. (Yes, I know I was somewhat blunter on rasfc, but it will only upset some of my readers if I use *that* version here.:-) Explicit but very non-gratuitous D/s sex scenes. Make of that what you will.

http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook34650.htm

(Volume 2 of The Syndicate wasn't in this week's batch. It'll probably be in next week's new releases.)

So I sent Journey Into Freedom to Tor on Monday. I know it's got at least as far as the Flatiron building, because I paid the extra 45c for delivery confirmation, well worth it for the peace of mind it gives. :-) We now hurry up and wait. And wait. And wait... I should probably decide on the next venue and do the query letter, since it seems to be easier to tackle that bit when the thing's actually sitting in a slushpile somewhere, rather than when I'm trying to wind myself up to send it out again.

I finally gave in and bought a scanner. I've never had one at home, because they do take up a lot of room and I didn't really have enough use for one to justify the space, when I can usually hand whatever-it-is to Other Half with instructions to scan it at work. But there's starting to be enough call for it now that it's inconvenient to not have one in the home office. I did a little research on the one I had in mind, and discovered that nobody cares about the OCR side of things any more. Since one of the major uses I have in mind for it is OCR, this was a bit of a pain. At least I eventually managed to find out that it does have OCR software included. Things have obviously changed since the last time I had occasion to read scanner reviews... It does have a nice easy button on the front to scan and send straight to the printer, pity this invariably results in the printer spitting out a blank page. I'll have to get this sorted out, because one of the secondary reasons for getting the scanner was increasing need of photocopying.

The Syndicate 1 peaked at #8 on Fictionwise's erotica list this week, although it's dropped back down to 11 today. It's also picked up a couple of reader ratings.

Just checked The Syndicate 1 over at Fictionwise. It wasn't on the second page anymore, somewhat worrying me. It turned out to be not on the second page... because it was on the first page, at #12.

I am Pleased.

(And for the RASFC crowd - Alma's at #10 on the fantasy list today.)