Last week I told you Dear Readers about my husband Don’s latest medical adventures. On January 2 he went in for an outpatient procedure to remove a kidney stone, which he has done many times before, but his blood pressure was so high that the anesthesiologist canceled the procedure and had him admitted to the hospital overnight. After many consultations with his cardiologist and many adjustments to his meds, his pressure dropped into the range of a 25-year old. He went back in for the kidney stone removal on the 9th, and his pressure shot right back up. Fortunately, the anesthesiologist this time was a cardiac expert and knew just what kind of happy juice to give Don and and operation proceed with no problem. So the stone is out. This does not mean that all his problems are over. We saw his eye doctor this afternoon (the 14th), and more difficulties may be on the horizon. However I shall not borrow trouble. If anything of interest happens, I’ll certainly let everyone know.
I mentioned that I had some big news about my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, who I have been with since the beginning. I learned last month that Poisoned Pen Press will become the mystery imprint for Sourcebooks. Sourcebooks has acquired the “majority” of the Poisoned Pen Press list—about 550 titles—which will include my own. Along with some additional Sourcebooks titles, these works will become the new Poisoned Pen Press imprint at Sourcebooks, which has expanded its publishing program to include the crime and mystery category. In addition titles from Poisoned Pencil, PP’s young adult mystery imprint, will be transferred to Fire, Sourebooks’ young adult imprint.
According to an article in Publisher’s Weekly, Sourcebooks CEO and publisher Dominique Raccah said she was “thrilled” to welcome the Poisoned Pen founders and staff to Sourcebooks. “I look forward to doing what Sourcebooks does best—build big success for Poisoned Pen Press authors with broader sales distribution and innovative marketing.”
Poisoned Pen is a well respected, award-winning publisher, but Sourcebook has a much larger distribution, so I am told that this should be a great boon to the authors and make out books that much easier to acquire. Let’s hope it is so.
On a happy note, I have finished the first of a new series, a spin-off of the Alafair Tucker books. The new book is called Lust For Vengeance, The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse, Episode One, and stars Bianca LaBelle, silent movie star of the silver screen, and is set in Southern California during the Roaring Twenties. And, yes, Bianca has quite the connection to Alafair Tucker. Release of the new book has been somewhat up in the air because of the publisher’s merger, but last I heard, it should be out around November, 2019.
On yet another happy note, I learned recently that my latest Alafair Tucker Mystery, Forty Dead Men, was named one of Barnes and Nobel’s best Indie books of 2018. If you have not read it yet, click on About This Book, left, and have a look at the first chapter. I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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