Honeymoon with Death is released

The latest Second Sons Inquiry Agency Regency mystery series is out: Honeymoon with Death! This is the fifth book in the Regency mystery series and the third featuring Prudence Barnard and Knighton Gaunt. For those interested in Pru and Knighton, the previous two books were:
The Vital Principle
Dead Man's View

The books don't have to be read in order, but That is the "proper order" for those interested.

Since I'm snowed in at the moment and am suffering from writer's block with the book I'm currently writing, I figured now would be a good time to tell everyone about the book.

On their honeymoon trip through Europe, Prudence and Knighton Gaunt take a brief excursion to see the triple falls on the river Velino on their way to Rome, little knowing the chain of events this will precipitate.

The couple sends their own carriage and servants on to Rome to reserve rooms and joins a small group of travelers in a hired coach. Unfortunately, before the group reaches the triple cascade, their carriage breaks down on a remote road. A band of ruffians ambushes them, and their only safety seems to lie in a ramshackle, old inn reputed to be haunted.

The party of travelers spends one night only to discover one of their group dead the next morning. The body lies in a ravine near the area where they were attacked, casting suspicion on the bandits.

But why had the passenger returned to such a dangerous spot in the middle of the night, and why was the victim wearing another traveler’s cloak?

As Knighton and Pru investigate, they discover the other travelers were not all the strangers they seemed to be. Mistaken identity, revenge, envy, and frustrated love vie as motives, and Knighton is pushed to desperation when Pru disappears as well. He must use every ounce of logic and intelligence to find her—and identify the killer--before there is another death on the road to Rome.

Excerpt

In this excerpt, the carriage Pru, Knighton, and several other passengers are riding within suffers a terrifying accident on a treacherous mountain road. None of them realize that their difficulties are only the start of even more trouble.

A loud crack shuddered through the coach. The vehicle lurched to the right and then tilted abruptly. Pru would have fallen to the floor if she had not caught her husband’s strong, outstretched hand. Mrs. Ruberry was thrown forward and only the lieutenant’s outstretched hands kept her from landing in his lap.

Through the open windows next to Pru, a terrifying view of a mountainside scattered with sharp rocks, ravines, and dark pine trees slanted down toward a misty valley below. It was a dizzying and frightening sight as they teetered on the very edge of a long drop down to scattered boulders and rubble.

“I’m falling!” Miss Demaretti screamed as she cast a frightened glance out Pru’s window and threw her arms around Mrs. Ruberry. “We must escape, Violet, the carriage is slipping—I can feel us falling!”

“No one is going to fall,” Knighton said curtly as he fumbled with the carriage’s only door next to Pru.

When he opened it, the door swung out loosely over the abyss, showing only a narrow edge of the road immediately under the carriage. A bare six inches of ground lay between them and disaster.
Pru hooked her right arm through the window to keep from falling out and held on to Mrs. Ruberry’s shoulder with her left. “Is there any room to climb out?” Her voice sounded breathless, and she sucked in a sharp gasp when there was another crack.

Her breath caught in her throat. The carriage tilted alarmingly toward the ravine, top-heavy as it was with baggage. She could hear thumps and slithering from the roof as the two men who had been forced to rid atop due to the already overcrowded interior scrambled to hold on.

“Yes,” her husband grunted as he caught the edge of the door for support before leaning out a few inches. “There is just enough room if we are careful. You men, shift your weight toward the opposite side when I climb out. I will assist the ladies to exit first.” He glanced apologetically at Pru.

She nodded quickly, knowing what he needed from her. “I’ll help Miss Demaretti and Mrs. Ruberry and then follow them.”

Knighton depended upon her to keep her head and help the others. If only she felt as calm as he sounded. She turned her head away from the window, ignoring the pull of the terrifying ravine. Her weight, combined with that of the other men, would provide stabilization while Miss Demaretti and the somewhat portly Mrs. Ruberry scrambled out.

The carriage shook. Rocks cascaded down the mountainside, dislodged by the carriage. The coachman spoke sharply to the horses in an attempt to control the frightened animals. Every movement made the coach shudder and created another cascade of rubble.

Knighton as he climbed out and clung to the door and coach fender. The two other men quickly slid toward the opposite side as the conveyance trembled and groaned.

A few rocks from the verge rolled over the edge, clicking and rattling their way down the hill. The noise went on and on, and they all froze, listening with tense faces until the sounds of the tumbling stones faded away.

“Come, Miss Demaretti, you must go first.” Pru stretched her arm across the trembling body of Mrs. Ruberry to catch hold of Miss Demaretti’s wrist.

“Careful!” Mrs. Ruberry’s shrill voice cut through the tension, immobilizing the others in the coach.

“You’ll send us all down the mountain to our deaths!” She twisted as if to push her way past Pru’s arm, but when she caught her glance, the older woman thrust her hand against her charge’s back and literally pushed her toward the door.

“Excuse me, Miss,” Captain Marshall said apologetically as he braced Miss Demaretti with his hands around her waist and lifted her through the door. He held on to her until Knighton caught her and eased her around the rear of the coach to the road.

The conveyance swayed as the weight shifted, and another shower of stones bounced over the side.
In a state of panic, Mrs. Ruberry climbed past Pru, elbowing her aside and nearly kicking her in the face in her haste to follow the girl out. Knighton caught her and ignored her wild words as he swung her around the fender and pushed her onto the road next to Miss Demaretti.

Without the plump woman’s weight, the coach wallowed and lurched, sending more and more rocks down into the ravine. The narrow edge of the road crumbled under the broken wheel. The coach leaned further over the ravine. The horses, restive and terrified by the sounds, snorted and whinnied, jerking the conveyance even more, despite the driver’s attempts to calm them and keep the vehicle stable.

Pru squeezed her eyes shut. Despite her efforts to remain calm, her mind feverishly flashed terrifying images of the coach tilting over the edge. Tumbling and crashing against the rocks, they would be smashed into pieces and scattered over the scree at the base, like so many crushed porcelain dolls amidst the wooden debris of the coach. She clutched one of the leather straps as the conveyance shifted again.

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If you are interested, here is the link for the book on Amazon, followed by my web page which has links to other sources for the book.
Honeymoon with Death on Amazon
Honeymoon with Death web page

Happy Reading!

Guest Author: Dara England

Please welcome Dara England! I had the temerity to ask her if she would write a blog after I found her books and downloaded every single one of the to my Kindle. I loved her writing and really wanted a chance to host her.

She graciously agreed, and not only that, she is sponsoring a contest. If you stop by and leave a comment here, Dara and I will pick a winner. You'll receive an ebook by Dara, and I'll tell you, if I hadn't already bought all her books, I'd be tempted to cheat and keep the book for myself.
So here she is!

Dara England

Many thanks to Amy for agreeing to have me as a guest on her lovely blog.

Something I’m often asked lately is why I’m pursuing indie publishing after having been previously published in more traditional forms. There’s no short answer to this so I’m going to go with a long one. That’s right, get comfy because this girl is going to share her entire publishing background, such as it is.

In The Beginning …

After years of writing fiction in the hope of getting published “someday” I finally got up the nerve to start submitting my work. Only to small webzines and print magazines no one had ever heard of but at least it was a start. Seeing my work up on the web and knowing other people were reading it was fun and it gave me confidence, as well as the chance to hone my skills.

But that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the real dream, just the smallest taste of it. I learned about the possibilities opening up in the e-publishing world and, although the idea of e-books took some getting used to at first, decided to give it a try. I submitted to a number of digital first presses and was eventually picked up by an up and coming small press called Lyrical Press Inc.

I still knew very little about the small press world and hadn’t had the sense to do much research before submitting. But I got lucky this time and LPI turned out to be a great first home for me and my books. They were professional, easy to work with, paid on time, and I didn’t have to deal with any of the nightmares it’s so easy for a first-timer to get sucked into.

Oh, Sweet Rapture!

But my dream was still traditional publication. Or legacy publishing. Or New York publication. It goes by many different names but you know what I mean. I wanted to see my books in stores and libraries. So when I heard of an opportunity to submit for a Running Press anthology, I jumped at it. And shockingly, at least to me, they wanted my story!

My experience with this second publication was a good one and seeing the Mammoth Book of Irish Romance in bookstores everywhere was beyond awesome. Whenever I stumbled across it someplace new I’d stop and pick up a copy and hug it. Or just stroke the cover. Let’s just say I probably looked like a crazy person to all the bookstore employees and the shoppers around me.

The Depths Of Despair

But New York, alas, still didn’t throw it’s gates open wide for me. I wrote a new book, sent it on the agent rounds and got a lot of interest. One agent even agreed to send me a contract but shortly thereafter her agency closed its doors and I was left still unrepresented. I was tired and frustrated at the endless rounds of queries, submissions, partials, fulls, rejections… Everywhere I went agents and editors talked about the tough market and all our communications ended the same way. They just weren’t confident enough that they could sell my book.

I returned to publishing with digital first presses but I kept an ear to the wind. And about this time I began to hear whispers of the potential for success in the self-publishing arena. Well, this was nothing new. I’d been hearing this kind of talk for years and had always dismissed it as nonsense. Everybody knew what self-publishing was, right? Just hand-selling a few copies of your little book to family and friends and anybody else you could beg or guilt into buying a copy. Self-publishers were largely derided and I was one of the persecutors. Just call me the Biblical Saul/Paul.

What’s This Indie Thing About?

But then something changed. Several authors I knew began to come out and “admit” to trying their hands at self-publishing e-books. These were “real” authors, people whose business sense I respected. They were New York published, for heaven’s sake! And yet, they were finding indie-publishing on the side lucrative. They kept their New York contracts and they continued to write for digital first publishers like Samhain Publishing, Ellora’s Cave, Carina Press, Spice Briefs, Red Sage, etc. But they were also finding time to put out some indie works and were reporting impressive sells numbers.

Cue inspirational music. This was the moment a light bulb went off over my head and I realized I could be building a reader base with indie publishing and pursuing New York at the same time. It wasn’t an either-or situation. What was more, thanks to the lower cost of producing an e-book versus a print book I could experiment with this whole indie thing at little expense.

Testing The Waters

Ok, I’d wised up and it was time to dip my toe into the water. I wrote something new, something I hadn’t tried before. A historical mystery novella set in Victorian England. I titled in Accomplished In Murder. I had always enjoyed detective stories but this was the first time I’d had the nerve to write one. Previously I had written things I thought would sell well, mostly paranormal romance. But it was time to break out and write something my heart was in, something I actually enjoyed for its own sake.

Thanks to my major obsession with hanging out on writers’ forums all these years I’d made a lot of connections with people involved in the publishing industry. I knew a number of formatters, editors, cover designers, etc. I hired Lauren Dee of Daisy Cakes Creative to edit my manuscript because she came highly recommend by other writers I trusted. Also she was reasonably priced and I didn’t have a huge budget. I lined up Lucinda Campbell of L.K. E-Book Formatting to format my e-book because I didn’t trust myself to do it properly and I was determined my first effort at an indie book would look professional.

The Big Experiment

With surprising ease, I uploaded my e-book to the usual venders and sat back expecting to watch the dismal numbers creep in at snail speed. Instead they…well, not exactly rushed in, but came in at a respectable and sedate pace. I had studied other’s statistics and was prepared for the long haul. I thought, “I’ll sell five copies the first month, ten copies the next, and wait for the snowball effect everybody talks about”. Instead, I easily surpassed my meager expectations on the first day my book was available for purchase.

At this moment, about a month out from my first indie release, I’m sitting in Amazon’s Top 100 list of best-sellers in the Historical Mystery Category. I’m also respectably situated on the Women Sleuths list. I have no idea how long this good fortune will last but I’m enjoying the ride.

As to the big question, will I be doing it again? Heck, yes!
Dara England
http://www.daraenglandauthor.com/

Accomplished in Murder


Murder was never so refined…

When her holiday on the coast of Cornwall takes a deadly turn, it is up to Drucilla Winterbourne to uncover the dangerous secrets the inhabitants of Blackridge House will do anything to conceal. But can a proper young lady from London society comprehend the dark motives of a killer?

Accomplished In Murder is the first in a series of historical mystery novellas featuring intrepid Victorian heroines up to their bustles in crime. These works are only loosely connected and can be read in any order.

Length: 17,000 word novella.
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Contest
Please be sure to leave a comment to win a free copy of the ebook, Accomplished In Murder.