THE FAERIES' PROMISE

For young readers (and all the adults who send me fan mail for this series and The Unicorn's Secret)... I love you! 

There is a shiny new addition to The Faeries Promise series today...
Book Two, Wishes and Wings .   


You can read excerpts from all four books  here : http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=books%20kathleen%20duey

                                                                book one in the series

REVIEWS:

This lovely, sincere faerie story tempers sadness with joy. Readers will eagerly return for the next volume.

-- Kirkus

"With its magical tone, sturdy characters, and satisfying plot, this simple fantasy will engage young readers and leave them eager to read the next book."

-- School Library Journal

"The opening portrayal of Alida's isolation is particularly compelling, and young readers will no doubt feel at first her despondency and then her hope and determination as the story progresses." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

((I chose the name Alida because I have always loved the sound of it. A year after I wrote the books, I looked up the meaning. "small winged one". Really.))

real things in my books

For anyone who wonders what the coat/key rack in Sadima's hidden room above the warehouse looks like: This is it. It hung on the wall of my grandfather's flour mill  for as long as he lived.  I think he brought it with him from Tennesee, but I can't be sure. I was fascinated with it when I was little. I remember pulling a chair up so I could get closer to the dragons. If you click the picture, you can too.

The lantern on the right is an old miner's lantern I used when I lived in a tipi until I could afford a Coleman. It became Sadima's lantern. The copper kitchen tools are from a garage sale years ago. The scarf was bought in Dubai  when I was there to do school visits. The bag came from a discount store in Chelsea, NYC. All of these things belong to Sadima now.  The Hame-harness breast plate side-piece with the brass knobs came out of an abandoned and rotting/literally/ tilting barn I stumbled across hiking in Steamboat Springs CO. It isn't in the book yet but yesterday I remembered that I once picked it up to walk through a dark house to investigate an odd noise, thinking, I am ARMED....

Real people in my books

These cups belonged to my great aunt. I, who never played tea party or dolls,  somehow ended up with a cabinet full of her travel-treasures, many of them dishes and gravy boats and little painted tea pots. She died when I was six or seven, I think, so I don't have the stories to go with them. 


She had an automatic crank-up card shuffler, too, and cheated like crazy.  I loved her apartment in Denver, crowded with her collections, incense, furnished with expensive old stand-alone cabinets and divans with curved pecan wood feet. 


She was funny, adventurous, wry, elegant and nice to me. Really elegant, and really nice. This morning I wrote her into the third Resurrection of Magic book. It's a bit part, but I know she will like it.  

SKYPE is fun!!!

Another great library visit with teens and tweens, this one in Colorado. It was lovely. No airplanes were involved. 


Please get in touch, teachers, book clubs, librarians, writer's groups, bookstores... In person is better, I know, but this is POSSIBLE!!!


Contact me here, FB, @kdueykduey (twitter), kathleenduey at earthlink dot net (email) or through my website http://www.kathleenduey.com

Writing about writing....again.

   Writers:  I  have been writing about writing in my free time, here and there, for years. Someday it will be a book. What parts of writing are difficult for you? What stops you, confounds you.  Comment here, please, and help me spend the ink where it is most needed.

Thanks!

k   

WHY I TWEET

Twitter was made to fill a corporate need: a device that required short, hourly  updates from every member of a production team. If the brochure designer tweeted that he was waiting on something, the rest of the group could switch tasks or redirect energy efficiently. Brilliant time saver. Everyone on the same page, all the time.

Some people use it in almost the same way now.  They can tweet once and have it reach 20 (or 200 or ?) family or group members at once. It has massive potential as a disaster rescue tool, an aggregator of information from the ground up--and citizen communication.

There are journalists on twitter who retweet (gather and send out to their followers) a constant stream of  mobile and other tweets by citizens in the streets of the world, dealing with local crises. This week there is much news from Bahrain and Yemen and Egypt and elsewhere.

the # hashtag mark denotes topics and allows you to occupy a space filled with people who are addressing that topic, 140 characters at a time. They argue, they convince, they share solutions, they support each other, they make joyous human noise.  Free.

#writer
# Oscars
# knitting
#kidlit
# Egypt
# the band/actor/celebrity of your choice
#amwriting
Or, this morning,  # Wisconsin


Image taken in Rabat, Morocco

THE UNICORN'S SECRET NEW COVERS

art by the amazing Sandara Tang


CLICK art to enlarge image...










This series is based on dreams I had--night after night--in third/fourth grade. Lord Dunraven's lands were as real to me as my own life.There is a second series now, set in the same place: The Faeries Promise. 

Scene openings

Scene openings

I am writing the third book of this trilogy now. There are two protagonists and two timelines. In one story, about 8 years will pass. In the other, about 200 years go by. So it gets complicated at times. The chapters tend to be short overall, but I use chapter length as a way to brighten or dim the spotlight a little, guiding the reader back and forth when emphasis is needed on one thread or the other.


One of the constant concerns is pacing. Because the short chapters range from 5-9 pages the events have to be compressed to fit, and sometimes I realize I have made two--or even three--chapters out of something that really only needed one.


So I spent this morning turning twenty chapters in one of the storylines into fifteen chapters, by combining chapter content and changing the emphasis points--and re-polishing the little cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter. But more than anything, I eliminated re-descriptions of things the reader already knows I had used as set-ups to more compelling stuff.
The story rolls so much better now.


It can be useful for any writer to reread each chapter and see what it really brings to the story. If the event you are excited to write occurs in the middle of the night, after the protagonist comes home from spending time with someone that you know they are slowly going to come to love, it might be worth painting a full scene with that person, then letting the protagonist get ready for bed thinking about the evening...and then be awakened by whatever the midnight surprise scene is.


But if the protagonist spends the evening with people less important in her/his life, and the reader already  knows what their roles are in the protagonist's world and is equally familiar with the physical layout of the apartment or house or campground (or whatever) consider a chapter opening that has almost no set up:


 quick example: ** (this is not from the book in progress, just examples I am making up now...)
       For a moment, Jenny thought the pounding was imagined, part of a dream. Then she thought it was coming from the street. She sat up in bed, confused and scared, tangled in the sheets, finally awake enough to understand that the banging was close, meant for her, and not muted by skin or flesh. Someone was pounding her door with something metal, someone was trying to break it down.


As opposed to:
    Jenny got home late and took a shower to relax after another long day at work. Gregory had been tedious as always and sometimes she wondered how she could stand to work there, but she knew she had to. Nothing had changed. She had to support herself now. It look a long time for her to go to sleep, then, in the middle of the night, someone pounded on the door.   For a moment....etc.

To everyone who has gotten in touch....

I woke up this morning trying to think of a way to say thank you....
....to everyone who has written to me through http://www.kathleenduey.com , facebook, twitter, etc. I have been trying to answer each one of you, and have to finally admit that I am probably too far behind to ever catch up.
Ever.

It’s amazing. YOU are amazing. I have heard from people all over the US and Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Poland, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Belize, Brazil, Mexico, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Morocco, Turkey, China, North Korea, Chile, …and all of you will get a link to this message soon. If you have written me from a place I have not mentioned, contact me, and I will add it.

If you want updates on my work once or twice a year, please email me:   kathleen duey at earthlink dot net. You will be the first to know what’s up next and how it’s going. I start almost every day by reading messages from readers. Your letters are a treasure. They make me write better (and sometimes faster). What you have written makes me smile and laugh and sometimes cry.

It’s always wonderful to hear someone say they love my books. People write to me asking questions about Sadima, Hahp, Gerrard, and all the others in ways that make me feel like they are people we both know and sometimes worry about. The city of Limori is very real to me, too, and yes, I do know more about it than I will ever fit into three books.

Thanks to everyone who thinks that a book about Eridies might be interesting. It might be. To everyone writing to ask about Russet: I am accumulating entries again will post them soon.  http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/

I love to hear from teens who say they hate reading but they liked my books anyway and stayed up late because they couldn’t stop reading.

Older Adults have written to tell me that even though the books are for Young Adults, they stay up too late reading them too.

LOTS of people have suggestions as to how Somiss needs to die. All I can say is, we'll see...

Librarians often say there are waiting lists for the books! School librarians write to say the added them to their collections and hope the censorship loving parents don’t notice.

One teen reader, recovering from a terrible accident, wrote to tell me that the books took her “out of the hospital, away from the pain". Another girl thanked me for the Eridians and said that her friends were like that, they carried as much of her sorrow as they could. Teen book clubs have written asking me really deep questions about the stories and the characters. I have recently gotten Skype and look forward to being part of book club and library discussions.

Some people write to ask WHERE TO BUY THE BOOKS.
In the US:
Most bookstores carry them and any bookstore can order them for you and have them in a few days.
Indiebound http://www.indiebound.org/ is a portal into the wonderful world of America’s independent booksellers. Type in the book title upper right and you can order it from a local bookstore in your area. All the online stores carry the books: Amazon, Barns&Noble, Borders, etc.

Internationally: Skin Hunger and Sacred Scars have been translated into:
German: http://bit.ly/h9w1S2
French: http://www.castelmore.fr/
Polish: (coming soon)
UK English (ok, not really translated, but some expressions and words changed)

If you want UK English versions of *any* book: http://www.bookdepository.com/
They have fair, low prices, and ship to most of the world... free.

Thanks for all the people who have written to tell me there are no ebook versions yet. I know. There will be, probably in 2013.

Everyone (almost) asks me when the third book will come out. After a LOT of interruptions (some of them self-inflicted) I am writing all day every day on book three. As soon as it tells me its name, I will tell YOU. I hope to finish it (including the revisions, etc, by the end of summer 2011. After that, it will take most of a year to produce the hardcover. I know. I apologize. I am trying hard to make it incredibly good.

Valid Excuses:
1. These are complex books and the details take time.
2. I have had to write other things, including books for younger kids, which I also love doing.

Whines:
1. I want the last one to be so good that I am afraid of it, a little. Which doesn’t sound like a very good excuse for taking so long, but it is, in an odd way.

Thank you ALL for writing to me, thank you for reading this. I send you all my very best wishes and may the coming new year bring you all good things.

Washington Post's annual word-repurposing contest.

I look forward to this every year...

The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.


And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men

I am thinking about writing a book about writing.

I have two monster deadlines to meet.  After that, or during that, somehow, I am thinking very seriously about writing a book about writing. One that addresses both art and craft and treats them as lovers, partners, siblings, fraternal twins, BFF's.

I spent last week interacting with an MFA class whose teacher is a friend (the amazing Bonny Becker) and realized from the questions and my attempt to answer them.....that maybe there is a reason for me to write a book about writing. 

!!!AND!!!  if I released it as a download-only, I would have very little tree-guilt.



(((This is the French Edition of Skin Hunger,
just released....)))

A former slave writes his master--this just caught my heart.

I checked snopes and other places and this appears to be real.

Jourdan Anderson

Annotation Jourdon Anderson, an ex- Tennessee slave, declines his former master's invitation to return as a laborer on his plantation.

1865 Text Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee


Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday- School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, "The colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.


As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free- papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly- - and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty- two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good- looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die if it comes to that than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

<>P.S. -- Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson
Source: Cincinnati Commercial, reprinted in New York Tribune, August 22, 1865.

Unicorns and faeries, oh my!

The new Unicorn's Secret covers are really lovely.

And the Faerie's Promise books are beautiful, too. Thanks Sandara Tang!!!

first chapter excerpts here http://www.kathleenduey.com/KidsBooks/

Zombies vs Unicorns

Unicorns are fascinating. They are mysterious, shy, rare, and beautiful.  Many of the of the old stories say they had the ability to heal, which has always fascinated me. They are in the folk tales and mythology of almost every part of the world–and so are Zombies. 

When Holly Black contacted me about writing a short story for the anthology she and Justine Larbalestier were planning :  http://pages.simonandschuster.com/zombiesvsunicorns ..... I was thrilled to be included. I was team unicorn, of course! I had written stories about unicorns for young readers, and I was excited to write the darker side of unicorns for teens and YA readers.  Once I started the story, it dragged me into deeper and darker explanations of how the ability to heal might shape a unicorn’s life, his ethics, his needs. It became far darker than I could have imagined. 

It is the possibility of both darkness and light that make unicorns awesome.  As much as I love zombies (and I DO) they are always more or less the same. How people deal with them, survive them, escape/hide/destroy—mourn the friends who become zombies—all of that is interesting and exciting, yes. It can make for great books and films and TV shows about how human beings react when zombies stumble into their towns and cities.  But unicorns aren’t that simple. If you saw one leaping across an intersection, or hiding in the woods, you wouldn’t know how to react, whether to be scared or astonished or grateful or crazy or...?. The old  tales are vague and varied and ancient. There are just so many things we don’t know about unicorns...

Central Coast Writers' Conference, San Luis Obispo, CA

It was FUN.  It was wonderfully well run and I learned a great deal!   I also got to take a train ride, which is always a plus for me. This train-window shot is worth enlarging just to see the color of the water. It was a cloud/sun day, so it changed constantly....

DragonCon, oh, DragonCon....

DragonCon is a huge event that is much like a small city, assembled within a big city, if that small city had to be built and inhabited overnight, and could exist for only four days a year....and if it were populated with an explosively creative citizenry of all ages, including pre-natal and post octogenarian.

 There is, every year, a blood drive near the YA track rooms. Vampires line up next to corsetted and begoggled Steam-Punkers, Elves, Zombies, Jokers, Storm Troopers, and the astounding variety of one-of-a-kinders.

There are no bad words....I am almost sure.

I got two very thoughtful, very kind, messages this past week telling me that my Resurrection of Magic books are well written, absorbing, and very hard to put down, but that "foul language" was an issue for both readers. If you have read the books, skip the next section. If not, you might want to skim it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are two stories in the Resurrection of Magic books--and two protagonists. The narratives go back and forth every other chapter. The stories are set about 200 years apart and the first story causes the second one:

First story: Sadima is a damaged, gentle person trying to make sense of herself and a young man she loves—even though he is tangled up in the rage and ambition of a fanatic who is intent on re-discovering magic and changing the world at any cost.

Second Story: Hahp is trying to survive (200 years later) in the decaying and brutal academy that is eventually founded by Sadima’s companions. It is a strange and terrible place. Hahp, 11 years old at the story's beginning, often uses the word "crap" in the first book and uses f-word twice. In the second book, (just over 550 pages long ) he uses the F-word fifteen times--about once every thirty six pages--and the word "crap" only twice. He has outgrown it, I think, and/or it no longer provides the rage and terror release it once did.

Both stories are terrifying at points, emotionally realistic--a portrayal of uncontrolled ambition and fanaticism and the universally human inequity of power and magic. The two stories gradually weave together: in the third book the time difference narrows to synchronicity, almost 200 years having passed by the end of Sadima’s story and about 7 in Hahp’s.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neither of the people who wrote me made a single comment about the ordeal of either character, even though both are nearly destroyed by what happens to them. The books are very dark. Both readers were bothered by specific words Hahp used. All the “language” issues are in Hahp’s story, I am almost certain. Sadima copes with her experiences in other ways.

One person said it was impossible to recommend the books because she would be embarrassed if friends found out she had read them. Reading the third book when it comes out would be impossible, too, she said, so she would have to "make up an ending" to the “amazing” story because of the “profanity”. She closed with "I won't read the next one for fear of the same bad language." If she had used any word but *fear* I probably wouldn’t be writing this.

The second writer said she couldn’t wait to read the third one and explained that it was a single word that bothered her most (for clarity, it starts with F, rhymes with truck, was said 15 times in a 550 page book, or about once every 36 pages.. She said she had read a lot of books for teens and that few if any used that word. (this is not my experience, but maybe I pick dark books) She wanted me to realize that a great tale can stand on its own without foul language.

I agree.
Completely.
Unless it is what the character would say.

I try hard to stay out of the way and to accurately record what happens. I never give the use of language by any character ten seconds thought. As loopy as it will sound to people who don’t write books, I never restrict the language of my characters: I have no right to do so. And I need to admit that if Hahp had even once said "Gosh, this is terrible," I would have canned him as a shallow and souless protagonist unworthy of the book and its readers and I would have held another casting call.

So here is my very respectful response to two people who could not have been more respectful to me in bringing up an issue that genuinely disturbs them both:

My own opinion is that words are words. There aren't good or bad ones. All exist because they were useful to human speakers for one reason or another. Some carry huge emotional freight…sometimes. Others don't. Many words, spoken or shouted with anger and/or hatred, can hurt. They can also sometimes ease the heart of the shouter, prop up courage, or announce a line drawn, hope abandoned, hope reclaimed, and so much more. They can build a proud wall between a bruised heart and bottomless despair. The use of words to communicate with ourselves and others is not a simple issue and it is a deeply personal one.

Interestingly, Hahp is using much less strong language in book #3—at least so far. He is older now, almost 16, and has seen more inhumanity that I ever will. He doesn't seem to need to prove/announce/prop-up his courage like he did a couple years ago. Yet anyway. He has nearly drowned in random and deliberate cruelty and confusion, and he has found a way forward in spite of it. He is a decent, fair person in a sea of brutality and has faced decisions that would torture anyone of any age.

I admire him.
I don’t care what words he uses to describe his story.
I just want him to survive.

Ellen, Humble TX,censorship, and something even worse.

My friend Ellen Hopkins was recently invited--then un-invited--to speak to students in Humble TX. Authors' reactions have been thoughtful and varied. Many--not all--of the other authors who had agreed to be part of the event have dropped out  in support of Ellen and her work, and in opposition to censorship. They have written about their reactions:
Tera Lynn Childs
Pete Hautman
Matt de la Pena
Melissa de la Cruz
Ellen herself:

Ellen is often targeted by people who are convinced her realistic portrayal of teens, their problems, and the consequences of their choices are too....realistic? Her enormous popularity among teens and Young Adult readers argues that her words ring true and resonate with them. She is not alone. Many of the authors teens love best have censorship challenges all too often.

One of the most troubling things for me about this situation is that it sounds like one librarian alerted 2 or 3 parents, who then contacted the superintendent of schools. Oh, how I would like to be able to hear that first conversation. But however it went, the superintendent could have reacted by raising the question of Ellen's appearances for general discussion by all involved--including Ellen, people who have heard her speak at schools, and all the students and their parents. If he had, my guess is that the ayes would have drowned out the nays very quickly.

AND...while people debated and settled on some compromise, everyone would have had a chance to think about and talk about all the issues involved. But like so many administrators before him, the superintendent ducked. So the librarian and her like-minded parents silenced an author who has--without scolding, preaching, or patronizing, helped countless kids understand that their choices are real, ongoing, and *will* shape their lives. The most concerned parents could have been given an alternative author, or could have been transported by their parents to a school with a less controversial speaker. Lessons of all kinds about free speech and democracy and personal choices would have been learned by everyone involved.

But no.
The superintendent ducked.
I can imagine his work load, the headache he got after the phone call, the staff he doesn’t have to handle things like this. But he is in charge of a school district. This was a massive teachable moment and he opted instead to write an email un-inviting Ellen and that was supposed to be the end of it.  A decision was made by a few adults that effected thousands of students and their parents without any of them even knowing it was being made.
That isn’t just censorship, it is something far worse.

The future of the future?

Almost every writer I know sets Google alerts for her/his name and book titles. I do. I want to hear what people are saying about my books. Lately, the alerts have directed me to illegal download sites as well as the usual blog reviews, bookclub discussions and fan comments. As of this morning, I have seen stats claiming that my Resurrection of Magic books have been downloaded over 60,000 times.

Free.
Wow.
I am not a cave-dwelling preservationist, I am a futurist. I am fascinated with the rapid-change era I live in and can easily see many human advantages to being able to access all the arts free of payment. But…wow. So I whined a little on Twitter. ((One of the many good things about Twitter is that even whining must be brief.))

I tweeted that I'd spent the morning a little sad over downloads. Neil Gaiman , a writer I admire a great deal, a man who has 1,480,401 (so far) people who follow his every word and drown him in tweets, somehow noticed and answered my whine:

Neilhimself @kdueykduey I don't mind downloads. I figure nobody who's going to buy something won't, and it just makes readers. Your mileage may vary.

Which is pretty much what I think when I can stop multiplying my royalty rate by 60,000 and let my brain kick in again. It's easier for Neil to say because of his income level, but I think he's right. I also think there is no turning back so I intend to look forward. Cory Doctorow, ((a visionary SF author, journalist, BigBrain, and very nice guy)) drove his publishers crazy putting up whole books to download on his website. But then his book sales went up. WAY up. Word of mouth matters.

So here’s the deal. If you download my work for free, and you like it, do me a favor.
Talk about it.
Tell everyone you know how interesting and odd the books are.
I promise to write more.

Then, consider getting the next book at your local library--also free, and a great place to meet the other reader-teens in your area. Camp by the YA section and see what happens. And when you are happily dating someone who is both hot and your intellectual equal...

Go here:
http://www.kathleenduey.com/
click “contact”
And thank me.


The picture is of Volubilis, the southernmost limit of ancient Roma, as far south as they ever got, in what is now Morocco. They did not have free, stolen, downloads but figured out much worse ways to screw over their artists.

writingwritingwriting

I have a very good excuse for not posting here lately  No. Wait, I have TWO very good excuses.

The first one is that I am writing like a maniac and you will thank me for that later, I think, because the third book of the trilogy is getting amazing....

Second, I am traveling a lot and had to deal with a nasty flu after my last trip. I am almost completely over it YAY.
It was *awful*. 

Back to work,
(me, I mean, you are free to play if you like)