Streamlining my author profile

When I began to publish my own books in 2012, one thing seemed obvious. I couldn’t publish different genres under one name. It would confuse my readers and possibly accidentally make them read books in genres they didn’t want to. They’d naturally be upset for this.

So from the beginning, I’ve been publishing with two author names: Susanna Shore for paranormal romances and Hannah Kane for contemporary romances. I even had a pen name ready for historical romances, but I’ve never got around to publishing those, and so haven’t needed it. Incidentally, I have a folder full of unfinished regency romances.

From the start, the two author names were a hassle. Do I create different webpages for them, and social media identities? I tried the first, which resulted with such a complex system of pages that I had no idea what was where. It also took me a great deal of time to keep each page updated. Fairly soon, I collected my pages under one address, crimsonhousebooks.com, which made my life easier. My social media accounts were under that umbrella also, hence my twitter handle @crimsonhouseboo.

But I couldn’t really have an effective, enjoyable social media presence under such an impersonal name, so I made the decision to use one author name for all my social media instead. I chose Susanna Shore for that. While it, too, is a pen name, Susanna is actually my given name, so it felt more personal to me. And I’ve been happy with my decision.

Little by little, Hannah Kane was side-lined completely. Those books didn’t sell – at all – so I never wrote new ones and concentrated on my paranormal romances instead. And when I wanted to write something different, first a thriller, then a series of light mysteries, I chose Susanna Shore as their author.

By then I’d come to a conclusion that readers might actually be able to discern between genres, even if the author name is the same. And so I started to think that I should give up Hannah Kane altogether. I should publish all my books as Susanna Shore and let readers decide what they want to read.

It’s been a slow process of letting go. Even though I’d decided to republish Hannah Kane books as Susanna Shore, it made me sad to give up that part of my author’s journey. And I knew some of those books needed editing too, for which I didn’t seem to have time, so I postponed the change.

But I couldn’t postpone it forever. So when I had a bit of time in my hands, I made new, uniform covers for the books and went through the contents with a critical eye. And now they are ready to be published.

The first three books to be republished are It Happened on a Lie, a fairly short romance of lies and misunderstandings, To Catch a Billionaire Dragon, a book about a fantasy author and a billionaire who inspires her, and At Her Boss’s Command about a PA whose job depends on the new CEO. They’re stand-alone books with no recurring characters, but I chose to publish them under a series name anyway, mostly to give them more visibility in searches. I chose Contemporary Romances to Go, as they are light, quick books you can read anywhere.

And here they are:

You can preorder them on Amazon (here, here and here) and Smashwords (here, here and here), and they’ll be published in February 6. You can read more about each book here. I’m really feeling positive about this change, but I’ll have to see what it brings with it. Hopefully new readers.

Reading recap: December

Happy New Year! I’m starting the year by rounding up the series of posts I did last year about the books I’ve read. December was a good reading month despite the fact that I was busy publishing my Two-Natured London Christmas short story collection. The Goodreads reading challenge counted nine books into my challenge, and even though two of those are actually very short stories, I think reading seven proper books is still impressive.

For I have Sinned by Darynda Jones

The stories were For I Have Sinned by Darynda Jones and Black Friday by Karen Chance. The first was a bit of a disappointment. The story – part of Charley Davidson series – was told from a ghost’s point of view, and it was nice. However, it was only a ten or so pages long and took about twenty per cent of the e-book. The rest was filler material I’d already read, so I kind of felt cheated out of my money. The second story was one of the many that Karen Chance offers for free on her website, a mad Christmas romp in Hell in the best Cassie Palmer style. It was about the same length than the first and not something I’d necessarily have paid money for. I’m not saying authors should offer all their stories for free, but at least inform your readers better about what they’re getting when they buy your filler stories.

Black Friday by Karen Chance

The first proper book of the month finished my Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence binge. The sixth book, The Ruin of Angels, started what the author called ‘a new cycle’ in the series and it showed. The story was very different from the earlier ones that focused mainly on the economics and the gods driving it. This was more character driven and focused on the relationships between the characters – again an all-female cast. The setting was new too, a strange city with layers from the past coexisting with the present as a result of the Gods War, but it featured a couple of familiar faces, like Kai from Full Fathom Five, who tries to save her sister from murder charges – a thankless job – and Tara Abernathy. Ley, the sister, was a thoroughly dislikeable person and if her ruin wouldn’t have meant the ruin of the entire city, I would have wanted her to perish. Still – or because of it – this was definitely the best book in the series – so far.

The Ruin of Angels by Max Glandstone

Sometimes books improve on a reread. I needed a short book to while away a couple of hours and read again Suzanne Enoch’s The Black Duke’s Prize, one of her earlier Regency romances. I’d given it two stars the first time, mostly because of a messy plot, but the second time round it turned out to be a perfectly charming story. Not in any way her best book, but delightful.

The Black Duke's Prize by Suzanne Enoch

I’ve had a similar disappointment with Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series. They sound promising, but the plots have been messy and Irene, the main character, is quite insufferable. But I gave the third book, The Burning Page, a try and I was pleasantly surprised with it. It still wasn’t a strong book, but the plot made sense and the secondary characters gained some – well – character. It felt like an end of a trilogy, but since there is another book out, the story continues.

The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman

A great new acquaintance was Murderbot from Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. All Systems Red was a compact book of a security android on a distant planet protecting a mining survey. The first person narrative was wry, and the Murderbot’s attempt to pass as a proper security robot instead of one that had hacked itself to be independent was interesting. The story was fast paced and good, and the ending a bit heart-breaking. I’ll definitely read the next book the moment it comes out.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

 

Breath of Fire by Amanda Bouchet was another disappointment. I already disliked the first book – the tired plot of an abducted woman falling for her captor – but the second book was on sale so I bought it. I shouldn’t have. All the annoying things were still there, like Cat being all-powerful – and gaining more as the story continued. And I really don’t know why an editor would allow a publishing of a book where over half of the story is spent on a mission that doesn’t contribute to the overall plot at all and the goal of which is immediately made redundant by the last third of the book. However, the last third was good enough for me to give the book three stars instead of two. Add a LOT of gratuitous sex, and you have everything you need to know about the book.

Breath of Fire by Amanda Bouchet

The Devil You Know by Mike Carey gave me mixed feelings. The premise was interesting – an exorcist who’s given up his work after accidentally summoning a demon inside a friend of his – and the setting in London good. The story was great too, and, as it turned into a murder mystery, more complex than appeared at first. There were comparisons made in reviews to Harry Dresden and they weren’t entirely off. But what makes Harry and his world so likeable – his sense of humour and his animal sidekicks – were completely absent here. The overall feeling was glum and hopeless, and the feeling lingered long after I’d finished reading. I’m not entirely sure I’ll read another book in the series.

The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

I like fantasy books with thieves as heroes, so I was eager to read The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble’s Braids by Michael McClung. Not much thieving took place, to my disappointment. Instead, it was a revenge story with a complicated plot to solve a murder. Amra was a great heroine, but despite the first person narrative, she remained distant. What drove her on was revenge, and though bits and pieces of her past were revealed, they didn’t really add much to her character. But the story was a bit above average and since the setting for the next book was intriguing, I think I’ll read the next book too.

The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung

So that was my reading year. I finished sixty books of the fifty-five I’d pledged in my reading challenge – or fifty-seven if you count out the couple of short stories I read along the way. Thirty of those sixty books ended up being from outside of my reading list, which means I didn’t read half of the books I intended to. But I don’t count that as a failure. I’ve started another reading challenge on Goodreads and pledged to read fifty-five books this year too. Those unread books from my list are waiting for me to read them this year.

And so the year comes to an end…

It’s that time of the year again, time for retrospection. It has been a long year in many respects, but I’ve been happy with my year as an author-publisher. There were some highlights, like visiting WorldCon in August, and not so bad lowlights that they would pull the entire year down.

I began the year with a bang by publishing two P.I. Tracy Hayes books that I’d written back to back at the end of the previous year. It was an intensive writing period and after it my brain needed time to recharge. Not that I realised it at first. I tried to write both of my ongoing series, Two-Natured London and the next Tracy Hayes book, but both got stuck after a few chapters.

Instead of pushing doggedly on, I decided to write something completely different. I’ve had this idea of a book brewing at the back of my brain for a long time, and I gave it a try. The project occupied my time suitably for most of the summer, and the writing process was interesting, not least because I aimed at a longer book than what I usually write. I almost finished the book too, reaching the climax of the story before I ran out of words. Basically, something went wrong with the plot somewhere along the way, and until I’ve figured out what it is and fixed it, I can’t finish the book. So far, I haven’t done it.

But the side project worked its magic on my brain and I managed to start writing the next Two-Natured London book again. It was going well too, until I absolutely had to write the fourth Tracy Hayes book – my brain is weird that way. This time the stars aligned and it took less than a month to write it from the first chapter I’d managed in the spring. P.I. with the Eye came out in November and sold nicely enough for as long as the price was only $0.99. Now it’s slowed down a bit. But more important than the sales for me was the knowledge that I’d managed to see through one project this year from start to finish.

After the book was published, I didn’t instantly return to the sixth Two-Natured London book. Instead, I had an idea for a collection of Christmas stories set in the Two-Natured London world, and set out to write them. I’ve never been all that interested in writing short stories, but these I found easy and fun to write. In no time at all I had six stories that make a nice little book. Since I started the project so close to Christmas, it’s been a race with time to get them out before it, but I think I can make it.

The only lowlight of the year has been this blog that I haven’t managed to update with the same regularity than before. Mostly I’ve recapped the books I’ve read. It has been fun, but hasn’t provided enough posts. Still, all in all, the year has been good. Two books written and four published. The next book is well under way and will come out early next year. I can retire for the holidays and rest until the next year. Thank you for following my year and I hope to see you next year too.

***

How do vampires spend Christmas? My short story collection Moonlight, Magic and Mistletoes, a Two-Natured London Christmas Special has six short stories, all of them sweet, Christmassy and romantic. The opening story, Escape on a Moonless Night, is the longest and is set in in 1660s France. In it, we learn more about the past of the vampire lord Alexander Hamilton, the leader of the warriors of the Crimson Circle. He’s forced to flee after marriage negotiations turn sour, and he’s not fleeing alone. In other stories we meet old and new characters from the Two-Natured London books, and follow how vampires, humans, and shifters find love and Christmas magic in the unique two-natured way. I’ll add a link to the collection here the moment it comes out. Stay tuned. Until then, you can read the opening chapter here.

Reading recap: November

I had a great reading month in November with six books finished, and only one of them from my reading list. Two books by Max Gladstone and two by Gail Carriger, with Nalini Singh and J.D. Robb thrown in the mix.

The Craft Sequence series by Max Gladstone continues strong with Last First Snow that takes place twenty years before the events in Two Serpents Rise. The story is about the last effort of old gods of Dresediel Lex to defend themselves against the new craft rulers, namely the King in Red. The uprise is led by Temoc, the last priest of the old gods, and father of Caleb who was the main character in Two Serpents Rise. Temoc becomes a reluctant leader of an uprising of people of Skittersill that the developers want to claim. Unlike the earlier books, which were crime mysteries, the story reads kind of like an epic fantasy with a build-up to a final battle, only it takes place on one city square and is mostly fought on negotiating tables. We also get Temoc’s side of the story of how he ended up losing his son and why Caleb hates him, which was kind of bittersweet to follow, knowing the outcome. Temoc was already my favourite character in Two Serpents Rise, and he was my favourite here too. We also get to meet a much younger Elayne Kevarian who turns out to be a more interesting character than she appears in the other books. All in all, a great book.

Last First Snow by Max Gladstone

Romancing the Werewolf by Gail Carriger was a completely different beast. A shorter M/M romance between two of my favourite characters from her Parasol Protectorate series, werewolf alpha Biffy and his newly returned beta Randolph Lyall. The London pack has relocated to Greenwich with curious consequences: babies start showing up on their doorstep. Some hilarity ensures, all too soon sorted out to my tastes. Also the romance itself resolves pretty fast and easily, considering the two of them had been waiting for decades. But it was a wonderfully uplifting book and I enjoyed it greatly.

Romancing the Werewolf by Gail Carriger

Naked in Death by J. D. Robb, the first book in her In Death series, was a bit of an impulse read after I found it cheap in a second hand bookshop. I’ve heard good things about the series, but I guess I should’ve started reading it back in the 90s when the series began. Now the futuristic world the book is set in feels dated and marred my enjoyment of the crime story. That too fell short. Some of her books written as Nora Roberts from that same time have had much better crime stories that kept me in their grips from start to finish. Also the love story between the main characters felt boring and I have no intention of reading through the twenty odd books the series has to see how it develops.

Naked in Death by J.D. Robb

The Sumage Solution by G. L. Carriger – i.e. Gail Carriger – starts her new adult urban fantasy series with a lot of sex, mostly of the same sex kind. It’s about a werewolf pack that relocates to San Francisco where they can be what they want, that is, openly gay. Set in present time, it sort of ties in with her Parasolverse world, and the differences are explained in the book. This new world has more mages and the love story is between one with daddy issues and a werewolf with issues with mages. Max was more complex and interesting of the two, though annoying at times, whereas Biff was more one dimensional. And the HEA felt like a happily for now, but since there will be more books in the series, we’ll see how that’ll go. I’ll definitely be reading those too.

The Sumage Solution by G.L. Carriger

A must read the moment it came out was Cherish Hard by Nalini Singh. I love her two urban fantasy series, and the contemporary romance series of bad-boy rockers was good too, if not as captivating. Cherish Hard is a start of a new Hard Play series that ties with the Rock Kiss series and tells the story of Sailor Bishop, whose brother Gabriel was the main character in Rock Hard. Sailor is a gardener with great plans for the future. He meets Ísa, who has plans too – not to be overlooked by people she loves. It takes a while for them to have their plans align, and all of it is wonderful to read. I’m eagerly waiting for the next book.

Cherish Hard by Nalini Singh

Four Roads Cross, book 5 in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence series, returns to the place and people of the first book, Three Parts Dead. The city of Alt Coulumb is slowly becoming aware that their moon goddess Seril is still alive and that her gargoyle protectors are back too. Not everyone is happy, and the most upset of all are all the investors whose money depends on Kos Everburning, the main god and spouse of Seril. They force what is basically a huge stress test on the gods: should Kos lend soulstuff to save Seril, it would make him an unreliable investment and void all the millions of investments that rely on him, thus bankrupting Alt Coulumb. A complicated plot is needed to save the city and the gods. All characters from the first book are back, the craftswoman Tara Abernathy who is mostly responsible for saving the day, Abelard the monk-technician, Cat and Riz, and the gargoyles. Even Caleb makes an appearance. It’s a great book, made better now that I was more familiar with the world and the differences in governance and theology between the different parts. Made it easier to follow everything.

Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone

That was my reading in November. One more month to cover, but I can already tell that I didn’t manage to cover my reading list, as I deviated from it a lot. But I got some great books in their stead, so I’m not upset.

***

In other news, Tracy Hayes, P.I. with the Eye is now available on all platforms and as a paperback too. And since it took forever for it to show up on iBooks and B&N, I’m extending the opening sale with a week, so that those who prefer to shop there can have the book with only $0.99 too. The sale ends on Sunday, December 10. Don’t miss.

Working with the editor: a case study

Editing has been on my mind lately, as I’ve been preparing Tracy Hayes, P.I. with the Eye for publishing. As a happy coincidence, Delilah S. Dawson had a lengthy tweet chain about the topic too, prompted by her annoyance with aspiring authors unwilling to make changes that editors suggest to their books. Her response, in short, was that no author escapes the changes, so you’d better get used to them from the start. Her notes are useful to read in full.

She was speaking from the point of view of a traditionally published author who has more than one set of editors making suggestions and demands, all of which strive to make the book as good as possible. She doesn’t claim it’s easy to let other people to have their say, but that it’s necessary.

Listening to one’s editor is even more crucial for self-publishing authors, as we lack the gatekeepers of traditional publishing. If you’re lucky, you find one who understands your writing, and who isn’t afraid to tell you how you can improve it. If not, you have the annoying task of finding a new one.

I’ve been working with the same editor, Lee Burton from Ocean’s Edge Editing, since 2012. We pretty much know what to expect of each other by now, but that doesn’t mean the process of fixing the manuscript is a shoe-in. There are different layers to the edits, all of which demand careful attention.

Mostly in my case, it’s about the correct use of language. I use incorrect grammar and words, in this case British English words instead of American, which there were more than usually. In my defence, I’d been writing another book right before this one in British English. He also suggests words that might fit the style better, but these are always suggestions. The final decision is mine. However, I always think them through carefully. Sometimes he has misunderstood my meaning and made suggestions based on that, which in itself is a reason to make changes to my writing. Clarity is the key.

It’s also about sentence structure. Lee likes tighter sentences than I do, hears a different rhythm than I, so he makes quite a few changes there. Sometimes I agree with his changes, sometimes I don’t. Being my own publisher, I can make my own decisions about them. That doesn’t mean I make the right choices, but I have to own them.

Then there are the larger issues of plot, characters and pacing. The greatest fear the new authors seem to have is that the editor forces them to make changes they don’t want to one or all of these. We’ve all read about authors who have been told to add a romance plot to a thriller, or change the point of view from the first person to third, all to make the book sell better. Delilah S. Dawson has good comments about that in her twitter rant too. Mostly it’s about what’s comfortable to you. Everything is negotiable, if you can make a good case for yourself.

Usually, though, editor’s suggestions spring from the manuscript itself, to make it better. Editor doesn’t tell you exactly how to fix the pace or the plot, and then expect you to follow their suggestion to the letter. They challenge you to read your text with different eyes. This time I’d managed to pace the book well, but if needed, Lee points out where the pace lags, or if a scene isn’t quite in the right place. I’ve only ignored his suggestion once. He found the ending of one of my books abrupt, but I didn’t change it, and the first reader to review the book made a scathing comment about it. In my defence, a year later, I still don’t know how I should fix it.

And then there’s a lot of fine tuning. This time round, it concentrated on the first paragraph of the book. Every author knows that the opening sentence and paragraph are crucial, so I’d really put some thought into them. I thought I’d nailed them too. Imagine my dismay, then, when the first thing I see opening the edits were two lengthy comments about the opening paragraph. In short, Lee didn’t think it worked at all.

This is the original opening:

I was trying to keep a tray-full of champagne flutes from gliding to the floor when the thief struck. Not me, or Mrs. Snobby-as-fuck I was serving would’ve got her jewel-adorned cleavage doused with champagne -- or the sparkling white wine the glasses actually contained, and about which she’d been complaining to me for the past five minutes.

I was sorely tempted to soak her anyway.

Lee didn’t like the transition between two different kinds of ‘struck’, figurative and literal. He didn’t like the pacing of the paragraph either, with one short and one long sentence. I thought he was wrong, so I moped a little. Then I rewrote the paragraph to this:

I was trying to keep a tray-full of champagne flutes from gliding to the floor when things went south. Not the tray, or Mrs. Snobby-as-fuck I was serving would’ve got her jewel-adorned cleavage doused with champagne -- or the sparkling white wine the glasses actually contained, and about which she’d been complaining to me for the past five minutes.

I was sorely tempted to soak her anyway.

But Lee liked this version even less. It removed the hook of the thief, and he found ‘went south’ to be a cliché. In his words: “The issue as I see it now is that by removing the connection between the second and the third line (the struck pun), we have to find a new way to get from the good hook to the lady. The issue is made difficult as we're introduced to the idea of there being a thief and a robbery, but then we're taken back in time thirty seconds to the conversation with the Snobby-as-fuck lady, and then walked forward in time until the fire alarm goes off, so it would probably be useful to – in place of the pun – acknowledge the time gap, and then switch up the circumstances around how Tracy comes to the idea that she could use a good dousing with champagne. Something like...”

And then he gave me a number of suggestions of how I could fix the issue.

I spent an hour or so going through his suggestions, trying to fit them into the paragraph and into what I wanted to say. I consulted my sisters who didn’t like my earlier versions, so I kept working on it. Eventually, it turned out like this:

I was trying to keep a tray-full of champagne flutes from gliding to the floor when the thief struck. I was serving Mrs. Snobby-as-fuck at the time, and contemplating her impressive, jewel-adorned cleavage with fascinated horror. I was kind of hoping one of the milling guests at the upscale party would nudge me from behind, so that I could “accidentally” douse her with champagne -- or the sparkling white wine the glasses actually contained, about which she’d been complaining to me for the past five minutes. But no one bumped into me.

I was sorely tempted to soak her anyway.

This, finally, found everyone’s approval, though Lee would’ve wanted to remove the last sentence of the first paragraph too. That one I kept though, as it serves as a bridge to the punch-line.

All of this took more than a day – though mostly because Lee and I live in different time-zones. It wasn’t an easy process, but it was a necessary one. I think the opening paragraph is stronger because of the changes, but I would never have thought to make them. So, an editor is definitely necessary – and nothing to fear. It’s not always easy to let go of words you’ve carefully chosen, but if you do, you can get something better in return.

What do you think, did the first paragraph improve or not?

Tracy Hayes, P.I. with the Eyes comes out later this week. Until then, the first book in the series, Tracy Hayes, Apprentice P.I., is only $0.99. Don’t miss!

Tracy Hayes is back! With a sneak preview.

As I promised last week, this week’s post is about my writing. Coming up later this month – the date isn’t set yet, but I’m hoping around US Thanksgiving – is the fourth book in my Tracy Hayes detective series, Tracy Hayes, P.I. with the Eye. For those who haven’t met her yet, Tracy is a Brooklyn waitress who, after losing her job, becomes an apprentice to a PI. All sorts of shenanigans follow. Adding to the mix is Tracy’s family, two brothers and a sister, with their problems. If you want to read the previous books in the series, you can do so here, here, and here.

In today’s post, I have the description, the cover, and the first chapter for you – though still unedited. I hope you like them. And stay tuned for the publication date so that you won’t miss Tracy Hayes, P.I. with the Eye.

What do you think of the cover?

Thieves and baby nappers, Tracy is here to catch them.
 
It’s Thanksgiving Eve, but Tracy isn’t happy. She’s back to waitressing, a thief ruins a perfectly good party – lousy beverages notwithstanding – and she fails to apprehend the culprit. As the sole eye-witness, she is needed by the police, but she has a more important case to worry about. Babies have gone missing in her parents’ neighborhood and the police have no clues. And then one is found dead.

Tracy sets her sights on finding the baby-napper while juggling a family Thanksgiving, a jewelry thief, and two gorgeous men. And all this with a shining black eye. Who said being an apprentice P.I. would be easy?

Chapter One

I was trying to keep a tray-full of champagne flutes from gliding to the floor when the thief struck. Not me, or Mrs. Snobby-as-fuck in front of me would’ve got her jewel adorned cleavage doused with champagne. Or the sparkling white wine the glasses in fact contained, about which she’d been complaining to me for the past five minutes.

I was sorely tempted to soak her anyway.

It wasn’t just her complaining that irritated me, or the fact that her dress, which she was too old and portly to wear, cost probably more than I made in a year. It wasn’t even solely that it was the night before Thanksgiving and I should’ve been at my parents’ house helping Mom prepare for it instead of serving pretense champagne and hors d’oeuvres to who’s who in Brooklyn – and probably half of Manhattan as well.

No, it was the misery of being back to waitressing after three months as a private detective. Worse yet, my body had naturally activated the muscles needed to hold the large trays hours on end while wearing high heels. I had been waitress extraordinaire once, and it was as if I’d never stopped. Even my attitude became subdued as befit a person in servile position.

Not exactly my natural state.

The only thing that saved Mrs. I-know-champagne-when-I-taste-it from getting a bubbly white bath was the knowledge that this was only a temporary assignment. I wasn’t back to waitressing for good. I was undercover for a case. And I couldn’t mess this up, or my boss would be very upset.

And when Jackson Dean, my boss at Jackson Dean Investigations, became upset, he got angry. Then he would yell at me, which would upset me. It wasn’t so much the yelling that did it – he was entertaining to watch – but the knowledge that I’d earned his anger. I’d been on a roll this past month and preferred to continue my winning streak. He’d only yelled at me, like, once or maybe twice, if you count the time I slept in and forgot to show up for our morning jog. He’d run two and a half miles from his home in Marine Park to Midwood where I live, in rain, just to vent his aggravation to me.

That’s dedication.

“What is your name, girl,” Mrs. Real-champagne-has-tinier-bubbles demanded in a haughty tone you didn’t often hear outside British period dramas.

“Jessica, ma’am.”

It wasn’t. My name’s Tracy Hayes, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I was undercover, after all. However, why I gave her the name of my former roommate eluded me. Especially since it wasn’t the name I’d picked for this job. I’d chosen Henrietta Fern, for those curious, a name that had caused Jackson infinite mirth. His undercover name was Dean Jones, which totally lacked imagination in my opinion, but which he’d said was easy to remember in a tight spot. I guess he was right.

Don’t tell him I said that.

Jessica and I had parted in nasty terms about a month ago when she’d moved away with some of my furniture without asking my permission. I’d retaliated by confronting her in front of her date, one Thomas Thane Westley, a tech start-up millionaire and – incidentally – the host of the party tonight.

He hadn’t remembered me when he briefed Jackson and me about the evening, and Jessica was no longer his girlfriend, so I hadn’t had to face her here. But perhaps I’d been subconsciously bracing for the encounter and the name just popped out.

“Well, Jessica, why don’t you scurry into the kitchen and bring me proper champagne,” Mrs. I’m-too-important-to-be-served-inferior-stuff suggested with an arrogant sneer. I widened my professional smile from polite to indulgent, as if it was my privilege to serve her, and said “Right away,” without the least intention of doing so and turned to leave.

That’s when the fire alarm went off.

The entire roomful of people froze when the loud beeping started. The large loft apartment had an open floor plan – only the kitchen at the back and the bedrooms on the mezzanine were closed off – and the sound echoed from the high ceiling and bare redbrick walls, making it impossible to detect where it came from.

“Is that the fire alarm?” the woman demanded affronted, as if it was a personal insult to her.

“I’ll go investigate.” I pushed the tray at her and she instinctively accepted it. Then I dashed off as fast as I could in my high-heels, ignoring her protests.

I located Jackson in the foyer at the foot of the curving metal and glass stairs leading up. I’d forgotten he was wearing a suit tonight, so it took me a moment to spot him, as I kept looking for a man in a black T and jeans. I barely recognized him in his James Bond getup and I startled when my eyes landed on him. He looked good.

Don’t tell him I said that either.

“What’s going on?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the noise.

“Fucked if I know. I’ve been keeping an eye on these stairs the whole evening. No one’s gone up, so it can’t be the safe’s alarm.”

The reason we were undercover was to protect the host from being burglarized. There had been a series of break-ins into the finest homes of New York the past month, mostly on Manhattan and always during a party like this one. While the house was filled with people and the hosts busy, the thief snug in, broke into the house safe and left with whatever they’d contained. The police had no clues.

Thomas Thane Westley hadn’t wanted to take chances. “I don’t have valuables in my safe, but I do keep some important papers there.” So he’d hired us to keep an eye on the guests. The police assumed that the thief either impersonated as a guest, or was someone from the upper echelon of society to get an invitation.

Since Mr. Westley didn’t want to ruin his first big party after listing his company by bringing in the cops, he’d selected us. “I doubt I’ll be targeted, since the thief seems to know when there are valuables in the house, but better safe than sorry.”

It seemed he’d been wrong. And that spelled trouble for us if we couldn’t handle the situation.

The irritating beeping continued without anyone seeming to be able to do anything about it. “I think it’s the fire alarm,” I said to Jackson who nodded, sweeping his gaze over the guests who were looking at each other in indecision, wondering if the situation was serious enough to merit evacuation and leaving a perfectly good party.

“But what caused it? And is it genuine?”

“I’ll go check the kitchen,” I said, assuming that if there was a fire, the kitchen was the likeliest source.

I’d barely taken a step towards the other end of the room where the kitchen was, when there was a sort of ‘whoosh’ sound and the sprinklers began to spew cold water on us. It cut off the beeping, so I took it as an improvement. Not so the others.

Screams and curses filled the air, and the guests began to mill towards the front door, their heads pressed down and hands lifted over their heads to protect their fine hairdos, as if it would help against the determination of the finest sprinkler system money could buy to extinguish all fires. In mere moments everyone and everything was drenched and the floor was swimming.

Jackson took instant charge. He was a former cop, so he was trained for it, and he was the kind of person who naturally assumed he was the one you should listen to when things went ape-shit. He rushed to open the door out of the apartment and began to issue orders about orderly exit and telling people not to use the elevator. I don’t think anyone paid any attention. They were in too much of a hurry to get out of the cold water raining on us.

I wanted to flee too. I didn’t have a death wish and a house fire was one of my least favorite ways to die. But I didn’t see or smell any smoke, and since I was wet anyway, I couldn’t get more miserable than I already was. My clothes weren’t expensive and a few drops of water wouldn’t ruin them.

Instead, I retreated on the stairs to get out of the way of the people pushing towards the door. Water was dripping down my face and into my eyes, but I got a good look at how Brooklyn’s finest treated each other in a crisis situation. It was pretty ugly. I wouldn’t trust any of them with my back. There wasn’t a woman so old and feeble that she wouldn’t be pushed out of the way by a strong younger man. I was about to dash over to the woman when she bashed the man with her handbag. She clearly didn’t need any help from me.

The crowd was thinning, but not very fast – the door wasn’t wide enough for such a disorderly exit. But they were consistently pushing to the same direction. All but one man, who was calmly heading to the kitchen.

Now, he could’ve been a man blessed with more than common sense who had realized that the place had to have a second exit through the kitchen that no one else was taking. But there was something in his studied nonchalance that was calculated to keep people from noticing him that instantly put my Spidey senses on alert. Or whatever senses private detectives have.

I considered my course of action for as long as it took me to slip off my high heels. Then I pushed into the exit throng, as heedless of their well-being as they were of each other’s. I’m average height and half the Brooklyn Nets seemed to be among the guests, judging by how they towered over me, but what I lacked in vertical reach, I more than made up with the sharpness of my elbows. They met their targets unerringly, and in no time at all I was through the milling people. The floor clear before me, I took off at full speed – or as fast as I was able to through the water – after the man who had already disappeared into the kitchen.

Behind me, the first shouts erupted: “My necklace!” “My wallet.” And then, the inevitable: “Did that girl take them?” “Stop that girl!”

But I couldn’t pause to tell them they had the wrong person, because I now knew I had the right one. Sliding on the wet hardwood floor, I pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen, only to see the man exit through the open back door.

***

That was the first chapter of Tracy Hayes, P.I. with the Eye. Tell me what you thought of it in the comments.

Reading recap: October

I got back on my reading track in October with five great books. Well, technically I finished the last one in November, but it was in the small hours of the morning, so I’m counting it to this month. As has been my habit this year, some of the books were outside of my reading list, some from it.

I started the month with a great young adult book called Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John. It tells about Piper who ends up as a manager of the up and coming – hopefully – band called Dumb of her high school, mostly on dare, but partly because her parents have raided her college fund to pay for a hearing implant for her baby sister and she wants to get rich fast. It would’ve been a good premise as is, but the twist is that Piper is deaf, so she has no idea if the band is any good or not. Also she has zero knowledge of the music the band is interested in, or music in general. The book is kind of an emotional roller-coaster with both the band and her family offering her plenty of opportunities for personal growth. And she mostly learns from them too, but not before creating quite a mess. The only parts that felt a bit glued on were the trips to the past music scenes of Seattle where she lives, presumably to teach Piper about it, but mostly, I felt, to show the readers how much the author knows about it. But I can forgive that, because Piper was a wonderful character and the author had taken great pains in imagining what it would be like to be deaf in the world of the hearing and not be discouraged by it.

Five Flavors of Dumb by Anthony John

In sharp contrast with the first book was White Hot Kiss by Jennifer L. Armentrout, also about a high-schooler, Layla. She, too, is different from her friends, she’s part demon, part gargoyle, but since she can’t talk about it with them, her school friends are sort of add-ons to the story instead of part of her life. She’s not really accepted at home either among her adoptive caretakers, who are full gargoyles and hunt demons.  The story is basically about Layla finding out about her roots, why she is the way she is, but since it’s the first book in a series, nothing conclusive is said about it. There’s a love story too, between Layla and a demon who claims to help her against demons who hunt her, but for a book with such a name, it was disappointinly chaste and lame. I found the book tedious and too long, and ended up skipping a bit. But the ending was good.

White Hot Kiss by Jennifer L. Armentrout

My best readings of the month were two books in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence series, Two Serpents Rise and Full Fathom Five, which are books two and three in the series. Gladstone has created an amazing fantasy world were soul stuff is currency that can be accumulated and saved in banks, and which is used for all kinds of transactions that bind the countries, the people and the gods. The world is divided to countries with and without gods, the Gods War having killed most of the gods in the former. They are ruled by craft users, sort of magicians, but more like lawyers who negotiate intricate contracts to bind the world to their will. But gods haven’t completely disappeared and it’s the theme in both books.

Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone

In the first book, Caleb Altemoc who works as a risk manager for a water company – basically – is sent to investigate why demons are infesting the water reservoir. It starts a long and complicated crime mystery where dormant gods play a role too. And things aren’t made any easier by the fact that Caleb’s estranged father Temoc, the last living priest of the former gods, is the prime suspect. In the second book, set in a far-off island, idols that are used for storing soul stuff for companies that need gods but do not want them, start gaining consciousness and becoming gods in truth. Like in all the books in the series, this isn’t a theological or metaphysical problem, but an economic one and requires complicated action to save the entire world from a financial ruin. Easiest solution would be killing the emerging gods, but the main characters, a beggar and thief Izzy who’s become an unwitting priestess of the gods, and Kai, a priestess-accountant who creates the idols, have other ideas. A couple of characters from the first book make an appearance too. After three books, it’s evident that this is definitely a series unlike anything out there, both big and small at the same time, an amazing world combined with characters that feel real.

Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone

I ended the month with one of my all-time favourite urban fantasy series, Charley Davidson by Darynda Jones. The Trouble with Twelfth Grave is already book twelve, but the series is still going strong – though sadly soon to end. We pick off where the previous book ended, Charley’s husband Rey returning from a hell dimension as an evil god. Charley isn’t discouraged by it – she’s never discouraged by anything, she’s too ADHD to think that far ahead; she tries to prove that her husband is still somewhere inside the evil version of him. But a series of gruesome deaths that might be done by him dampens her spirits a bit. After all sorts of shenanigans, the true killer is found, but it only delivers a kick-in-the-gut twist that ends the book in a cliff-hanger.  It was a good book, though not quite as funny as most of the previous ones. And now we have the agonising wait for the next one.

The Trouble with Twelfth Grave by Darynda Jones

That’s my recap. But I’ve done more than just reading, I’ve been writing too. Coming up next week, cover reveal and an excerpt of the fourth Tracy Hayes book, Tracy Hayes, P.I. with the Eye. Stay tuned. And if you haven't read the earlier books, you can start with Tracy Hayes, Apprentice P.I.

Tracy Hayes, Apprentice P.I. by Susanna Shore