The Bearens' Hope is Just Days Away!

We are in the final stages of getting The Bearens' Hope ready for publication.  We hope to have it available for purchase in a week to ten days from today, depending on how things go.  Laura Jo has finished the manuscript and is going through it, filling in small scenes here and there, and making some tweaks.  I have edited about 40% of the book so far and I'm very, very impressed.

To whet your appetite, I am authorized to tell you that, in this book, readers are going to really get to know Ellicia Daniels, sister to Lariah, the heroine from Book One and a significant presence in the later novels.  As many of you remember, Ellicia is a psychic Agent for an organization whose covert business will also be glimpsed a bit more fully in this novel.  In addition, a good portion of the action in this book takes place on Earth, much of which will be familiar to readers but much of which has been changed almost beyond recognition by the horribly destructive Bolkin Wars.

Don't let all that military/spy stuff fool you, though.  This book has enough romance and love and heart in it for two books.  In fact, readers will be getting two love stories and an even twistier emotional ride than in the first three books.  There are some parts that brought me to tears, and I'm a guy.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, this book is going to be significantly longer than the others.  Accordingly, our publication costs, in both the digital and paperback versions, are going to be slightly higher, requiring that we pass the cost on to our readers.  We want to keep these books very affordable, so the price will not increase by much and will go up only as much as our costs, but it is looking like the cost of the e book is going to be $6.99 (up from $5.99 for the first three books).  We think that readers will still be getting a good value, as this book is going to be somewhere between 35% and 50% longer than Book Three.  On a page for page basis, in fact, this book will actually be cheaper than the others!

We will alert you as we progress toward publication and will be sure to put a notice in this space when we upload the text so you will know when the book becomes available.

Audio Book Version?

We have been approached by an audio production company about producing audio book versions of the books in this series.  While no figures are on the table yet, it is pretty clear that the process would involve our having to pay the production company to make the recording, a sum likely to run many thousands of dollars.  We are reluctant to make this investment out of our own pockets unless we are fairly confident that that there is a large market out there for audio versions of these books.

So, we are asking you, Laura Jo's readers, to "sound off" (yes, I know how lame the pun is) on this issue.  Would you be interested in buying audio versions of these books--they would probably be available on CD and as a digital download you could listen to on your MP3 player or computer?  We really don't have any clear idea what the price would be, but if you look on line and in stores, you can get some idea what audio books are going for these days.  The recording, we are assured, would be of the highest quality, with a professional reader, music, and maybe even some sound effects.

We ask that you use the comments section to let us know whether you would spend your hard-earned cash to own an audio version of the books, and--if you think you know--your views on whether there would be a market for these recordings that would make it worth our while to pay the production costs.

We look forward to hearing your views.

Cajun French in "The Katres' Summer"

Summer Whitney, our intrepid heroine in The Katres' Summer, uses some Cajun French expressions that readers may not be able to look up easily in standard dictionaries.  I provided these to Laura Jo from my memories of growing up in South Louisiana with a 100% Cajun mother.  When the rush of getting the next book out slackens off, we are going to put them in the glossary on www.laurajophillips.com.  Until that happens, I thought it might be helpful to some readers to provide some informal definitions and discussion here.

chierie.  This is one of my favorite Cajun insults.  It literally means "little spot of diarrhea" which is doubly insulting because the term says that the person in question both disgusting AND insignificant.  This term is not used very widely.  Pity.

fils de putain.  This one, on the other hand, is one of the more common Cajun epithets.  The literal translation is "son of a whore" but it is used where an English speaker would say "bastard" or "son of a bitch."  I heard this one a lot on the playground.

gardez donc.  This expression is probably more correctly written "regardez donc" but when Cajuns say it in normal conversation you almost never hear the "re" in "regardez."  I never knew it was supposed to be "regardez" until I read it in a novel set in Louisiana.  The literal meaning is "look at that." Cajuns say "gardez donc" when an English speaker would say something like "wow" or "isn't that amazing."  It is an expression of wonder and astonishment, but it applies only to something that you can actually see.  You don't say "gardez donc" to express astonishment at something that you hear or smell.

By the way, if you use this expression, you've got to do it right--there is a special way to say it.  You say it slowly, like it's three words, not two, with a bit of emphasis on each syllable.  Plus, remember that you don't pronounce the "nc" in "donc."  So, phonetically, it's close to "gar day doh."  And, there's a trick to pronouncing the last syllable if you aren't used to French vowel sounds.  It sounds like "dong" without the "ng."  

When would you hear it used in the heart of Acadiana (the region of Louisiana inhabited by the Cajuns)?  Well, if the Royal Princes of Jasan shifted into their Dracon forms in the parking lot of the Northgate Mall in Lafayette, Louisiana, most of the astonished bystanders would exclaim "gardez donc!"  Then they would probably start looking for their shotguns and ask each other whether Dracons taste good in gumbo (grin).

The Cajuns are a wonderful people with a fascinating culture, and it was fun to help Laura Jo use her writing to put them (us) in a bit of a spotlight for a moment.  Because Cajun culture has proved to be so resilient, I believe and hope that even centuries in the future when these books are set, there will still be Cajuns in Louisiana, speaking French, eating crawfish and gumbo and jambalaya, and dancing the two step.

"Accidental" Readers

Laura Jo eagerly reads (and excitedly shows to me) all of the signatures to the guest book on her web site, www.laurajophillips.com.  One thing that people seem to mention over and over is how they "stumbled" on her books, "found them by accident," or words to that effect.  One thing that these posts suggest to me is that one of the main ways people are finding Laura Jo's books is by browsing or by Amazon.com's recommendation process.  That is fine, and we are happy to get readers any way we can, but . . . .

Given how enthusiastic Laura Jo's readers seem to be, and given the number of you who are out there, how many MORE people would find these amazing books if more readers recommended them to their friends, gave them as gifts, blogged about them, wrote favorable reviews on Amazon and other seller web sites, and so on, spreading the word about this wonderful author and these fantastic stories out there that have love and romance and excitement and intrigue and and and and, so on?  We know that many of you are doing these things already, but if more of you did so, we can only imagine the readership that these books would find.

So, in light of the reception these books have found with readers (for which we are endlessly grateful), we would love to see what happens if a larger audience became aware of these books.  Any help we could receive from readers would be much appreciated.

Bearens Hope Update

Work on The Bearens' Hope is still progressing rapidly and we are still looking forward to publication later this month.  I think readers will be very pleased at the direction Laura has taken in this book.  In particular, there are a few big "reveals" that are going to be huge surprises to most of you and that will set up some exciting story lines in future books.  And, no, I'm not even going to give you a hint.

Also, I'm sure most of you have noticed that each book in the series has a richer, more involved plot than the one before.  The chapters that Laura has shown me so far seem to continue this trend--there is A LOT happening in this book.

Please continue to check this space for more updates, and please don't hesitate to use the comments function here to offer comments or to ask questions.  Laura loves to hear from readers and I love to answer questions.