Guest Blogger - Alice Duncan

November

Happy Hallowiener! And on to November. Another year almost shot to heck. Amazing. Kind of depressing maybe. Or maybe not. I dunno.

Not much to report this month. I haven’t injured myself in a couple of weeks (knock wood), the last injury being a sprained ankle, which is getting better. Whew!

The wieners of my October contest, who will get either a paper or an e-copy of BRUISED SPIRITS (Daisy Gumm Majesty’s tenth adventure) are: Val Reed (Val, you’ll get an e-copy because it costs too much to mail a book to Canada. Let me know if you’d prefer a Kindle or a Nook copy. Thanks!); Caroline Ruth Molloy; Virginia Winfield; and Carole Goerz! I’ll get whichever (paper or e-book) to you as soon as you let me know which one you’d prefer. Thanks! Please e-mail me at alice@aliceduncan.net to inform me.

Anyone dressing up for Halloween? I’m kind of loath to admit it, but costumes for Halloween have never been among my favorite things. My girls generally had to dress up as Gypsies or something equally boring because I could throw a Gypsy costume together without much fuss. My mom made them both Raggedy Ann costumes one year, and that was cute. Mind you, if I’d had all the money and time in the world, they’d probably have had cool costumes, but I had neither when my daughters were young. My older daughter, Anni, won a Halloween costume contest one year when she was twelve or thereabouts by attending the contest as herself! Go figure.

And I don’t dress up the hounds, either. For one thing, they’d hate it. For another thing, I’d hate it. I do, however, love to see my great-grandchildren all dressed up for trick-or-treating. Their parents (my grandson, Dai, and his wife, Emily) are great costume-makers, as is Emily’s sister, Catherine. Yet one more thing I feel guilty about: not making my kids nice costumes for Halloween. Oh, well…

Anyway, I guess I’ll just mosey along to tell you about the book I’ll be giving away at the end of November. Lemme think for a minute. Ow. That hurt. However, I did think of contest books to give away: Lucky winners will receive a hardback copy of THANKSGIVING ANGELS (Mercy Allcutt’s fifth [and perhaps last] adventure), PECOS VALLEY REVIVAL (Annabelle Blue’s second [and probably last] adventure, HIGH SPIRITS (Daisy Gumm Majesty’s third adventure), or SIERRA RANSOM (written by me using the pseudonym Emma Craig). SIERRA RANSOM is an historical romance novel set in California’s Gold Rush Days. I like this book! It’s also the only book for which I wrote the last chapter first. Did that make any sense? Oh, never mind.

Anyhow, if you enter the contest, none of us will know the names of the winners or the book they won until Bam-Bam, my winner-picking wiener dog, scarfs the name for each out of his special contest doggie dish. So you might end up with an historical romance novel if you aren’t careful. But it’s a pretty good one, even if I do say so myself. It even won a contest once, although I can’t remember which one. I don’t enter contests as a rule. Oh! I remember! It wasn’t a contest I entered at all. It was a reviewers’ choice thing. PECOS VALLEY REVIVAL was a finalist in the New Mexico/Arizona Book of the Year Awards, too. I didn’t enter it myself. A really neat guy named Michael Orenduff, who writes the Pot Thief mysteries, entered it because he liked it. I thought that was very nice of him. Mike is also incredibly tall, not that his height has anything to do with anything. Just thought I’d mention it. That’s probably because I’m really short and have always envied tall people. Oh, never mind again.

Here are cover pictures of the books. I’ve been really lucky with covers during my as-yet unprofitable writing career:

A word about my monthly contests. I love giving my work to people; however, I found out quite by accident a few months ago that sending books to Great Britain, Australia, and other countries outside the United States is beyond my monetary capability. If a resident of a nation other than the United States has an e-reader, I’ll happily supply that person with an e-book. If a person doesn’t have an e-reader and still likes to read book-books, he or she is on his or her own. I’m sorry, but what I laughingly call my writing career hasn’t made me wealthy yet. And it probably won’t, but let’s not get in to that because it always depresses me. So. That’s that.

If you’d like to enter the contest, just send me an email (alice@aliceduncan.net) and give me your name and home address. If you’d like to be added to my mailing list, you may do so on my web site (http://aliceduncan.net/) or email me (you won’t be smothered in e-mails, because I only write one blog a month, and that’s an effort). If you’d like to be friends on Facebook, visit my page at https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925.

Thank you!