The Saga of Daisy
Gumm Majesty’s Publication
Before
I begin telling you about Daisy’s epic publishing history, here are the wieners
of September’s book giveaway (SPIRITS UNEARTHED): Elizabeth Keene, Paula Adams,
Jon Ludwig and Linda Ames-Boman. Congrats! I’ll get your books to you…
eventually. Truth to tell, I only managed to mail August’s books yesterday.
Sigh.
But
back to the subject of this month’s newsletter, let me tell you that keeping
Daisy published wasn’t easy. Here’s why.
The
idea for the Daisy Gumm Majesty series came to me in the early 2000s. The books
were supposed to be historical cozy mysteries, and they were supposed to feature
as their main protagonist a fake spiritualist-medium named Daisy Gumm Majesty, a
young woman married to a crippled veteran of the War to End All Wars (it wasn’t,
more’s the pity). Daisy plied her art during the 1920s in Pasadena, California,
my old hometown.
In
order to achieve publication of this series, I gathered what few wits I had
left and sent a proposal for the first two books to my publisher at the time
(Kensington). The Powers That Were liked the idea, the characters and the
period, but they said there wasn’t enough mystery. That’s undoubtedly true, and
it’s also pretty much the story of my life. Their fix, however, was for me to
take out the dead bodies, add a subsidiary romance (since the heroine was
already married) and they’d market the books as romances.
So I
did, they did, and STRONG SPIRITS and FINE SPIRITS were published. They tanked.
Big-time. Broke my heart. I loved
Daisy. More, I loved Pasadena, California, and the era in which Daisy lived.
Nevertheless, Daisy and her pals seemed to be floating belly-up in the goldfish
bowl of publishing, and there was nothing I could do about it. The late, great
Kate Duffy called and apologized for mis-marketing the books, but that didn’t
help a whole lot. My heart remained, squashed and pulsing with grief, on the
floor at my feet.
Nevertheless,
I did as the Kensington goddesses asked, took yet another pseudonym (I think
this made six of them), and I wrote a series about survivors of the Titanic disaster. I used a combination of my daughters’ names for my pseudonym and churned
out A PERFECT STRANGER, A PERFECT ROMANCE and A PERFECT WEDDING as Anne Robins.
Then,
because I was editing books for Five Star-Cengage, I asked if I could submit a
book for their consideration. Five Star doesn’t acquire books on proposal, but
I already had the third Daisy book written. Therefore, I sent it in, and they
acquired it for their women’s fiction line. I was delighted, even if the books
still weren’t dead-body-cozy mysteries. And then Five Star closed their women’s
fiction line. I managed to get book #6 (ANCIENT SPIRITS) published as a
romantic suspense novel, and then I
got to turn Daisy’s books into cozy mysteries! Yay!
Five
Star published SPIRITS REVIVED, Daisy’s seventh adventure, as a mystery!
Wheeee! Then Five Star closed their mystery line.
Um .
. . I wasn’t sure what to do after that. However, a lovely woman named Jeanne
Glidewell, whose cozy mystery novels I’d edited for Five Star, told me she’d
found a great publisher and suggested I get in touch with them about my Daisy
books. So I did. ePublishing Works (Brian and Nina Paules) decided to reprint
the entire Daisy series, give the books new covers that clearly defined them as
cozy mysteries (“branding” is, I think, what this is called), and they even put
the series number of each book on the front cover! Wow. You can’t get much
better than that. What’s more, ePW actually promotes their authors’ books! This has never happened to me before in my
life. I’m actually making money with ePW.
Whatta miracle!
The
only thing neither ePW nor I can do is get the rights to SPIRITS REVIVED back.
Therefore, there’s a hole in the middle of Daisy’s series. However, when the
narrator reading the Daisy books for audio (the extremely talented Denice
Stradling) got to SPIRITS REVIVED, Nina Paules made a lovely cover for it and
numbered it 6 ½. I tell you, those ePW folks are clever.
Anyway,
book #12 (actually, it’s #13, but I just explained the reason it’s not numbered
as such) was published in July of this year. SPIRITS UNEARTHED begins at the
Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California. It’s not as gruesome as it
sounds (to start with, anyway) because Daisy and her fiancé, Sam Rotondo, are there
to visit their late spouses’ graves. Daisy’s dachshund, Spike, begins the
action by finding a shoe. Unfortunately, the shoe contains a foot. And so the
fun begins.
By
the way, I grew up and lived in Altadena and Pasadena for most of my life, so
it didn’t occur to me that having only one cemetery to serve an entire
community was in any way unusual. I’ve since been told by my number-one beta
reader, Lynne Welch, librarian extraordinaire, that most cities have little
cemeteries dotted all over the place. In Altadena and Pasadena, it’s either
Mountain View or an urn on somebody’s mantel, I reckon.
A
running theme in the Daisy books is the magnificence of Viola Gumm’s cooking.
Vi is Daisy’s aunt-by-marriage and is a genius in the kitchen. That’s a good
thing because neither Daisy nor her mother can cook a worth a lick. They all
live together in a sweet little bungalow in Pasadena. One of Vi’s recipes appears
in SPIRITS UNEARTHED. In order to make Vi’s Swedish-style smothered chicken,
you first have to haul out your Scotch kettle. Don’t know what a Scotch kettle
is? Neither did I. So I did some research, and it turned out to be a Dutch
oven!
Daisy’s
13th (actually, her 14th) adventure is titled SHAKEN
SPIRITS, and it will be published in January of 2019. This novel features a
character created by another author for his own books. Peter Brandvold (who
writes terrific westerns) gave me his very own, personal, made-up character,
Lou Prophet, to play with. Mind you, Mean Pete waited to give Lou to me until he
was old, weathered, falling apart and one-legged, but Daisy and I had a whole
lot of fun with old Lou in spite of his antiquity. Daisy thinks Lou is quaint.
Lou, who was once a hard-drinking, violent, womanizing, dangerous and tricky
bounty hunter in the wild and wooly Old West, would not be happy with Daisy’s assessment. Being a woman of
understanding and compassion, Daisy will never
tells Lou she thinks he’s quaint mainly because, if she did, Lou would hobble
out of her life as fast as he could. Please pre-order SHAKEN SPIRITS if you
feel so inclined.
What
the heck, you can get Lou Prophet’s latest story (written about his early career,
when he was young, virile, handsome as heck, and not quite as cantankerous as
he ultimately became) right now if you want to:
Link for STAGECOACH TO PURGATORY: https://www.amazon.com/Stagecoach-Purgatory-Prophet-Bounty-Hunter-ebook/dp/B077WZ6884/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1538354279&sr=1-1&keywords=stagecoach+to+purgatory
Now
I’m writing SCARLET SPIRITS, Daisy’s 14th (actually, her 15th)
adventure. Lou Prophet’s in this book too; however, even more fictional Old-West characters show up in SCARLET. I made up
all these new guys, though. In fact, a proposal for a western novel no one ever
showed interest in publishing (because westerns are supposed to be jam-packed
with adventure, and all my characters ever do is sit around chatting with each
other. Well, and they eat a lot), is helping me with SCARLET’S plot. Never let
a good plot go to waste is my philosophy. In truth, it isn’t, but it sounds
good.
I
tell you, publishing is a strange and confusing industry.
At
the end of October, I’ll be giving away even more copies of SPIRITS UNEARTHED.
I seem to have about fifty billion copies of that particular book for some
reason. If you’d like to find out more about Daisy and the gang, please visit
this page (https://ebookdiscovery.lpages.co/aliceduncandaisygummbook12excerpt/
), where you can read an excerpt from SPIRITS UNEARTHED and learn more about my
Daisy books. That page also contains links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and
everywhere else if you’d like to buy the book. If you’d like to visit my web
page, here’s the link: http://aliceduncan.net/ . And if you’d
like to be Facebook friends, please go here: https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925
Thank
you!
No comments:
Post a Comment