Castles, Customs, and Kings: Goodreads Giveaway

Where have I been for the last three weeks? (Or is it the last eight months?) Reading history essays for an anthology that Madison Street Publishing is putting out next month.

One more week till the final proofreading deadline for Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors. Then it will go back to the book designer for finishing touches and be released on September 23. This is the longest book we've published so far at Madison Street Publishing, well over 500 pages. It's also been a challenging project, coordinating text edits from 50+ authors.

But despite the challenges--or perhaps because of them--this book is shaping up to be one of the most exciting items in our catalog. The cover is beautiful, the essays are a history-lover's dream, and if you don't treat yourself to an early Christmas present on September 23...well, let's just say you will be missing out. :-)

We're running a giveaway of two copies of the book on Goodreads for the month leading up to the release. Feel free to enter and spread the word!

 
 

    Goodreads Book Giveaway
 

   

       
   

   

     

          Castles, Customs, and Kings
     
     

          by Debra  Brown
     

     

         
            Giveaway ends September 23, 2013.
         
         
            See the giveaway details
            at Goodreads.
         
     
   
   

      Enter to win

Desultory Remarks III

There are quite a few exciting tidbits in the publicity front. Yesterday I had a featured interview on the Kindle Author blog discussing I Serve and my journey as a writer. You can read the interview here and learn fascinating things like "how I develop my characters" and "which authors have inspired me."

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Goodreads is currently running a giveaway of FOUR Advanced Reading Copies of Road from the West. 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Road from the West

by Rosanne E. Lortz

Giveaway ends August 15, 2011.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

And if the odds for the Goodreads giveaway are too daunting, the giveaway for one ARC from this blog is still running until August 8. Click here to fill out the form and enter.

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I mailed out dozens of Advanced Review Copies a week and a half ago, and it's fun to see ARC's arriving in the Mailbox Monday posts by several HF book bloggers. I'm looking forward to the Road from the West Blog Tour, put together by Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours and running from September 2 to October 20. There are twenty-six blogs participating with reviews, interviews, and guest posts--which reminds me, I have seven guest posts to write up for the tour and less than seven weeks to do it in. I better get working on those....

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Cynthia Robertson has an excellent post against "The Cult of the Short Sentence" on her blog. Some writers feel that any sentence with more than ten or twelve words is too complex for the modern reader and must be broken into smaller sentences, but Cynthia feels otherwise and provides example after example of powerful prose using extended clauses, creative punctuation, and multiple conjunctions, including one excerpt from Hemingway that lasts 424 words before reaching a full stop.