Look at that! Isn't she beautiful? I think it might be my favorite cover.
Bed of Flowers is releasing on June 19. It's the first book in a new series I'm calling Sweetness and Light. (Please do remember that we mostly use the phrase to tell one another that "It's not all sweetness and light.") The new series will be set in the 1850s, about a decade later than the No Better Angels books. We're out of the transitional, betwixt-and-between 1840s and moving into the High Victorian period, the era of smokestacks and steamships, of Manet and Darwin.
I've got thumbnail sketches of all four books planned out, but in this first one--Bed of Flowers--you'll met all four of the heroines I'll be writing about: Bonny Reed, Cordelia Kelly, Tess Hurley, and Olympia Swain. My goal with this series is to write about truly and intrinsically good people, who do what they believe is right... and, in the process, get themselves into serious trouble. The phrase 'no good deed goes unpunished' hadn't been coined yet, but it would come in handy for my poor protagonists.
Bed of Flowers is a deconstructed Beauty and the Beast story. Not just the Disney version--I went back to the original--with lots of recognizable elements either scrambled or subverted to the point where, in all honesty, the source material is mostly unrecognizable. So how about a blurb?
Bonny Reed is beautiful, inside and out.
A loyal friend and loving daughter, she's newly engaged to her small town's most eligible bachelor. She's happy for herself--but mostly for her family, who need the security her marriage will bring.
An old enemy shatters her illusions.
First Baron Loel cost Bonny's family her fortune. Now he's insisting that her fiancé has hidden flaws, secrets so dark that--if she believed him--she'd have to call off the wedding.
How will she choose?
When the truth comes out, Bonny will have to choose between doing what's right and what's easy. Between her family and her best friend. And hardest of all--between her honor and the love of a man who everyone wants her to hate.
Bed of Flowers is available for pre-order right now. I'm starting it out at a very low pre-order price of $0.99. But as we get closer to the release date, I'll start raising it.
Because I self-publish, raising prices can be an inexact science--I don't always have control over when the new prices go into effect--but I plan to raise it to $1.99 on May 29, to $2.99 on June 5, to $3.99 on June 12 and to $4.99 on June 19.
I want my fans to be able to buy the book at the best price--I don't want anyone to feel like they're being punished for supporting me if the book ever goes on sale--so I want to make sure everyone has a chance to take advantage of this excellent $0.99 deal right now.
Want a pre-order link? I've got you covered:
Amazon - iBooks - Kobo - Barnes & Noble - Google Play