Contract for Speaking of Murder!

I am delighted to announce that yesterday I signed a contract with Barking Rain Press to publish Speaking of Murder, featuring Quaker Linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau. I am so very excited. I am using the pen name Tace Baker (my Local Foods Mystery contract with Kensington Publishing stipulated that I couldn't publish a different book or series under my real name during the term of the contract). Tace is an old female Quaker name.

The print book will come out mid-September, with e-formats following in October. Although Barking Rain is a fairly new small press, I am impressed by their professionalism and response time. I'll be jumping into the editing phase shortly.

I started writing this book after I was laid off a job in the late fall of 2008, and finished the first draft in February of 2010. I started trying to sell it in January of 2011, so this has been a path requiring perseverance.

Now I totally have to get busy building my 'brand' of Tace Baker: URL, web site, Facebook author page, twitter (AND finish the first draft of the first book in the Local Foods series. AND work full time. And so on...). Makes my head spin a bit, but first I'm going to have some champagne and chocolate!