Audio, Nosy Newfie Cozy Mysteries

Halloween Short Story Now in Audio

aleksabaxter

Just dropping by to let you know that the short story that comes after A Missing Mom and Mutt Munchies, Halloween at the Baker Valley Barkery & Cafe, is now available in audio.

(Amazon, Nook, Google, Kobo, Audible US, Audible UK, Audible France, Audible Germany, Hoopla, Audiobooks.com)

I have to say, this was the funnest story to record so far just because it’s so silly and over the top.

Also, I had some fun experimenting with a new cover design for the collections. One friend said she adored the new design, one said it didn’t work for him at all. No one else had strong opinions. So, you know, you may or may not like them but they’re out there for now:

(I always regret that I can’t use photos of my own girl for things like this but it’s really, really hard to work with a dog that is all black for these sorts of things. Plus using a stock photo that has a white background is an absolute time saver, too.)

Also, I will be working at some point on getting the rest of the books out in audio and maybe writing some more with these characters, but it probably won’t be soon. I took a day job so I could have some sort of structure and distraction now that my pup is gone and that has to be my priority. But at least on both the audio and ebook/print side everyone currently has a happily ever after.

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Goodbye My Sweet Girl

aleksabaxter

Yesterday I had to say goodbye to my sweet girl. Picture on the top left was the first day she came to live with me. (I had not intended to own a dog but my mom’s dog attacked her so she couldn’t stay there. Hence the hiding under her water bowl stand.)

She was a bright, sweet girl from the start and I pretty much rearranged my life to make hers a good one. I figured no one asked me to take responsibility for her so if I was going to do that, I’d do it right.

And she paid back every sacrifice and foolish decision I made for her with all the love and loyalty in the world. She made me a better person and I’ll miss her terribly.

But it was time. She was struggling to stand up and it wasn’t getting better. (Didn’t stop her from wanting her daily walks, but I could see she was in pain.)

We almost made it to her 10th birthday and I think that’s a pretty amazing thing, really. Picture on the far right is from just a couple days ago. She never lost that sweet but stubborn spirit.

If you loved Miss Fancypants in the books, you’d’ve loved Miss Priss, too. She was absolutely my inspiration for those books and half of the reason you ended up with so many of them, because she’d do one or two things and I’d think, “Well, now I have to write another one so I can put that in it.”

So (if you have one) give your pup a hug today. And, if you want to honor my girl, a yummy treat or puppy ice cream while you’re at it.

Audio, My Miss Fancypants

Two More Audiobooks On The Way

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I have recorded and submitted the audio files for A Buried Body and Barkery Bites as well as A Missing Mom and Mutt Munchies. (If you click on those universal links and scroll to the bottom you’ll see the links for some of the audio retailers.)

At this point I don’t have control over when they’ll make it to any specific retailer. Buried Body I submitted about a week ago so it’s made it to most of the major sites at this point except Hoopla and Google. I know a lot of you like to use Hoopla so it may be worth a nudge from your end if you aren’t seeing it. I know with ebooks they seem to prioritize processing books that have been requested. Not sure how it works with audio, though. Missing Mom I only submitted yesterday so that’ll probably be a week or so before it gets approved and starts to trickle through the system.

It was fun to revisit Maggie May, Fancy, and crew. And, of course, the end of Missing Mom is where Maggie and Matt first kiss, so that was a warm fuzzy moment to narrate.

It was also interesting to narrate these books because when I was writing them some choices I made seemed to have inevitable consequences. Like the fact that when Janice Fletcher died she left those parcels of land for sale that could jeopardize the barkery. And Ted Little being so scary and taking an interest in Maggie.

I happen to be a pantser as a writer, meaning it’s sort of coming to me as I write it. So the story adjusts as the events occur. And with those two items that I introduced I felt I had to follow them up. Which is why we get that one paragraph about Ted Little in the next book and also why the barkery has to be torn down.

But reading it back I realized I could’ve maybe just ignored both of those things and been okay to continue the story without incorporating them. In one sense, I’m happy I did follow those consequences through because I think the pet resort will let Maggie build an entire community around herself instead of just a business with her friend. So I like where that went. But I could’ve spared Jamie the Ted Little experience. (And also the reference to Ruby. She’s a character I want to write about someday who has a ghost dog companion but I could’ve kept her out of this series.)

Anyway. Sorry I don’t have news on a next book. It might be a while. I love this little world I’ve created, but money-wise if I want to keep writing I need to put some time in on a few other series that have far higher sales numbers and haven’t had releases in (six) years. Yikes! Although I may do a collaboration between two of my pen names which would mean the next book is the first in a contemporary paranormal romance mystery series. (Haha. My problem as an author is that I have too many ideas to every write them all.)

Also, my own Miss Fancypants is now 9 years and almost 9 months old and my vet said that statistically she doesn’t see dogs of her size/breed make it to 10 often. (I know some Newfs make it to 15 or 16 and a decent number make it to 12, but we are now up to eight pills every morning, pot drops with each of her meals, and another five pills each night. That includes three different types of pain medicines on top of lupus and thyroid meds. So as much as I can hope she’s with me forever, realistically I don’t think she will make it that far.) That makes it a little hard to write about Fancy right now.

Plus, I am happily spending as much time as she wants outside at lunchtime laying in the snow while I read a book. We only have our pups for so long, gotta spend that time with them while we have them.

Here’s my girl out on the patio clearly wanting me to put the computer away and pay her some attention:

(And, yes, there are two dog beds in that picture that she’s ignoring. Along with one more around the corner and two more inside…Spoiled? Nah.)

Hope you and yours are well. Take care.

Nosy Newfie Cozy Mysteries

A Little Holiday Surprise

aleksabaxter

Not a new book, sadly, but…something else.

I just received notice that the audiobook of A Dead Man and Doggie Delights has been approved by the folks at ACX. Which means it is now available on Amazon, Nook, Google, Kobo, Audible US, Audible UK, Audible France, Audible Germany, Hoopla, Audiobooks.com, and probably more. If you listen to audiobooks, check your favorite store or library.

It was a big leap for me to do so, but I decided to narrate this series myself. (I worked my way up to it with about a half dozen non-fiction titles and about a dozen short stories, because it’s a lot to narrate a novel. All the voices!) I figured I knew Maggie’s voice best and I’m pretty proud of the result.

I expect to hear that A Crazy Cat Lady and Canine Crunchies is also approved very soon since I submitted them on the same day. I will post links when that happens on the series page and update that Books2Read link, too, to include audio.

In 2023 I hope to work my way through the rest of the series, but, you know, the better these do the sooner that will happen because my girl likes her treats and comfy beds and those are not free, so I sometimes have to prioritize the money-makers.

If you already read the book and don’t want to listen to it in audio, but do like cute holiday stories with puppies in them, maybe check out the Puppy Love Holiday Collection, which has four holiday short stories that involve puppies bringing people together. (Be warned that one story does have an injured dog, but all of the stories have very happy endings.) That one is available in ebook, print, and audio as well. And is me writing under the name C. Coal.

Hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday season. My girl and I are trying to get as much time hanging out in the grass as we can in winter in Colorado. (Which is actually surprisingly more than you’d think possible.) Not looking too shabby for a 9 1/2 year old lady is she?

Misc

A Few Quick Notes

aleksabaxter

First, if you ever notice a typo in one of my books feel free to send me an email about it. (aleksabaxterwriter at gmail) For the ebook version it’s pretty easy for me to fix and I do like to correct typos when I become aware of them. For print on Amazon I can also fix those easily. For print not on Amazon I may or may not be able to fix it.

But I do want to know.

The reason I bring this up is that it seems someone was kind enough to report a couple of typos to Amazon that I also found during my recent re-read of the whole series.

Amazon didn’t let me know about them so I didn’t know about those reports until I uploaded new files with those issues corrected and suddenly Amazon was like, “Oh, hey, way to correct those quality issues.”

So if you want me to know about the issues so I can fix them, email direct. Probably the same goes for other authors as well.

Also, it didn’t happen with me but I have heard of other authors getting books pulled or threatened to be pulled for a typo report. And for some authors who have things structured differently they may not have the ability to easily update their files like I do. So better to go direct and understand that it won’t always be an easy fix for every author.

Two, now through July 8th the ebook of book four in the series, A Missing Mom and Mutt Munchies is going to be free in celebration of the latest release. And I’ve put the ebook of A Dead Man and Doggie Delights to free and plan to keep it there going forward.

This also means that the two first collections for the series that include Books 1 through 3 and then Books 4 through 6 as well as the Halloween short story will be reduced in price during those same periods so no one is paying extra just to get the collection.

And, three, the ebook version of Books 7 through 9 and the Housebound short story is now live. Paperback to follow soon.

Oh, and also, when I re-read Salacious Scandal I realized that having two characters named Evan in the same book was confusing so I renamed Evan Browers to Owen Browers. He’s only mentioned in that book so it shouldn’t cause an issue unless someone refreshes the book mid-read and you had already started reading it. (So don’t do that.)

But if that is you, now you know what happened.

(And in general with my books at least you don’t need to update when I update a file. Usually it’s because I’m adding new books to the Also By section or making a minor correction like replacing a comma with a period. If it’s big, I’ll let you know here. And that’s probably true for other authors as well. My rule would be, don’t worry about updating unless you read something and think, “What on earth?” and then go look to see if the file was updated.)

Nosy Newfie Cozy Mysteries

New Release: A Puzzling Pooch and Pumpkin Puffs

aleksabaxter

Book 9 in the Maggie May and Miss Fancypants series, A Puzzling Pooch and Pumpkin Puffs, is live on most platforms and should be live on all platforms very soon.

This is the last book in the series. If I write about these characters again it will be a new series.

It’s also murder-free and death-free. I just didn’t have it in me to write about anybody being dead right now so in this one Maggie is on bed rest (or at least her version of it) but she still gets involved in solving the mystery of a lost dog. Low stakes, high rewards.

I should have the collection for books 6 through 9 out probably by the end of the month if you prefer to read in collections instead of one book at a time. Also, within the next few days I’ll probably be setting book 1 and 4 to free so if you know someone you think would enjoy the series or fell off of it, it’ll be a good chance for them to try it out or come back to it.

And for those who read the large print hardcover version for now that’s only going to be available on Amazon, but the regular large print version should make its way to other platforms.

Enjoy!

Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Nook, Google, Print, Large Print PB, Large Print HC
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Kobo Promotion

aleksabaxter

For the month of April Kobo has a mystery/thriller buy one, get one promotion and the first three books in the Maggie May and Miss Fancypants mysteries series are included. So if you haven’t read them yet, now might be a good chance to get one for free.

And if you have, plenty of other excellent mystery/thriller titles to choose from.

The promotion is in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Here are the links:

Australia: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsau

Canada: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsca

New Zealand: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsnz

UK: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsuk

US: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsus

Misc

Some Updates

aleksabaxter

First, quick reminder that I did release book eight in the Maggie May and Miss Fancypants Mysteries series, A Salacious Scandal and Steak Sizzlers, in December just in case anyone was consumed by the holidays and missed that announcement.

Second, if you click on that link or any of the images on this page they should take you to a Books2Read page with links to many of the stores that carry the books. I’ve now added links to those pages for the regular print and large print paperback versions on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. So if you’re looking for print those links will take you right to the version you want.

(Amazon has an annoying habit of showing either the regular paperback version or the large print version, but not both at the same time. Right now I’ve sold more large print there than regular print so for most of the book listings it’s defaulting to the large print instead of the regular print. You can usually tell by the price. As of now the regular print books are $9.99 USD and the large print are $14.95. I’ll also probably add more stores soon, but each moment I spend on that is a moment not spent writing the next book so it’s always a balancing act.)

Third, my pup and I had quite the adventure at the end of December. You may have seen news coverage of that massive fire that destroyed over a thousand homes in Colorado. Well, we were right in the middle of that area.

Fortunately we left before there were flames at our doorstep (which did pretty much happen although our place came out of it with ash but nothing worse). But it meant three weeks lost to being in hotels and clean-up, etc.

Made me glad I’d gone ahead and released the latest book when I did because it was a coin flip between releasing it then or releasing it around January 3rd which would not have happened had I waited.

Fourth, there will be a Maggie May and Miss Fancypants mystery this year. Hopefully before June, but as you can see life sometimes has other plans. For anyone who read book eight, you know there’s one more big thing that has to happen in Maggie’s life.

And then that’s actually going to be the final book in this series. I may well continue with Maggie, Fancy, Matt, and crew, but if I do it will be as a new series centered around the pet resort. But I also have a mystery series involving a ghost dog that’s been percolating for a while that I may start first. I also have a very neglected fantasy pen name that needs a book this year.

Fifth, in the meantime I do have a short story coming out in a charity anthology on the 11th. It’s not a mystery so much as a whimsical holiday murder story. You can find it here right now but expect it to be up on more stores when the time comes.

The anthology is called Eat, Drink, and Be Wary and is edited by Lisa Magnum. My story is “Tick Tock”. It should be under this name, but if not it’ll be under M.L. Humphrey.

I haven’t read the other stories yet, but I believe a lot of them will be speculative fiction stories because the anthology funds go to support scholarships for people to attend the Superstars Writing Seminars for the first time and the founding authors of that conference tend to be known best in fantasy and science fiction circles.

It’s been getting positive reviews, so maybe check it out and help some new writers at the same time. (And to be clear, not all the authors in the anthology are new, that’s for the conference scholarship. Kevin J Anderson, one of the founders of Superstars who is probably best known for his Dune books or Star Wars books, has a story in there, too.)

And I think that’s it. Pup is snoring away on the other side of the desk, so time to get some writing done. Hope all is well with you.

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A Holiday Surprise

aleksabaxter

First, Happy Holidays! I hope you and yours (including your furry friends) are well. I am currently sitting here typing away to the snores of my girl as she keeps me company. Finally I’ve found an office setup she likes enough to actually be in the office when I am! Victory is mine.

Now for the surprise: There’s a new Maggie May and Miss Fancypants Mystery available!

I hit publish yesterday so it’s still making its way through the various channels and into the various formats, but it should be fully available everywhere by Christmas when we will all need a few days of downtime to recover from the season and this crazy year and family who we have missed dearly I am sure but are still family. (Or you could read it now, which is why I just went and hit publish instead of put it on pre-order until mid-January.)

I will update the links in this post as each version becomes available, but here’s what we have for now: Universal Link, Apple, Amazon, Nook, Google, Kobo, Amazon Regular Paperback (ISBN 978-1-950902-69-9), and Amazon Large Print Paperback (ISBN 978-1-63744-026-1).

Paperbacks are making their way to other stores. Here are the Nook Regular Paperback and Nook Large Print Paper back links. As well as the Large Print Hardcover (ISBN 978-1-63744-027-8) version on Amazon.

(Also, just a reminder that the hard cover version is a case laminate version, meaning it doesn’t have a removable cover like a standard hard cover you’d buy in the store. This version is mostly there for libraries to purchase, but obviously you’re welcome to do so if you want.)

Just when Maggie May Carver thinks her life is finally going to settle into happy newlywed bliss, a very scary man finds her and asks for her help in solving a thirty-six-year-old murder.

While a smart person would say no, Maggie feels compelled to at least give it a chance.

And good thing, too, because she’s going to need the distraction given the other things that are disrupting her bliss…

Join Maggie, Fancy, Matt, and crew as they dive into yet another situation that they should have left alone but that’s ultimately better for their involvement.
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Kobo Sale and Update

aleksabaxter

Kobo is having a sale in Canada and the U.S. for the next week of various mysteries in both audio and ebook. Check it out here. If you somehow haven’t read the first three Maggie May mysteries, the box set is part of the promo and on sale for $4.99 right now.

As for me…

I really don’t know where time goes. I made the (foolish? smart?) decision to sell my house earlier this year which meant that writing took a back seat to staging, packing, moving, living in a hotel for three weeks, moving again, unpacking, etc.

I wish I could say I’d moved into my forever home and wouldn’t be doing this again anytime soon but the pup and I actually moved into an apartment so that’s not true.

Fortunately my old girl (she’s now EIGHT) is loving apartment life. She’s been dragging me on hour-long walks most mornings exploring the neighborhood which has at least six of those mini free libraries. (A very good sign of a good neighborhood IMO.)

She’s lost ten pounds which makes the vet happy. I…have not, I don’t think. But that’s because I’ve been enjoying chocolate croissants, Coke, and good beer, so I’m okay with that.

Unfortunately I realized that by writing the Housebound Holiday book I wrote myself into a corner and I have yet to decide how to get myself out of that corner. In the meantime it seems I’m making videos about how to use a software no one uses. (It’s sometimes painful to be a Learner. See CliftonStrengths for an explanation…)

That may lead to my recording audio versions of the books at some point, though, so who knows it may work itself out in a positive way.

Anyway. I wish I had better news than that, but it’s been one of those years. Probably for most of us at this point.