Category: Misc

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.)

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.

Misc

Checking In

aleksabaxter

Hope you’re all doing well in these crazy times. I decided to go ahead and try something I’d thought about doing at the beginning of the year before things really went crazy, which is that I started a Facebook page for pretty pictures and tied it to the cozies.

If you’re on Facebook you can find it here: https://www.facebook.com/Miss-Fancypants-Mysteries-100154095055634/

My goal is to post pictures of my Miss Fancypants probably once a week and of pretty places or babies or other eye-catching images on a regular basis. I don’t expect to talk a lot there, just share beauty.

As I said in the pinned post, social media is not something I’m very good at because I’d rather be out spending time with my pup and reading. But I do think it would be nice to have a “safe” space to run to this year, so we’ll try it and see how it goes.

Other than that…

I spent most of the time since the last release doing administrative work on my non-fiction titles. It was something I could be productive at without having to be creative. I still want to write more Matt and Maggie and Miss Fancypants stories and I’ve definitely been having Maggie-esque thoughts about things the last couple months, but it’s tricky to write humor about a serious situation. I’ll probably do it because there is so much humor to be had in the midst of this. (Am I the only whose friends suddenly became master bakers when they were forced to stay home?)

But it’ll be a little bit still. And it’ll be a new series so that those who just want the happy pre-crazy story can get it, complete with “and they lived happily ever after.”

I did think of the last book the other night when I was heating up pinto beans my grandma had made me and my dad’s green chili my mom had made me for dinner. I’m lucky compared to Maggie because my mom and my grandma are actually still here for me. No tortillas, though. Haven’t been able to get my mom to make those for me in at least a decade and I’m horrible at making them myself. Ah, family. Treasure them.

Anyway. Hope you’re all well and taking care of yourselves and spending quality time with your dogs and family if you can.

Misc

New Covers Are Here

aleksabaxter

Almost. Amazon and ebook retailers should have them. All the other print sites will have them in the next couple of days.

And I have to say that I’m in love.

Because these covers fix an annoying issue that I at least had noticed with my print versions, which was that the blue color of the spine and back didn’t always match. One of the two printers I use seems to print the color as a more purplish-blue than the other. So I have six books on my shelf and they aren’t all the same color but they’re not different enough either.

So these new covers fix that issue. Because each one is its own color now and a distinct enough color you can’t mistake one for the other.

I also took the opportunity to change the font used on the spines and back cover to a font that I think works better.

And obviously the front cover images have changed a lot as well. This solved another issue with the print books. Because the printers print a book each time someone makes an order there can be variance between copies in how much space is cut off at the top, bottom, or side. Yesterday I received two copies of the old cover for the latest book and one had a 1/4 inch border at the top whereas the other had no border at the top. With these newer covers that should be much less noticeable.

I will miss having Fancy on the cover of each book, but that had to happen, too. There was a certain subset of readers that thought she’d be the one solving each mystery not Maggie May and were disappointed when that wasn’t the case, so this hopefully helps with that as well.

Anyway. Probably TMI, but there you have it. New covers but hopefully those who liked the old ones had a chance to buy all six before the switchover.

Hope you’re all doing well during these crazy times.

Misc

A Little Note About Apple

aleksabaxter

I’ve been working on moving my books that are listed on Apple from a distributor to direct. Normally this isn’t something that would impact any readers so it isn’t something I’d mention, but I just realized there is one thing that will impact Apple readers, which is reviews.

Because of how Apple is set up I can’t link the old version of each book to the new one so any reviews that were left on the old version of the book are going to be lost when it unpublishes in the next day or so. I’m very sorry about that for anyone who took the time to leave a review and thank you for doing so. So if you’re wondering what happened, that’s what it was.

The new version of the book on Apple is available here. (It’s currently the version without reviews but that will hopefully change over time.)

And as a thank you for letting me interrupt you with this administrivia, have a picture of what I now get to see from my desk every single day. A picture of my pup telling me to get back to work (while the real one sleeps down the hall from me) and a picture of New Zealand to remind me of the beauty in this world.

IMG_4974 - Copy

Misc, Uncategorized

A Holiday Wish

aleksabaxter

I just posted this on my personal account on Facebook, but wanted to share it here as well:

My holiday wish for all of you: That you find the moments of joy and hold onto them for all they’re worth, because none of us get as many of those moments as we want or should. Don’t let anyone steal your shine today or any other day.

Also, for the curious, the goal is to have book two out in early February, but I haven’t set a date yet. I’ll let you know here when I do.