My Eighth Amish-Country Mystery Will Launch Next Week

In less than a week, on May 28, 2013, my eighth Amish-Country Mystery will be published by Plume, a Division of Penguin Group, USA.  The title of the book is “The Names of Our Tears,” and it will be my first soft cover first edition original with Plume.  Like the seventh story, Harmless as Doves, this eighth story takes place partly in the Pinecraft Amish community of Sarasota. 

The Names of Our Tears has been a long time in the works.  After my excellent experience with Plume, which republished all of my first seven books as paperbacks, I started the process of switching to Plume as my new publisher.  This process took a long time, and it was greatly aided by the superior work of my agent, Jenny Bent, of The Bent Agency in New York, and of my editor at Plume, Denise Roy.

Now, however, Plume’s first original of mine is soon to be published, and as I look back over the process, I am glad to have worked with the editors and publicist at Plume.  I hope my fans will consider that it was worth the wait.  For me as an author, it very much has been.  The Names of Our Tears will be published just as I wrote it.  The book is a perfect replication of exactly what I wrote and what I envisioned when I first started designing the story.  As an author, I can tell you that is very important. 

When I had finished writing The Names of Our Tears, I realized that I had left a loose thread.  Even before my editors had worked through the manuscript of The Names of Our Tears, I started writing the ninth story, and it is a sequel.  It is not quite finished, but I am now approaching the end of the writing.  At least I am approaching the end of the first write.  I will have to revise, but that should take comparatively little time.  In the meantime, I will have to trust my fans to be patient, as much as I trust my new publisher to be excellent.

The local launch for The Names of Our Tears will be on Saturday June 8, 2013, at the Wooster Book Company, on West Liberty Street, in Wooster, Ohio.  I will autograph books there starting at 2:00 that afternoon.  I very much hope that you can make it to the signing.