I just finished writing Year of the Dog ! It had a massive plot hole that I had to fix which turned out to be more work than I expected. Here’s a snippet: “Hey, Auntie Nell.” He wrapped his arms around her, bussing her on the cheek and breathing in pikake flowers and shortbread cookies. And suddenly he was nine years old again, and her solid presence had made his chaotic world stable once more. “What are you doing here?” He usually took her to dinner on Wednesday nights, but today was Tuesday. The edges of her smile faltered a little before brightening right back up again. “What, I can’t visit my nephew?” She angled around him to enter his home. “Is this your new house? Looks lovely.” Which was a blatant lie, because the fixer-upper was barely livable, much less acceptable to a neat-freak like his aunt. She also left four matching pink and purple floral suitcases on the stoop behind her. Only then did Ashwin notice the cab driver standing slightly to the side of the walkway. “Can ...
The May anthology is Danger in the Shadows, and the October anthology is Don’t Blink.
I have taken down Year of the Dog from my blog and will instead finish editing/rewriting it for the May anthology, Danger in the Shadows. I decided to do this because I was only working on Year of the Dog sporadically, and I wanted to set a deadline for myself to finish it sooner.
To complicate matters, I’ve been unhappy with my decision to leave Sushi and Suspicions as a stand-alone rather than putting it in a series. And I’ve also been unhappy with putting The Lone Rice Ball as a 5th book in the Sushi series when it’s more romantic suspense than the other books in the series.
Now that I’ll be writing Year of the Dog for the anthology, and because I haven’t yet released Sushi and Suspicions and The Lone Rice Ball as individual ebooks, I decided to switch things around.
I’m removing The Lone Rice Ball from the Sushi series, and removing Year of the Dog from the Warubozu Spa Chronicles, and putting all three books into a brand new series, Mahina Security.
It occurred to me, as I was staring at my three books, that all three have heroes who work for Mahina Security Consultants. While Sushi and Suspicions has a bit less humor and more suspense than the other two books, they’re all humorous romantic suspense.
All 3 also serve as sort of a prequel series to the Warubozu Spa Chronicles, which is where Edytha’s search for her sister really gets going. While her missing sister is mentioned in the three Mahina Security books, and she gets a clue about it in Year of the Dog, things won’t start heating up until book 1 of the Warubozu Spa Chronicles.
I haven’t yet changed things on my website, but that’ll be next on my To-Do list. The three books will be collected under a new series, Mahina Security.
Sushi and Suspicions will be book 1, The Lone Rice Ball will be book 2, and Year of the Dog will be book 3, releasing in the May 2025 anthology, Danger in the Shadows.
I’ll also be adjusting the three books a little so that chronologically, they’ll also take place in that order. Sushi and Suspicions will still be in summer, The Lone Rice Ball takes place in Christmas that year, and Year of the Dog starts in spring the following year.
I hope to release Sushi and Suspicions and The Lone Rice Ball as individual ebooks later this year, maybe in November. I’ll send a newsletter when they’ll be available.
I apologize that I stopped posting Year of the Dog right in the middle, but I didn’t want to take another 2-3 years to write the book, and putting it in the Danger in the Shadows anthology will force me to finish it sooner.
As for the Don’t Blink anthology coming out in October 2025, I’ll be writing a prequel novella for the Mahina Security series. I’ve already chosen the heroine, who is September Wong, Edytha’s younger cousin. Edytha and Lila will be making an appearance in the novella, as well as their other Wong cousins. And I will also try to write Bennie into the book, too.
I’ll keep you posted as to when the two anthologies will come out. They’ll both be on preorder near the end of the year, and their preorder price will be a sale price of $2.99. Especially for the Danger in the Shadows anthology, which will be 10-12 full-length suspense novels, that’s a great deal.
Both anthologies will also be in Kindle Unlimited for 90 days, so you’ll be able to read them in KU during that time. I’ll post links in a later newsletter.
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