Different Types of Book Editions

I’ve been fortunate to have as many as  five different types of book editions for some of my Paul Jacobson Geezer-lit Mystery Series. This includes hardcover, large print, paperback book club edition, audio book and e-book.

As an example for the second book in my series, Living with Your Kids Is Murder, this is the cover for the hardcover and large print editions from Five Star, an imprint of Gale/Cengage Learning:

 

The paperback direct to book club through Worldwide Mystery, an imprint of Harlequin, looks like this:

 

The audio book from Books in Motion has this cover:

 

And finally, the e-book edition has this appearance:

I love that readers have so many different choices when reading my books.

Rejection in the World of Writing

One thing is given in the world of writing—rejection. We face a plethora of rejection opportunities from agents, editors, reviewers, readers, and people who posts opinions about books. So I’ve learned to suck it up and accept this as an unpleasant reality.

Even one of the best writers of all time faced the following rotten reviews:  “Pure melodrama. There is not a touch of characterization that goes below the skin.,” “It is a play of the worst that ever I heard.” “The most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.”, and “It is a vulgar and barbarous drama. One would imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken savage.” These were reviews of Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

I have eight published books and two more in the publishing queue, and I still receive rejections from editors and agents as I’m trying to sell my first non-fiction book. Rejection just comes with the territory.

Here’s my advice on rejection. You get a rejection, keep writing. You get another rejection, keep writing, You get another rejection, you keep writing. You get the picture.

Nursing Homes Are Murder

The sixth book in my Paul Jacobson Geezer-lit Mystery Series, Nursing Homes Are Murder, has been published. This book takes place in Honolulu right after Paul Jacobson has a winter break vacation with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

Don’t worry that Paul has degraded to the point where he needs to go in a nursing home. On the contrary, he’s asked to go in undercover by the police to help solve a case of sexual assault in a nursing home. When the assault turns into a murder investigation, Paul must muster all his geezer resources to escape from the killer. Along the way Paul makes friends with a member of the 442^nd , the Japanese-American regiment that was most decorated in World War II; a woman with synesthesia, a condition where numbers and letters are seen as colors; a soap eater; and a wheelchair racing resident.

Words, Words and More Words

Continuing with my last post, I’ve become fascinated with when words first appeared in the English language and have been using as a source, English Through the Ages, which records when specific words came into common usage. Since I write mystery novels here are a few words that I find interesting.

I have a historical mystery set in 1919 that uses fingerprinting as a clue. Fingerprint was first used as a noun in 1860 and as a verb in 1905. DNA made its appearance in 1935 with DNA fingerprinting in 1985.

The word police came into usage in 1720. Detective and police station appeared in 1845 and private investigator and private eye in 1940.

A few other random words: prisoner of war in 1680 and autism and autistic in 1915.

I could go on forever, but this is today’s sampling.