Details | Excerpt Details| Excerpt
And the wheels go round!
Since I’m writing for two publishers, my gerbil wheel is spinning as fast as ever, but busy and happy is good. I’ve finished No Longer a Gentleman, 4th in my Lost Lords series and I’ve agreed to write three more. I figure I can go eight or nine, easy. <G> I love my heroes who attended the Westerfield Academy for boys of “good birth and bad behavior.” So far, I’ve had no trouble keeping the stories quite different.
Once more, Kensington will give my books a one-two punch in spring 2012, with a reissue of my classic and much loved The Rake in April and No Longer a Gentleman in May. When I have covers, I’ll post more information and excerpts.
For those of you who are enjoying my young adult Dark Mirror series, the second book, Dark Passage, will be released on September 13, 2011. Visit my MJPutney (www.mjputney.com ) website for more information and an excerpt. The third Dark Mirror book, Dark Destiny, is scheduled for summer 2012. (The first book, Dark Mirror, has been nominated as one of the best YA novels of the year by YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association. Yay!)
With the rapidly changing marketplace, I’ve dived happily into e-booking my backlist. I’ve keeping a running list (http://mjputney.blogspot.com/ ) of what’s available, but to summarize, my historical Silk trilogy and the contemporary Circle of Friends series are available in e-book form, and I’ll soon start uploading the first six Fallen Angels books.
It will take time because I’m really busy writing new books (I mentioned that, didn’t I? <G>), but it will be happening. Eventually I hope to make available in e-book form all of my backlist for which I have had the rights reverted. For a listing of what’s e-available, click on “E-Books” in the left column of this page.
As for the year so far, April saw the reissue of The Bargain, (http://maryjoputney.com/bargainmore.htm), one of my more freestanding Regency historicals. Originally written as a traditional Regency (The Would-Be Widow)¸ it tells the story of a headstrong young lady who must marry by her 25th birthday in order to receive her full inheritance. Preferring to remain unfettered, she decides to marry a dying soldier—and then he hasn’t the grace to die for her. <G>
My third Lost Lords book, Nowhere Near Respectable, was out in May, and it made a brief but welcome appearance on the New York Timeslist. The hero, Mackenzie (“Trouble is his middle name”) is the illegitimate half brother of Will Masterson, one of the friends in Loving a Lost Lord, the first in the series. When Mackenzie was orphaned at a young age, Will took Mac in rather like a stray pup, which is why they both ended up at the Westerfield Academy.
After being cashiered from the army, Mac has become the proprietor of a fashionable London gaming house. His reputation is colorful, to say the least, and he knows his place is at the outer fringes of society. He certainly has no right to court a gorgeous duke’s daughter who is the sister of a friend and dubbed “a high holy handful.”
Lady Kiri Lawford is half Hindu and all hellion, far more comfortable with her mixed blood heritage than her brother is. (Adam was the ducal hero of Loving a Lost Lord.) Having spent most of her life in India, she’s ready to face the challenges of London society. But she’s having trouble finding an acceptable husband—until the thoroughly unsuitable Damian Mackenzie rescues her from kidnappers.
It might have ended there, but fate throws them together again as they investigate a plot against the royal family that could have shattering consequences for Britain. Which will win—Mackenzie’s honor, or Kiri’s free-spirited lack of it?
I seldom do a lovable rogue—tortured heroes are really much easier—but I couldn’t resist Mackenzie any more than Kiri could. I hope you feel the same!
November will see the mass market release of the very high-powered crossover sff/romance anthology, Songs of Love and Death. Edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, it was released in hardcover last years, and it includes contributors on the sff side such as Jim Butcher and Neil Gaiman, romance authors like me. Jo Beverley, and Diana Gabaldon, plus a lovely medley of crossover writers such as Linnea Sinclair, Yasmine Galenorn, and Marjorie M. Liu.
The theme is star-crossed lovers with seemingly impossible conflicts. My story, “The Demon Dancer,” is set in my Guardian world, but in modern day New York City, where my Guardian cop hero loves a woman he can never be with. Or can he? (Hey, I’m a romance writer, you can guess the answer to this!)
I hope you’ve been enjoying lots of good reads, in whatever format suits you best!
Mary Jo, writing madly
Nowhere Near Respectable made the Library Journal's list of the top ten romances of 2011
A Starred Review from Publisher's Weekly (May) Nowhere Near Respectable
Putney's third Lost Lords Regency (after 2010's Never Less than a Lady) is rich with historical detail and multifaceted characters. Anglo-Hindu Lady Kiri Lawford is about to accept a proposal from an English gentleman when she learns that his racist, fortune-hunting relatives secretly despise her. Stealing a horse, Kiri rides for Dover and right into a den of smugglers. Gambling club owner Damian Mackenzie aids her escape and passion instantly flares between them, but they resist, knowing the daughter of a duke and an Indian princess could never wed an actress's bastard son. When Kiri visits Damian's club, foils a kidnapping, and gets involved in a covert investigation, their romance sizzles out of control. Kiri's striking beauty, mental acuity, and martial arts training make her the perfect match for charming rogue Damian in this "splendid joining of East and West." (May)