Lori G. Armstrong's Blog

I found out this week that MERCILESS, the 3rd book in the Mercy Gunderson is a finalist for the Willa Cather Literary Award for Softcover Fiction! I’m thrilled! As a female writer, writing predominately female characters in the West, this award means a lot to me

MERCILESS on amazon.com

Barnes and Noble is running a “First in a series” promotion for $3.99 for the digital edition of CORRALLED, the first book in my erotic western series the Blacktop Cowboys by my author alter ego, Lorelei James! Thought I’d mention it to those of you who might want to step a toe over the line to my wilder side

CORRALLED on BARNES and NOBLE for nook

Prefer to read your books in print? I’ve combined the two Julie Collins novellas DEAD FLOWERS and BAITED into one print edition! Check out the cool print cover, which incorporates both of the digital covers:

Here’s the buy link: DEAD FLOWERS/BAITED print version on Createspace

BAITED is live — ha ha — in the Barnes and Noble store for nook — check it out! Thanks for your patience guys! Also, I’m compiling an edition of this novella and DEAD FLOWERS for print so stay tuned!

BAITED for nook

Why isn’t BAITED available on B&N for nook?

Good question. I uploaded the book on April 7th, same as the other vendor sites. The book is live on amazon.com, kobo, apple, and google books…but not at Barnes and Noble in the nook store. So I emailed B&N last Thursday asking what the holdup was…got a stock response they’d get back to me within 48 to 72 hours. Yeah, I still haven’t heard back. So I took the book off sale after I heard there were some issues with that recent virus, waited 24 hours and re-uploaded the project. Everything cleared with green check marks that indicated the book should be published. But nope. I got ahold of an online support tech person, explained the problem and let’s just say his advice? Less than helpful. Oh, and then he sent “my concerns” to some department that could possibly (key word here is possibly) help me…and I’d hear from them within 48 to 72 hours.

I ain’t holding my breath.

I know many of you love your nook devices and you’d rather fight than switch. Understandable. But please be patient–I’m doing everything I can to get this book available to you.

BAITED is up for sale at amazon.com!! Man, they get the books up quickly! Here’s the link:

BAITED for kindle

I uploaded this novella to Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and it’s in the process of being uploaded at iTunes/iBooks — I will let you all know when those versions go live!

I’m excited for this release! Like I mentioned yesterday, this is a NOVELLA, which means…it’s not a full length book. Some people get really pissy about that, even when it is clearly marked, so I always feel the need to mention it

I’m so in love with this cover that The Cover Collection created for me…

I hope you noticed we put up a new cover on the website! So I’ve had a few questions about what it is, when it’ll be available, etc.

BAITED is a Julie Collins novella. It runs about 20,000 words and is a “slice” of Julie’s current life and her cases. I never liked putting this series on hold and for the longest time I had publishing restrictions that kept me from writing another volume in the series. Once those were lifted, I was swamped on the Lorelei James side of my career and all I had time to write were little vignettes–so for me, that was better than nothing because I got to revisit this world I love so much.

I’m self-publishing BAITED so I don’t have a hard and fast release date besides…in the next 2 weeks. The story has been through my editor and is currently being formatted. As soon as that’s done, I’ll upload it to all the e-vendors selling digital books–amazon.com, nook, kobo, google, and apple. So keep checking back. And if that’s too much hassle, join my newsletter. That’ll have all the info in one handy place.

Also, I’ll be combining DEAD FLOWERS, the Julie novella I released last year, with BAITED in a print version! Cool beans, huh? So if you’re a die hard print reader, you’ll still be able to get in on Julie’s latest adventures. The lag time with that might be a few weeks, but heck, you’ve all waited over a year to get more Julie anyway, right?

So BAITED might be short…but since it’s Julie, it’s sure as hell not sweet

UNWOUND, the 2nd book in my alter ego, Lorelei James’ Mastered Series, released yesterday! It’s available digitially, in print and in audio — check it out:  UNWOUND at amazon.com

My alter ego, Lorelei James has a release today! BOUND the 1st book in the Mastered Series is available everywhere–online, in print, signed copies at Target! In audio, in digital format overseas.

I’m excited for this new series, it’s a departure from the erotic westerns I write, but it’s still an erotic novel.

Here’s the gorgeous cover and the buy links : BOUND at amazon.com  BOUND at B&N

It was a year ago today that MERCILESS the 3rd book  in my Mercy Gunderson series released from Simon and Schuster/Touchstone. After a year long delay, and great pride in the book, as well as great reviews, I had high hopes that the series would continue or at least garner enough interest that I could write a 4th book.

Alas, that is not the way it has played out.

I’ve debated on when to announce this–or whether to announce it at all, but I’ve ultimately decided this is the one thing that IS in my control in this crazy business; sharing the truth about why there won’t be any more Mercy Gunderson books for a while–I hesitate to say forever. This is a long-ish story, and I hope it doesn’t come off bitter as I state the facts that ended my mystery career to this point, so bear with me. I feel readers need to get the big picture when they ask “Why aren’t you publishing any more mysteries?”

NO MERCY came out in hardback in 2010. It had decent reviews, but not huge sales, the publisher had high hopes for the mass market edition that released 11 months after the hardcover. But the powers that be decided mid-2010 to release the second book MERCY KILL, in a different format–trade paperback not hardcover–and not follow it up with a mass market release. Where I had the greatest success with NO MERCY were the independent book stores, that catered to collectors any mystery enthusiasts who wanted signed first edition hardcovers. So by moving the 2nd book in the series to trade, very few of the collectors wanted to buy the 2nd book because it didn’t “match” the books on their shelves. That was problem #1. Problem #2 with MERCY KILL was it released in January 2011 and around that time, Borders was about to file for bankruptcy. So from mid-December 2010 on, none of the big NY publishers were shipping any new releases to any Borders book stores. At the time, the biggest bulk of the orders for MERCY KILL came from–you guessed it–Borders. So 60% of the books that were printed, never left the Simon and Schuster warehouse. MERCY KILL was deemed a failure before it even released.

I’d signed a contract for a 3rd Mercy book, for considerably less money, but I wanted to continue with the series so I was willing to take a substantial pay cut to write the book because I loved the characters and the world I created. 2011 was a rough year personally and it was the first time I’ve ever missed a deadline. Simon and Schuster rescheduled MERCILESS for January 2013 instead of January 2012. In the meantime, I wrote a digital only Mercy short story SILENT MERCY hoping that a December release and touting it as FREE!! would spur interest in MERCILESS which was set to release one month later.

Insert something here about the best laid plans…

MERCILESS released to little fanfare, and even less publicity January 2013. I was getting emails from my readers about why they couldn’t get copies of MERCILESS in their local chain bookstore. Well, remember by now Borders has disappeared off the face of the earth and the only bookstores left standing are Books A Million and Barnes and Noble. And guess what? Simon and Schuster was in some kind of price war/pissing match with Barnes and Noble, which meant–you guessed it–none of the Barnes and Noble’s across the country received copies of MERCILESS. Once again, another one of my books was a failure before it even released.

Many authors will blame publishers for their failures, and if I was to blame for any of this, it was trusting that a big publisher would help me take my mystery career to the next level. Instead, they made me pretty untouchable as far as any new publisher taking a chance on me these days as Lori Armstrong. They passed on the 4th Mercy book, and I’m standing here with my five Shamus nominations and two Shamus award wins–one for NO MERCY ironically enough–wondering what the hell to do next.

I’ve got another dead mystery series. I’ve got no publisher interest in picking up either series because of–you guessed it–low sales. It’s a little freakin’ hard for readers to buy my books when they can’t find them. So unless you’ve embraced the digital age–and I know firsthand that most mystery readers prefer books in their hand rather than on an electronic device–you can’t find my books ANYWHERE besides digitally.

The ironic, sad, sort of heartbreaking truth is the week after Simon and Schuster passed on the 4th Mercy Gunderson book, I signed the biggest book deal of my career…as Lorelei James.

With all the great things happening with self publishing, there’s a good chance that I will self-publish the next mystery I choose to write. I can control the cover, the content, the distribution, the pricing–and let’s face it, there’s no way I could do a worse job self-publishing a book than my other publishers have done tanking my mystery career in the traditional publishing arena.

I’m hoping this post comes across as bittersweet and not just plain bitter. Thanks to everyone who has supported me over the years. I’m not done in the mystery field by a long shot, but I now have the time to really decide what my next move will be. In the meantime, I’ll be releasing a Julie Collins novella at some point in 2014 (I’ll make the announcement on all the usual social media) but like the novella DEAD FLOWERS it will only be available digitally. I hope to do the same with a Mercy Gunderson novella–I’m just as interested as the rest of you as to what Mercy has been up to the last year…