Seasonal Celebrations and Stuffing (Your E-Reader)

This newsletter contains a link to hundreds of free books for one day only, which I am writing up here so that if you are skimming your email (legit!) you won't miss out.

I'm fond of Christmas, but I think as an adult I prefer Boxing Day.

In New Zealand, where many businesses1 are closed between the Monday before Christmas and the corresponding date two weeks later, Boxing Day is often dedicated to a more relaxed, idle celebration. You wear shorts and a sloppy T-shirt instead of festive finery, go to the beach if it's nice, and compose every meal out of leftovers, starting with leftover dessert for a late breakfast. I had steam pudding and custard at 11 a.m. and it was delicious.

I am good at late starts, but not actually very good at being idle. I read for most of the morning, and then I stretched, sighed, fetched my laptop from my mother's guest room, and started on the final proofreading run of Magician First Class. Cover designer Melanie has delivered the hardcover and paperback designs, Alison's map is nearly done (I have seen the sketches and I'm thrilled), and I'm going to be able to send out Kickstarter rewards well before the estimated delivery dates. After that I'll be able to distribute the book through other sales venues.

In between chapters, I finalised something I've been working on for a while, which are the mass market paperback versions of my Movie Magic novellas. I'm planning to have these for sale at in-person events, and as add-ons for my next Kickstarter, and I think they're going to be cute as heck.

In the meantime, would you like a free book by me?

OH GOOD, you can have one, and literally hundreds–like, seventeen hundred–of other great romances, in the Stuff Your E-Reader Day! No strings attached, no newsletter sign-ups required - just get amongst.

(Be aware that the search categories do work, but you need to give the page time to load. Because it's enormous.)

My freebie contribution is Persephone in Bloom, the first in my Olympus Inc. series. I also dropped the price of the second book, Aphrodite Unbound, to US .99c. For arcane Amazon reasons, the price drop for Aphrodite is only valid in the US and the UK, but Persephone should be completely free to everyone, everywhere.

It is 11:35 p.m. on Boxing Day as I write this (and schedule it to send in a few hours). The house is quiet, except for the tapping of my keys and the occasional sneeze from my mother's bedroom. I have taken all the turkish delight chocolates2 from the Roses box and piled them beside me. I think there's probably still half a glass in the champagne bottle in the fridge.

Ahhh. 'Tis the season.

That Healey Girl is the newsletter of Karen (or Kate) Healey, a romance and speculative fiction author who lives in Ōtautahi, New Zealand and shakes plots loose by wandering along the river. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might like it!

1 This is not true of essential services or retail, of course - almost everything is closed on Christmas Day, but Boxing Day starts the sales. When I used to work retail, Boxing Day was not at all relaxing, and I salute everyone who celebrated Christmas on the 25th and then had to get up and go to work the next morning. I hope there were still leftovers when you got home.

2 These bear no resemblance at all to actual turkish delight, and would not seduce a single surly British boy into betraying his brother and sisters, but I like them for what they are.