DFRAT Guest Post Lindsay Townsend

All my publishers – Kensington Zebra, Siren-Bookstrand, Ellora’s Cave, Muse It Up Publishing – are digital publishers. Some, like Kensington Zebra, are print first but they all have a digital arm. What advantages has digital publishing to offer to readers and writers?

To readers, the expansion of digital publishing has meant more choice, 24 hour choice, more genres, different kinds of stories and cheaper books. It’s a wonderful time to be a reader! If a writer is unknown to you, then you can digitally download a free sample before you buy. Ereaders such as Kindle and Nook mean that readers can select what they want to read at any time and almost in any place, plus storage is no longer a problem.

For writers, digital publishing has also meant more choice. Working with my own publishers, digital publishing has meant that things like editing and proof reading becomes easier as edits can be passed to me electronically, in the blink of an eye. Being a Brit living and working in the UK with USA and Canadian based publishers the transfer of edits, proofs, manuscripts and eventual royalties by electronic means is faster and cheaper for everyone. Cheaper prices for ebooks also means that readers are more tempted to buy, which is also good for me!

The rise of digital publishing has also meant a revival of the short story and novella as forms of fiction writing. I am especially fond of novellas in the romance genre, where a writer can really focus in on the main relationship and develop a story arc about that. Novellas are also good for readers in that again a reader can try a new writer in a shorter form to see if the writer’s voice appeals. I write both full length novels and novellas and find a great freedom in both. Novellas allow me to try out different romance genres.

Each of my publishers have their own styles and I’ve found working with each very rewarding and helpful to my writing. One of the other delights of digital publishing for me is that cover art is often discussed with the writer and input on cover art is welcomed. In traditional print publishing, this rarely happens. The relationship between author and publisher feels much more of a partnership in digital publishing. As an author, I also loved the increased royalty rate that digital publishing provides. A traditional print book may bring me a royalty of 6%. With digital publishing it is closer to 40% and with digital self-publishing even more.

I think that digital publishing is a delight and love being part of this great revolution in reading.

BLURB FOR ‘MISDUMMER MAID’. (Sweet historical romance novella)

Together, can their love defy the world? At Midsummer all things are possible…

He was a woodsman, a forester, a good man but cursed with the mark of the devil on his face and shunned by many. She was a dairy-maid, caring and brave, who feared no one.

Drawn to each other on a long and fateful Midsummer Day, can Haakon and Clare overcome the superstitions of their village and the brutal, lecherous knights to break out of their bonds of class and custom and to strive for a better life – together?

EXCERPT FROM ‘MIDSUMMER MAID’.

Haakon was a woodsman, a forester. He had cared for his parents until they had both died last winter and then given away his younger sister at her wedding this spring. He was lonely in his simple hovel, but not unhappy, because Clare had returned to the village.

“Clare,” Haakon said aloud, for the pleasure of speaking her name. “Clare.”

Clare was the daughter of Agnes, the wet-nurse, sent back from the castle this summer by the lord’s new lady, who disliked well-favored girls. With glowing brown hair and hazel eyes, Clare seemed an unlikely dairy maid, being so small and slender, but the beasts were docile with her. Who would not be, when tended by such nimble, smooth hands?

Haakon smiled and shook his head and returned to his sawing, working surely amidst the coppiced ash boles. Clare was a sweet wonder, with a ready smile and an easy laugh, even for him, but he had no illusions. He had work and a good, solid house, but she would never marry him. He had the mark of the devil on his face, a red stain stretching over half his chin. Even his beard did not cover it, for he was fair, with face hair as fine as a baby’s fuzz. He went about clean-shaven now, ignoring the stares.

Clare had not stared, nor made the sign of the cross against him. Driving a cow along the track running close to the woodland, she would nod to him and raise a hand in greeting. She did this each time he met her, and he took care that they met every day.

Today he had not seen her, but reminded himself that he would not until later. He worked early, to finish this task, although it was the eve of a holy day when by custom there should be no work. The lord had wanted fresh ash poles for a bower at the castle bailey. Haakon had warned that the tree might sicken through being cut so late, but the lord had brushed the matter aside. His lady wanted a bower, filled with flowers and arched over with honeysuckle, and she would have it.

Haakon stopped to rest his aching back and straightened, raising his saw above his head as he stretched and cracked his shoulders. He disliked the lord’s new lady, although he had never seen her. She had brought new things to the castle and new people, amongst them a rowdy younger brother, Edwin, a squire, who bullied all those smaller and weaker than himself. Still, he could not despise completely the lady who had returned Clare to the village.

He heard a blackbird give its alarm at the edge of the wood and knew the castle steward and his men approached.

“Soon be done,” he told himself, sawing anew, “then it is a dip in the stream for me and a climb to the bonfire field.”

Clare might be there already, garlanded with flowers. He thought it only right that she had been chosen as the June Lady of the village, for she was as bonny as a rose.

She will speak to me and smile, and the day will be bright. He grinned, hauling the cut poles to the waiting steward.