Following on from the announcement of the new titles and covers for the Dust of Centuries Series (previously the Rare Traits Trilogy), this post announces the rest of the changes relating to my seven novels.

Yes, there are four more new covers and another replacement title now out there.

The new title is ‘The Cambroni Vendetta’, a title that far more reflects the content of the third book in the cotton & Silk Thrillers than the previous ‘The Assassin’s Dog’.

But don’t worry, I still have the wonderful model of dear Goccia that will go with me to any book presentations.

Below are the new covers for the series. Click on any of them to head to the Amazon store for the kindle versions or head over to The Great British Book Shop for high quality and inexpensive paperback versions.

You can also go to the My Books page to read more about them.

And finally, the stand-alone novel An Imperfect Revenge has a new, punchier cover.

[Right now, writing this on 22 July, two of the above covers have no links. This is because an Imperfect Revenge and The Cambroni Vendetta are still enrolled in KDP Select. However, that will change in mid-August and the links to sales on other retail sites for those two books will go live and this note will disappear].

Even More Big News!!!

There’s one other big project that occupied me over the last few months, taking far longer than I anticipated, which has been the production of my first Audiobook. Big learning curve and lots of fun, not to mention a certain amount of frustration at times, the book is now ready.

The intention all along has been to give the audiobook away to anyone who joins my email list. Not a big ask and I’ll have details very soon. The audiobook is An Imperfect Revenge, read by me (Yay!!) and will be available to listen to on the Book Funnel reader, a free app that works pretty much like the Audible app. I have to say that I have been incredibly impressed by the folks at Book Funnel who have expanded their service to include full versions of audiobooks and made the whole process very easy.

Ever since I self-published my first novel Rare Traits back in 2012, I have had a nagging feeling about the title and the cover: they didn’t quite cut it, but alternatives were heard to conjure up, for me, at least.

That feeling persisted with the second and third parts of the Rare Traits Trilogy: Delusional Traits and Murderous Traits.

I then went on to write the three books (so far) in the Cotton & Silk Thriller series and although the titles of the first two: Irrefutable Evidence and Remorseless were fine, with the third part, The Assassin’s Dog, neither the title nor the cover really chimed after a while.

So with the great lockdown of winter 2020-2021, I got to thinking about all the above matters of state and the result is new covers for all seven on my books and new titles for four of them.

OUT WITH THE OLD.

The array in the banner shows the new line-up. Gone is the Rare Traits Trilogy and the three titles it comprised and…

ON WITH THE NEW

in their place we have The Dust of Centuries, the new series title. The three books within the series are:

Quincentenarian (The Dust of Centuries I)

The Delusion Gambit (The Dust of Centuries II)

Fatal Consequences (The Dust of Centuries III)

along with three new themed covers to reflect both the dust of centuries and the mists of time.

WHAT HASN’T CHANGED are the books themselves. The Dust of Centuries series are the same books, so if you read them under the Rare Traits titles, there’s no need to hit the buy button, unless you would like to have the paperbacks of the new versions adorning your shelves – and they do look rather fetching …

Here are the new titles and covers. The details are all on the My Books page but if you really can’t wait and want to buy now, just click on one of the cover images to the Amazon store to buy the kinmedle version.

If you would prefer the paperback versions, high quality, inexpensive versions of all my books are available from The Great British Book Shop, who, despite their name, ship worldwide.

To complete the Dust of Centuries saga, for now, there is also a new eBook box set available at most online ebook stores at the bargain price of £6.99 or equivalent.

Details of the other changes will be in the next post.

I don’t have any book-related images to post at present, so here’s a shot from the garden of a hardy Camellia sasanqua flower searching out the sun on a very frosty morning earlier this week. The camellia is a beautiful plant made all the more special by its habit of flowering throughout the winter, adding colour to an otherwise drab winter outlook.

On the book front, things have been a little slow since my last post, although this week I have picked up the ball again and made some progress.

Firstly, the book-in-progress now has a new title (although of course, that might change again!). Right now, the working title is ‘The Kegby Gene’, which I hope is suitably enigmatic. The entire plot has had an extensive rewrite, but now I have a full working plan for the new chapter layout, so all that remains is to write the additional chapters. Simple, really!

Progress with the audiobooks is rather slower than I originally hoped, largely because I’m a bit of a perfectionist in that I want the books to sound as professional as possible. This means injecting a lot of time into the editing of the soundtrack for each chapter. However, piano piano, as they say around here in Tuscany, slowly slowly. So far, I have seventeen chapters of An Imperfect Revenge sorted and my initial critic, Mrs C, who listens to dozens of audiobooks every year, reckons it sounds good. Whatever the outcome, it’s great fun and as an author it gives an interesting different perspective on how I view my books and how I might pay more attention to phraseology in future — fewer tongue-twisting groups of adjectives!