{"id":369,"date":"2011-12-24T18:54:14","date_gmt":"2011-12-24T23:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.judsonroberts.com\/?p=369"},"modified":"2011-12-24T18:54:14","modified_gmt":"2011-12-24T23:54:14","slug":"happy-holidays-and-best-wishes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.judsonroberts.com\/?p=369","title":{"rendered":"Happy Holidays and Best Wishes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy holidays to all, whichever holiday you celebrate during this season. For the Vikings, it would have been Jul (pronounce “Yule”), a feast to celebrate the winter solstice. And best wishes to all in the coming year. Hopefully the publication of book 4 of the Strongbow Saga will be a gift I can give to readers of the series during 2012. That is my goal.<\/p>\n

The new Kindle edition of The Road to Vengeance is now available on Amazon. I chose to use the first of the two cover alternatives I previously posted drafts of, but did incorporate many of the suggestions for that cover that some of you made–thanks very much for the input. Here is the finished cover:<\/p>\n

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A number of readers who responded did express disappointment that the old covers were being discontinued, and\/or that the new ones I’ve been using do not feature Halfdan on the cover. Let me briefly address those issues. The original publisher of the first three books, HarperCollins, created the originals of the first three covers, so they own the rights to those covers, not me. And the “Halfdan” on those three covers is an unknown model hired by HarperCollins for a photo-shoot, so there’s really no way for me to recreate, on new covers, that image of Halfdan. Additionally, it was my desire and intention with the new covers to (1) create images that more clearly suggested that these novels are historical fiction set during the Viking period than the original covers did, and (2) at least suggest some scene or event in the books. This most recent cover, for instance, is intended to evoke the Danish army’s sneak attack on Paris.<\/p>\n

That said, I will keep in mind the desire expressed by some that Halfdan appear on the covers, and see if there may be a means to achieve that with the cover of book 4, in some way that works around the problem that the model used for the first three original covers is not available.<\/p>\n

I hope the new paperback edition of The Road to Vengeance will become available in January–it takes longer to set up a print edition than an e-book–and that an e-book edition for the Barnes & Noble Nook will be available by then, too. In the meantime, book 1 of the series, Viking Warrior, is currently being featured in a new Amazon program which allows customers who have signed up for Amazon Prime membership to “borrow”–actually buy, at no charge–one featured Kindle book per month. And during January, I intend to run a special offering during which the Kindle edition of Viking Warrior will be available to anyone at no charge, through Amazon, for a brief period. I’ll announce more about that as the time approaches.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it is time for me to return to writing book 4.<\/p>\n