Spring’s here and writers’ thoughts turn to electronic publishing…when they’re not plotting a new book, planting seeds or munching chocolate fudge.

Convenient ’cause I’m again teaching my perennially popular course, Publish Your Ebook, on April 27th, at Camosun College, Victoria, BC.

We’re back to the all-in-one Saturday format; perfect for those whose schedule precludes their coming to weeknight classes.

If you can’t attend, don’t sweat. It’s based on my little ebook primer, Self-Publish Your Ebook, available for $3.99.

Another student from my Self-Publish Your Ebook in Minutes! course has done just that.

The Pivotal I Ching by Hanne Quillevere

Hanne Quillevere has just released The Pivotal I Ching and suggests that consulting the I CHING in depth opens up an unerring inner compass that gives us the personal insight and means needed to chart an enlightened and rewarding course for ourselves.

The ebook is now available at Amazon.com and will soon be by Print on Demand.

Congrats, Hanne! Sounds very cool and zen or should I say I Ching?

This epubbing is really catching on. I taught another session at Camosun last week and by the next Monday, one of my students had self-published her cookbook!

So, congrats big time to Kerry Whelan, a gardening blogger with a green thumb in the kitchen.

Basics for Cooking by Kerry Whelan

Find out more about Basics for New Cooks: A Beginner’s Guide. Available for only 99c so you can buy one for all the cooking-challenged in your circle.

Am again teaching my perennially popular course, Publish Your Own Ebook, on February 5th and 7th, at Camosun College, Victoria, BC.

After popular demand, we’re changing things up a bit, offering the course over two evenings instead of the usual one full-day session. Doesn’t really matter to the outcome though. After the second session, attendees will still be able to self-publish their own writing in minutes!

If you can’t attend, don’t sweat. It’s based on my little ebook primer, Self-Publish Your Ebook in Minutes!, available for $3.99.

I’m excited to reveal the new cover for my moody short story called The Will of God? Donna Casey helped me put it together.

New cover for Nicola Furlong’s short story, The Will of God?

It’s the story of a nun coming to terms with a traumatic past experience…a little dark with rays of hope. Why not check it out?

Happy Mystery-mas season. Here’s your first photograph clue. It represents a book title written by one of the authors in my Mystery-mas poem. Name the book and the author and post your answer on my Facebook page. Good luck!

12 Days of Mystery-mas, Day Photo 1

In tune with the holiday season, thought I’d run a fun little quiz called The 12 Days of Mystery-mas. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting photographs here (and on my Facebook Author Page) which represent a title of a novel by one of my favourite crime writers.

You job, should you decide to accept it, is to match each photograph to the appropriate book title and author and post your answers to my FB Page. There may be prizes!

Snowy apple

Your first clue is the list of ‘usual suspects’, found below. Good luck and enjoy.

On the twelve days of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Twelve Reginald Hills
Eleven Dashiell Hammetts
Ten Patricia Cornwells
Nine Val McDermids
Eight Mary Roberts Rheinharts
Seven Dorothy L Sayers
Six John Dickson Carrs
Five Minette Walters
Four Colin Dexters
Three Nicci Frenchs
Two Rex Stouts
And a DVD set of Agatha Christie
And a DVD set of Agatha Christie.

Am delighted to announce the ebook publication of Saving Findlay Finch by D. H. Toole, another of my electronic publishing students.

Saving Findlay Finch is a comic mystery set in Nova Scotia. Its eccentric and cash-strapped main characters begin hosting funerals for profit, resulting in much drinking, mayhem and murder among the corpses.

Saving Findlay Finch by D.H. Toole

David Toole has a wonderful ear for dialogue, a knack for quirky characters and the ability to keep you spellbound and laughing simultaneously. Not an easy feat!

For more information and to review an excerpt, please visit DavidHToole.com.

You may purchase Saving Findlay Finch as an ebook for $2.99 through Amazon.com.

Congratulations to Veronica Knox, one of my publishing students, who has just released a new novel about Emily Carr’s love life.

Painter and author, Emily Carr (1871 – 1945) was the honorary eighth member of the Canadian artists known as the ‘Group of Seven’. Her paintings have become the definitive portrait of the Canadian West and a tribute to her studies abroad of the impressionist movement.

As a young woman, Emily braved a solo expedition to a string of remote First Nations settlements of British Columbia. Her on-site illustrations of neglected totem poles disintegrating in decimated villages helped to document a fast disappearing culture. When she was twenty-seven, she was given the native name Klee Wyck, the laughing one.

Emily became an eccentric icon of her hometown Victoria, on Vancouver Island. She was frequently seen in her later years, a dowdy plump old bird pushing a baby’s pram filled with pottery clay or groceries, accompanied by a tangle of the Griffon dogs she bred, and Woo, a Java monkey that perched on her shoulder, wearing a dress.

Emily eventually became famous for her curmudgeon ways, but she flaunted the rules of society at an early age. Something untoward in her teenage years caused her to reject the intimate loves of her life. One suitor in particular, pursued Emily to the end of her days.

Much local conjecture surrounds the hints of Emily’s lost love in her books as well as her letters and diaries. Today, an historic mystery man continues to hover over Emily Carr’s memoirs… like a ghost.

Discover more at www.veronicaknox.com.