Laini Giles's Blog

Hello everyone, and I’m sorry for the long absence.

For those of you who aren’t on my mailing list and aren’t aware, we found out back in January that my husband Allan was very sick with a fast-moving, very aggressive form of gastro-esophageal cancer.

The first few months of the year were a nightmare of caring for him during the Covid epidemic, and trying to keep him (and myself) safe so we wouldn’t end up separated by quarantine during his final days. He was initially given 8 months, but he passed away in June, and took my heart with him. He died just short of his 52nd birthday and our twentieth anniversary, so I’ve already had two very difficult occasions to get through.

The grief has been overwhelming, and as you might imagine, it’s been hard to do much in the way of anything. It was hard even dragging myself out of bed for a while.

I’m beginning to bounce back, but my regular schedule of writing, editing, formatting, etc has been severely disrupted. I had so hoped that I could offer you a book every other year, but it will be a while before I can release anything. The brain fog is intense, and it’s hard to concentrate. But I have begun editing in small amounts, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to write again soon. It’s getting easier.

I’m also looking at relocating to another province next year, which means fixing up my house is also taking large chunks of time. I hope you’ll be patient with me as I do my best to offer you more books on a slightly delayed timetable.

Thanks to everyone who has emailed and PM’d. Your messages mean so much to me.

Laini

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I’m so excited to announce that the long-awaited audio book for The Forgotten Flapper is now available!

Jen Taylor from Cedar House Audio narrates, and she did a marvelous job creating the perfect Olive Thomas in the audio book!

She captured multiple voices, accents, and personalities in such a delightful way. I’m so pleased with the result!

If you play video games, you may recognize Jen as the voice of Cortana from Halo, but she also voices audio books.

It takes a while to upload to all the various sites, but the audio book is currently for sale at the following places:

In the future, look for them at Scribd, Playster, Beek, Nook Audiobooks, and Audiobooks.com.

Eventually, the books will appear at Amazon. It can take up to 30 days for all retailers to display them. I purposely went wide, to make the book more easily available to those who can’t purchase through Amazon.

You can take a quick listen here:

I hope you enjoy it!

If you like the audio book, please review it where you purchased it. Hopefully, with these sales, I can add audio for more of The Forgotten Actresses series soon. First, I’ll tackle The It Girl and Me and then Bathing Beauty.

Drop me a line and let me know what you think! http://lainigiles.com/index.php/contact/

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Sorry for the wait for a new post, everyone. It’s been a busy summer!

Other than writing like the wind, which I always do better when I have a day job, I was actually able to make a quick trip to Virginia for some book research.

I know, you’re asking, “Virginia? But don’t you write about old Hollywood?” Yes, I do, BUT I started looking up where I might be able to find information about military things, since I now have two subjects with heavy military content in them. I’ll let you guess a while longer as to who they are, but those of you who REALLY love silent movies may be able to figure out one of them based on one of the places I visited.

So how do you write a novel? For me, I headed to Richmond, Virginia. As a history maven, I’d forgotten just how much of what I’d read about the Civil War years ago pertained to Richmond! SO much history there. I’d forgotten about the burning of the city, and it being the capital of the Confederacy, and I’d never known about Edgar Allan Poe’s connection to the city. Did you know there’s a Poe museum there? If you haven’t been, check it out. It’s SUPER cool!

My main reason for visiting was to head to nearby Fort Lee, where there are two fabulous museums for military content:

And also to Fort Eustis/Langley not far away, to the Transportation Museum.

Before I left, I also found out about a man named Lee Holland, who has built a garage exactly to the specs of real motor pool buildings, where he has created a small museum of his own. Here, he lovingly restores old military vehicles and donates them to museums. Unfortunately, I was not able to connect with him before I left, but I hoped I still might be able to find him.

Women’s Museum

It was amazing to see how far we ladies have come in the 200-something years since the revolution, or since the Civil War, since many women simply followed their husband’s unit, cooking and laundering for the troops.

Here are some great photographs from the Women’s Museum:

I visited the WACs first, and spent quite a while in their small library, making note of more books that I needed to buy and making jottings from some of the books they had on hand.

Before I went to the Quartermaster Museum right next door, I had the bright idea to ask one of the fellows in the office if he was familiar with Mr. Holland. “Oh, he volunteers next door. He was just there on Tuesday,” the man told me. “He may be there now.”

“Ooh!” I said. I thanked him then flew down the sidewalk to the Quartermasters next door. And wouldn’t you know it, here comes Mr. Holland out of the museum, making a beeline for his car. I recognized him from his picture in the article linked above.

I greeted him and said I had come ALL THE WAY from Canada to visit his museum. He was quite pleased. And he was headed to an appointment, but said he could meet me there in another hour or so, since I still wanted to tour the Quartermasters.

Quartermaster Museum

I had no idea of the scope of quartermaster duties– from wardrobe laundering (imagine trying to do that in a New Guinea jungle during World War II!) to wardrobe repair, to transporting supplies, to identifying war dead. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Here are some photos from the Quartermaster Museum:

These don’t even scratch the surface of all the amazing exhibits I saw and made note of!

When I visited with Lee, he showed me around his garage, the vehicles he has underway, and he even gifted me with a few spare magazines that he had on military vehicles which are fantastic reading! I also have contact information, in case I have any questions. Thank you, Lee for sharing your time and expertise with me!

Lee’s Motor Pool Museum

Here are some pictures of what he’s working on right now:

He calls this guy his desk sergeant. He sits at a little desk that looks just like one would have looked in a real motor pool:

After getting caught in a massive hurricane deluge driving back north to Richmond, I was EXTREMELY excited but extremely exhausted!

That weekend, I planned a trip to Newport News to visit the Transportation Museum, and to have a late lunch with one of my old college friends who now lives in Virginia Beach. As a Canadian resident (but an American citizen), I had to laugh at my attempt to get on base. My father even worked at Langley when I was about 4 years old, but no matter what I gave them, the guys with the shoulder mikes weren’t having any luck with my information from the guys at home base ID. I gave them my Alberta drivers license, my social security number, mentioned that I’d most recently lived in Wisconsin in the United States, and nothing doing. FINALLY, I offered up my Texas drivers license number (thank God I still remembered it, having had the same one for 20-something years!) and got the nod. I was good to go.

Transportation Museum

The Transportation Museum is super cool too. Lots of vehicles from jeeps to trucks to boats to rail cars and everything in between (Higgins boats, for the win!). Here are some photos from there:

I had such a great time. In addition to all the research, I finally got to eat a Potbelly sandwich again for the first time in TEN YEARS, y’all (A Wreck with hot peppers is like a party in your mouth). In the name of research, I also tried scrapple for the first time. How I wish Edmonton would get hip to this. But I guess it’s better if we don’t. I’d weigh 400 pounds, and my arteries would be shot.

In addition to the aforementioned Poe Museum, I also visited Owens & Ramsey Booksellers (where I got to meet the friendly owner, Mark, and the friendly store cat, Star), and also Fountain Bookstore, where I bought these very cool socks!

I had so much fun, I’d love to go back to Richmond for another visit!

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If you’ve been wanting to check out one or multiple e-books, but haven’t been able to decide which one, you’re in luck!

My e-book designer is currently whipping up an e-book box set. It should be out shortly. I’ll be pricing it at 7.99 US.

The post Good news! Box set on the way! appeared first on .

If you’re in town, or planning on being in town on July 13th, come on down to Audreys Books (Jasper at 107th) at 2 pm for a reading and snacks to celebrate the release of Bathing Beauty.

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It’s finally happened, y’all. Sorry for the wait. I finally got the e-book for Bathing Beauty uploaded tonight. It should be immediately available at Smashwords. It will take it a little while to go through the Amazon approval process, and to go out to all the Smashwords merchants like Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Apple. But it’s out there.

Please let me know what you think. And as usual, reviews are always appreciated at your favorite review site.

The post Good news! appeared first on .

Good news, everyone! To celebrate the release of Bathing Beauty, I’m running a BookBub deal.

Until June 5th, The Forgotten Flapper e-book is marked down in multiple markets. In the UK, Australia or Canada? You’ve got a sweet 99 cent pricetag.

India is 65 rupees, and the US is 1.99.

These deals are available at Amazon, Apple books, Kobo, and Google.

And hang tight, the e-book for Bathing Beauty should be out shortly.

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I’m pleased to announce that Bathing Beauty is out, as of yesterday. The hard copies are available on Amazon. the eCopies will be out shortly, after a few more edits.

I hope you all enjoy it. Happy reading!

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Hi all–

Sorry for radio silence during the holidays. I’m hoping to release Bathing Beauty within the next month or two. Stay tuned!

The post Checking in… appeared first on .

Hi everyone–

If you are outside the U.S, and you’ve tried to go to Amazon.com lately and buy any of my e-books, you may be experiencing issues doing it. Either you won’t see the e-book to begin with, or you click on the e-book to buy it, and then it tells you that you can’t purchase it on the US site.

I’m aware of the problem, but completely powerless to do anything about it. Depending on who you speak to at Amazon HQ, this is either a bug and being worked on, or it’s a permanent solution. Evidently, it began in Australia, because of a new tax plan being introduced there, but is now being used widely in other markets, and appears to be rolling out incrementally.

For anyone outside the US, you are now being guided to use your own Amazon site (UK, AU, DE, etc). If you are outside one of the countries with an Amazon presence (for instance, New Zealand, the Philippines, etc), who formerly used Amazon.com, I’m not sure how this is being implemented.

Suffice to say that for me, a US author, now in Canada, writing about American subjects, this has caused a HUGE seismic shift in my fortunes. I’d seen a major dip in sales the last month, and this only makes things worse. US KDP sales were the bulk of my earnings every month.

At least the experts are staying on top of the issues. By experts, I mean those folks very recognized in the indie publishing community, such as David Gaughran and Joanna Penn.

Here are some links to help you understand what’s going on:

Reuters

The Digital Reader blog

David Gaughran’s blog

In the meantime, all I can really suggest is searching other stores for digital books, such as Chapters/Indigo, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, or Kobo. I know formats are different. I’m available through just about every digital market there is. If you have a question about one, please feel free to contact me.

Amazon has lost a LOT of market share the last few weeks, and now I really understand why. Since they forced we authors to move from Createspace over to KDP for all of our books, their support has become non-existent. And now this.

I urge ALL my readers, now more than ever, to move away from Amazon to other sources for my books.

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