Holiday Baking Dilemma

Cookies from a swap I went to a few years ago.
The tea cookies were my favorites and I'd love
to try making some.

It's almost time for our ornament exchange party and there are a few items left on my list before I'm ready for Saturday. The two main things deciding on the cookies to make and finding the ornaments that I bought a month ago and put in a "safe place". Fortunately, I have back up ornaments (those are ornaments I bought at the end of last holiday season and forgot I bought until we started decorating for this year) and will use those if I can't locate the ones that are safely tucked away.

The menu for the party stays the same pretty much year after year: chili, Pizza Rolls, chicken nuggets, Buffalo chicken dip, and deli tray with meat and cheeses, and rolls. The only part of the menu that changes are the cookies that I make. I enjoy holiday baking and always want to try one new cookie. This year so far the list has chocolate chip (I like one easy recipe), either peanut butter and jelly cookies or thumbprint cookie with jelly, the recipes I'm debating between are a Russian tea cookie, cheesecake stuffed red velvet cookies, and super chocolatey buttons. . I like to only have one jelly cookie but my family is split evenly between the peanut butter and thumbprint. I have to hurry up and make a decision as I need to buy the supplies and then start baking if I want to stick with the tradition of having four different cookies. Classic Spritz cookies were on the list but my cookie press and I don't always get along. I'll save those when I'm not crunched for time and have time to sweet talk it into working properly.

An Experiment and an Invitation

I've had a busy week. On Thursday, I finished my rewrite of Death of a Schoolgirl: The Jane Eyre Chronicles, and sent it to my editor at Berkley.

It's a big baby at 98,264 words. The release date is August, 2012. The editor's corrections should come to me on Monday (tomorrow) and I plan to have them back to her within the week. I think the cover is absolutely out of this world! I've been working on the second book in the series Death of a Dowager Lady by doing my research reading at night. That book is due in March.

On Friday, the galleys for Ready, Scrap, Shoot arrived.

They are due to Midnight Ink in January. I'm a third of the way through reading those. I'm dedicating that book to a bookclub that meets at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Fenton, Missouri. Those ladies are really excited about the dedication--and we plan to have a big book launch at that store when the book is out in May, 2012.

On Saturday, I got a wild and crazy idea: what if I wrote a Kiki Lowenstein short story every month for a year and made it available to my readers for 99 cents on Kindle? I noodled around a story idea with my sister, Jane. Saturday night, I created a cover for Kiki Lowenstein and the Secret Santa. I hope to have it available on Kindle later this week.

Today (Sunday) we loaded onto Kindle the new Ink, Red, Dead: A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery that features two novellas, one a Kiki Lowenstein mystery and the other the progressive story that my blog sisters and I wrote. It should be available for sale within the next 48 hours. I priced it at 99 cents. I plan to keep the 99 cent price point for everything I offer on Kindle for a while.

I'm curious to see how this works. Here's my hunch: Readers who love my characters will want to have a monthly "fix." I know that I love tuning into my favorite TV shows. And basically, we're in the entertainment business, right?

Will it work? Or will I drop dead trying? We'll see!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS

On December 22 from 9 p.m EST to Midnight EST, I'm hosting an online Holiday Party on my Facebook page http://www.Facebook.com/JoannaCampbellSlan   There will be fabulous handmade prizes, signed books given away, and the chance to chat with your favorite authors including Diane Orgain (The Maternal Instincts Mysteries); Betty Hechtman (you know her! and she's giving away a crocheted scarf!); and Monica Ferris. More to come...

Will it work? I dunno. Here's hoping.