The Winter of Magic is here!

Sound the trumpets, pop the corks on the bottles of bubbly and pass the canapés, The Winter of Magic is here.

This is the trequel in the ONDINE series and I'm so happy I could burst.

"This third enthralling instalment in the young adult fantasy romance series takes a dark turn, as the country of Brugel descends into anarchy. 

Mutating magic is spreading across Europe. 'Normals' are developing supernatural powers at a startling rate and 16-year-old Ondine appears to be at the heart of it. 
To unravel the mystery, Ondine and her boyfriend (and part-time ferret) Hamish infiltrate CovenCon, a gathering of hundreds of witches presided over by wanna-be-witch-queen Mrs Howser. There, she tempts Ondine with an intriguing offer - but can Mrs Howser be trusted? It transpires the powerful witch has her claws in the arrogant royal heir Lord Vincent, in a covert bid to control all of Brugel. 
As dark magic riots break out in the nation's capital, Ondine is left with a heart-breaking choice that could tear her apart from her beloved Hamish. Forever. 
The Winter of Magic is the third novel in Ebony McKenna's comedic and wonderfully weird four-part ONDINE series. Fans will devour this spellbinding adventure, which will have readers gasping in shock and laughing with delight. Occasionally at the same time."

You can buy it from the ibookstore, Amazon, kobo and nook.

It's available worldwide too. None of that pesky "This title is not available in your territory" guff. If you want it, you grab it.

All proceeds from the sale of this book will be syphoned off into the Venzelemma 2026 Winter Olympic Games bid, run by the "Board to Make Brugel Better and Beautiful" (BMB3).

Ondine #3: The Winter of Magic Book Cover Reveal.

It's here, it's here, it's finally here!

Behold, the stunning-ness of my latest book cover.

Just, behold it.

I can't stop smiling and almost not breathing for a while, it's so beautiful.
I have to thank my pixel-wrangling best friend, The Masked Maven, who designed this.

I am so freaking excited about this, I can't get over it.

Latest News

So much to tell you, so little time.

News the first:
The Summer of Shambles WON the Book Junkies' Choice Awards for best debut novel (YA). This had me happy dancing for days.
Days I tell you.
I couldn't ask for a better launch for the series into the USA and the rest of the world (that hasn't already been covered by the UK and Commonwealth).

News the second:
I went to America!
This was for a fab family and friends holiday, basically to theme parks. Two crazy weeks in November. Sunshine every day, rolling fog in the evening, insanely great shows and more fun that we could poke a stick at.
We stayed at Universal Studios (ok, across the road, smarty). Disneyland (across the road again) and Las Vegas ('on' the strip, if you count a 15-minute walk to the edge of the hotel being 'on'. Man, those hotels are HUGE!).

News the third:
Ondine 3 is late. No, she's not 'late' late (she's not pregnant, silly). But she is late. The story is done, proofread, checked etc the cover is *almost* done and it's lined up for formatting. Then I got an email from the formatting company I use, Bookbaby.com, and asking that all 'Holiday' releases had to be in by November 29 to be out by the holidays, as some of their staff wanted to take holidays too.

Obviously, having been away for most of November, I've pretty much missed the deadline.
By some miracle, Ondine 3 might still come out in December, but if not, it will be January. This is still winter in the northern hemisphere, so it will fit the seasonal release.

News the fourth:
Ondine 4 will be late. I'm saying this up front, way ahead of time. Way ahead of the laughably ambitious "March" release fantasy. The story is *almost* done but needs more work. I'm working on it. The cover is not done either, but will be spectacular (obviously). The thing to remember is, I'm not putting some half-arse writing out there. It's full-arse or nothing with me.
It will be ready when it's ready.

News the fifth:

I have My First Pair of reading glasses, which I think make me look even cleverer than usual.
Anti-glare lenses (to make taking selfies easier, of course). Reasonably low magnification but if it means I can read the labels on food packages at the supermarket, I'm all for it. Things close up look marvellous, but further away is now blurry, so I'm going to be one of those dowagers looking down her nose at children. Hehehehe.

News the sixth:
My son has turned vegetarian and refuses to eat 'dead animals'. Even the ugly ones.

Happy holidays everyone.

Ondine's Army

It's happening now, folks! I have a giveaway underway (over there, lookeee, it's on the right).

More fun will keep happening to celebrate the release of the first two Ondine novels into the USA, in June and September this year.

Things will step up a notch when the much-awaited third Ondine novel goes out into the world in December.

AND THEN things will get positively crazy for the fourth and final novel, which will be released worldwide in March next year!

Which is why I'm recruiting bloggers, reviewers and readers for Ondine's Army, in preparation for a global charm offensive. We're going to have lots of fun including, but not limited to:

# Giveaways

# Post cards from Brugel [1]

# Blog tours

# Interviews

# Freebies

# Shenanigans

Are you ready for Wackiness of Mass Distraction? Yes. Yes you are.

Embrace the crazy and be one of the foot soldiers (or a three-star general, the training is just the same) and sign up for Ondine's Army.

Leave a comment and hilarity will ensue. [2]

And I will love you forever. But in a totally non-creepy way.

[1 Spellcheck says this should be burgle. It should know me by now!]
[2 Results may vary.]

The Same But Different

Why am I going "Indie"?
Good question. I know it's good because I asked it.

Here's why I'm going Indie.
Because publishing is changing and my Ondine books don't fit the traditional mould.

It doesn't mean they're rubbish, it just means they don't fit the way publishers do business these days.

Way back when I signed a deal for Ondine with Egmont UK, it was for UK and Commonwealth rights only. Which meant my agent and I still held the rights to sell into the USA.

Later, when the books came out in the UK to rave reviews, my agents tried to get USA interest. However, the times were already changing and the USA publishers weren't interested.

In rave reviews!
In a ferret hero!
In a diabolically funny romance!

They weren't crazy, they were being ultra cautious. Because publishing was changing. And also, ebooks were storming on in and everyone was NERVOUS. And that global financial crisis thing. Upshot being, if a US publisher was going to pay out for a book, they wanted as many rights as possible so they could get back their investment. And we'd already sold most of those rights.

But, I have the rights to the USA, which is why I'm releasing the first two Ondine titles, as ebooks, into that territory. The clever thing is, I can geographically restrict the sale of these titles to the territories I still have rights to, without infringing on the deal I've previously made with Egmont UK.

So, I'll be releasing the first two Ondines into the USA-only in June and September, and then . . .

The NEXT TWO ONDINES will be released as ebooks WORLD-WIDE in December and then March.

Are you still with me? Excellent.

Here's where things get tricky. That global financial crisis? It kicked in.

I wrote the Ondine trequel, and in 2012, Egmont UK passed. Not because it was crap, but because the first two books hadn't sold enough to warrant further investment. Traditional publishing is a business and they are in it to make money.

But I still had a story to tell, and for me, it was worth the investment of my time and money to write the next two books and deliver them for the fans. I hired a freelance editor (who, as luck would have it, used to work with Egmont). All up, it will cost me a few thousand dollars to release these four books, and I'm confident I'll get that investment back.

The downside is, the covers won't all match. If you're in the USA, and you're buying all the ebook versions, they will match. But if you've been a loyal fan who bought the paperbacks in the UK, books 3 and 4 will only be on your ereading device, rather than your bookshelf. I can only apologise for this, and for the different covers. I've tried to make the most gorgeous covers in the world, so that you'll be happy. Ultimately, it's what's between the covers that will count, and I've written the best books I can as my way of thanking my existing audience, while appealing to new readers.

Speaking of counting, I'm counting down the days. It's May now, and that means THE SUMMER OF SHAMBLES will be available in the USA next month. NEXT MONTH!

I have work to do.

Fabulous Plans

It's fabulous getting emails and tweets from readers who love the ONDINE books. It makes the angst (and chocolate, and curry pies) of writing them all worth it.

Alas, there's no satisfying some people. They want to know when the NEXT Ondine adventure will be out. Greedy, hungry, readery people.

Yay!

So here's what's going to happen.

I've written the Ondine trequel, The Winter of Magic. It's funny and emotional and swoony and magic. It's more of the same but different. It's more Hamish (yay!) more Lord Vincent (boooo!) more Infanta (uh-oh) and Mrs Howser and Melody are back. Oh yeah!

And Old Col, the world's most useless chaperone.1

And of course, plenty more Ondine coping with some weird and crazy magic. Loads of crazy. Embrace the crazy.

"But when will it be out?" I hear you cry.

In Winter. Winter 2013. The northern one.

Yep, The Winter of Magic will be ready for your reading pleasure in December 2013, to match the European (and North American, ehem) winter.

YES! ONDINE WILL ALSO BE AVAILABLE IN THE USA

The reason it's taking so long for The Winter of Magic to go on sale is I have to get The Summer of Shambles and The Autumn Palace ready for USA ebook formats. This means changing all the spelling and fixing the two typos in book 2 and formatting for kindle, ibooks etc and getting some beautiful, new thematic covers.

Release schedule:
1:The Summer of Shambles - June 2013 in the USA
2:The Autumn Palace - September 2013 in the USA
3:The Winter of Magic - December 2013 Worldwide! 2

The first two are already available as paperbacks and kindle/ibooks etc in the UK and Australia. This is because Egmont UK has the rights to publish in commonwealth and selected territories. However, I have the rights to the USA and Japan and other places, so I'm going to make the readers happy and release the first two books in these unclaimed (!) territories ahead of the release of book 3. Before I let book 3 out in public, I will hire a couple of very clever editors to make sure it's in top shape.

WHY SO LONG?
Because I am also writing stacks of other books and searching for a new agent in the USA. I've written a ghost story, a time slip novel and a reboot of Robin Hood. It's all crazy, and incredibly time consuming. But I also love it and I hope you will love these books too.

***
1. As voted by Modern Chaperone magazine, May 2011.
2. But with USA spelling for the whole world, because if I make different versions for different English-speaking territories, it will break me.