"Stealing the Elf-King's Roses: the Author's Cut" in the Ebooks Direct Store

[dianeduane]

It's been in the works for a good while now, so it's a pleasure to announce that the new revised ebook edition of Stealing the Elf-King's Roses -- which anticipated CSI-style forensic drama and brought it for the first time into an SF/fantasy format -- is now available in the Ebooks Direct store.

(ETA: to celebrate the release of STEKR’s new ebook edition, we’re also offering a limited-time 30% discount on the nine-volume complete series package of the Young Wizards International Edition ebooks. See below for more details.)

The new edition of Stealing the Elf-King's Roses comes with an afterword that talks about the evolution of the book, and also with the worldbuilding notes that set up the histories of the sheaf of universes where the story's set.

From the afterword:

As usual, when you look at a work almost ten years after you’ve written it, you find things that the almost-ten-years-on writer really wants to fix. There are little edits all through this edition, and some material that was edited out in the original edition has been restored; but in particular, the last few chapters have been rewritten to clarify exactly what the heck is going on.

Previous readers of my work will know that I have no trouble at all playing Cosmic Conkers – i.e., banging two universes together and seeing which one breaks first -- but this situation was big and complex even by my standards.  I hope the revisions satisfy both old readers returning to a favorite work, and new ones reading it for the first time. (In particular, some readers have mentioned that they’ve never read the book because the original cover gave them the idea it was a romance. I hope the new cover will have remedied this.)

...Every now and then people ask me when I’m going to do another book in this worldset. Until now the answer had been, “I’m not sure where else I can go with this.” Now, though, after the revision, I begin to see some ways forward. We’ll see how this realization plays out over the next year or so.

-- While it's always dangerous to ask a writer what his or her favorite book is, I have to admit to having a soft spot for this one -- maybe because I spent more time working on the project than on almost any other in my career: so I'm delighted to be able to relaunch it now, in this new and improved version, in e-format. Right now the book is available in the two main ebook formats, .ePub (for the Nook, iPad and Sony Reader) and .mobi (for the Kindle and all MobiPocket-friendly readers). We'll be adding more formats to the selection at the Ebooks Direct store over the next week or so, and in early December we'll be launching the book in the Kindle Store at Amazon and other online facilities. You can read an excerpt from an early chapter here, if you like.

Also: as mentioned above, to celebrate the release we’ll also be offering, for a very limited time, a 30% discount on the complete nine-volume set of the Young Wizards International editions — as above, in .ePub and .mobi formats, and a bundled download that contains both. Just use the coupon code ROSES at checkout to get the discount. (Info on how to use discount codes at the store is here.)

Enjoy, all!

Comments

[djinrain.livejournal.com]

Oh thank goodness someone else mentioned the cover! It isn't a bad cover, it's just all pink and flowery so whenever I read it in public (I have gone through two copies, now) I get strangers asking what my "romance" is about :/

[dduane.livejournal.com]

(chuckle) No, it's not a bad cover per se: but it wasn't quite right for the insides of the book, so to speak. The artist (Don Maitz) is an old friend and an excellent artist, but (like any other cover artist) had to do what the publisher's art director wants: and I think the art director grabbed hold of the concept from the wrong end, sort of.

[djonn]

You realize, of course, that now I'm going to have to break down and get an ebook reader in order to appreciate this properly.

It's not that I have moral objections to ebook readers, you understand; far from it. I've merely been holding off in the vain hope that someone will come up with one moderately priced mobile gadget that will do all the things I want a mobile gadget to do. This, of course, has stubbornly failed to happen. :-/

And the thing is, this is also one of my very favorite of your books, and the kinds of things you mention adding to the new version are exactly those I was most interested in more of the first time around. I need to read this, and a desktop PC just won't do. *sigh*

[pause, lightbulb]

OTOH, now I know exactly what's going at the top of my Christmas list....

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I bought an e-reader for exactly the same reason. Not, as it happened, one of dduane's books, but another beloved author whose new book came in a package with his backlisted titles. The books were $25, the e-reader $200, and it was the best damned money I've spent in ages. :)

[estara.livejournal.com]

oooooooooooooh revised! And possibly more in this world! *rebuys*

[mithriltabby]

Excellent! Now I just need ePubs of The Book of Night with Moon and To Visit the Queen and X-Com UFO Defense and I’ll have my whole collection of your books upgraded to electronic form. (I just gave a stack of the physical Young Wizards books to a coworker with a nine-year-old daughter who’s into the Percy Jackson stories.)

[thenetwork.livejournal.com]

Oh damn, I absolutely love this book. Is there the remotest chance that there will be a paper copy of it someday? The new cover is perfect, too.

[mrs-norris-mous.livejournal.com]

So I now have electronic versions of the old edition and the new one ( the old one was from fictionwise before they went bad ).

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

Squeee!

Re-purchased.

[dark-blade.livejournal.com]

Hello! Your Young Wizards series has been on my "good grief, have I really not gotten to reading that yet?" list for a number of years now, so when a friend mentioned your bundle sale today I clicked over to investigate. :) I have a question, though.

I see that you are updating and revising (have updated and revised?) some of the Young Wizards books and I am a little confused as to which is which, and can US citizens purchase bundles and things from your web store? I'm on the cusp of Gen X and Y, so the lack of internet things wouldn't bother me overly much, but I see that you had things that Bother You As the Author now so I probably ought to go with the revised ones?

[zianuray.livejournal.com]

Got this recently and very much enjoyed it! Noticed there is a setup at the end for a sequel, too :D