Last Day to Get Festival Madness free on your Kindle Device

My novel,  Festival Madness was inspired by my trips to Burning Man, and working in high-tech Cambridge.

How far would you go for a friend? Put a wrecking ball to your marriage? Endanger your job? Risk your very life?
Boston-based computer security consultant Emma Lee Devens leaves her top-secret project in disarray and jeopardizes her troubled marriage when she rushes to find her missing friend and colleague. Emma’s search takes her to the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada and the Burning Man Festival where a unique experience of survival, ceremonial fire, danger and transcendence awaits. Anything can happen at Burning Man. Everything Can Happen at Burning Man. 

I’m writing as Judith Copek. 

 Festival Madness on Amazon Kindle Free 1/12/14

 

ASIN: B00E2YO538

Why I Decided to Self-Publish Festival Madness With Amazon

It took five years to write my novel, Festival Madness, conceived in 2002, and written 2004-2007, the second book in a proposed series. I write slow. Sought an agent/publisher for another 4 years.  Almost 100 queries.  Nada.  Rewriting and polishing were my daily companions.  Let the whole project lie fallow for a couple years while I finished another book and began yet another one.  

What happened?


I had a gender-bender, which is to say:  a traditional mystery novel with lots of technology and partially set at Burning Man with a morally compromised amateur sleuth. 
 I don't think this book can find a publisher is the U.S.  Ever,  
Fans of mystery novels don't mind if the sleuth drinks, drugs, murders, lies and steals, but there is one sin she must never, ever, commit. Holy freakin' crap.  Think! The "A" word.

And it's a pretty cool story.  After all, it's a mystery, with ripped from the headlines technology, Burning Man, Boston high-tech, funny hackers, and a morally conflicted amateur sleuth, ergo a little (just a little) well, racy.  

If you like a main character who is as pure as the driven snow, don't bother.

Otherwise, get ready for a fun read with plenty of surprises, and a trip to Burning Man,  2004-style, Not so many people.   Got  your food?  Water?  Shelter?  Costumes?  Place to camp?  Transportation?  Booze?  Ticket?  Got to have a ticket. Ready to roam the playa at night?  Hang out at Center Camp during the day?  See the art and meet the people.  Join the craziness?  Maybe even join the Mile High Club?  

Anything is possible when you have Festival Madness!

 http://tinyurl.com/lsvcq9h

Currently available on the Kindle.  Soon to be a Trade Paperback.  

Yowza!!! 

The Shadow Warriors Now Available on Amazon Germany

 Cross-post with The Shadow Warriors blog. . .

The best news yesterday.  The Shadow Warriors, set in Germany, is now available on the Amazon Kindle in Germany.  See link to the right of this post.  I am nearly beside myself, because logic would dictate that a book set in Germany (Goettingen) should be available there.  And a book set at a university might tempt university students and faculty who read English. 

Other good news this week:  The literary journal Kansas City Lights is publishing  memoir piece about my grandmother.  My grandma was proudly from Kansas.  So is my heroine, Emma.  She always stops to notice flowers and gardens.  

Sometimes the stars do seem aligned.  The lilac has flower buds.  Last year, not one, and the year before only one.  This year, it looks loaded.  A pair of cardinals in the yard, and the cute little swamp (?) sparrow has a mate.  Ducks in the slough.  My cup runneth over.  Spring in New England.  Glorious.  The cats sleep upstairs in the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window.   They sniff spring at the open window.

Now I'm thinking of putting my Ruegen book onto the Kindle, too.  Set mostly on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic in midsummer,  with different characters, and also a computer crime novel (loosely), the story  hasn't found a home in the U.S.  By now it is an historical novel of technology.  Remember CD-ROMS?  That generation.  Before skysat phones. Before lots of technology.  

Here's a scrap of a Shadow Warrior's scene from a somewhat drunken university party on the occasion of Verna's graduation.

Raucous-voiced onlookers toasted Verena as she frugged wildly next to a man with bleached blond parted-in-the-middle-hair and a dark, bored face. Earlier, they had swept across the floor in an inhibition-shedding Lambada. Interesting that Verena celebrated her intellectual achievement with such a blow out. Vivacious and happy, she looked good tonight, with clear skin and legs slimmed by dark stockings. 

Every novel has a crazy party, some skinny dipping and a little weed.  Popular culture reigns.  

A street scene in Göttingen, scene of The Shadow Warriors