I started a new project last night that I think will be a lot of fun. I'll probably have to re-start it later because I don't think the opening scene really sets the proper stage for the story, but I need to write more to figure out exactly what that stage is. In a way, I feel weirdly unfaithful to the characters in my series for cheating on them with new characters, but I'm also having fun meeting new people instead of just hanging out with the same old folks.

Because my creativity is all tied up in that work, I've decided it's time for an FAQ, since I've had some questions in e-mail and comments, and this is as easy a place as any to answer things that keep coming up. So ...

I just finished Damsel Under Stress. You aren't going to end it that way, are you? That isn't the end of the series, right?
No, I'm not that evil, just slightly evil. There is another book coming. I just turned the final version in last week. Book 4 is called Don't Hex With Texas and is currently (as in, the last time I heard) scheduled for publication in January 2008. When I first submitted the proposal for book 3, they only wanted to buy that one, but I held firm and said it was both books or nothing, since I didn't want to leave people hanging that way (and it's a good thing, too, since they probably wouldn't have bought book 4 if they'd waited until now to make a decision).

Is Book 4 the end of the series?
It's not the ending I planned for the series, but if that is the last book, I think it has a satisfying ending that wraps up a lot of things. It just doesn't complete the story the way I want to. Unfortunately, though, the sales of the earlier books in the series have not been at the level my publisher is happy with, and bookstores decreased their order of the third book in the series, so the publisher said no to my proposal for a fifth book. As things stand now, book 4 will end the series.

Does that mean we'll never get book 5?
Not necessarily. If sales for Damsel Under Stress pick up or if book 4 suddenly does really well, or if I sell something else and it becomes a hit, which then boosts the sales of everything else I've written, they may come back to me and ask me for that book. There are also some other people looking at the possibility of doing that book. I haven't yet given up, but it's definitely going to take a stroke of luck.

I really want to get book five. What can we do to help? Is there someone we should write to?
The main thing to do if you want book 5 is help boost sales of the first books in the series. Tell lots of people, post about them online in various forums, talk about the books to people who work in bookstores and encourage the stores to stock them. Suggest them for book clubs. Make sure that people who buy the first book then go back and get the next books. The challenge here with word of mouth is that the books aren't being well stocked at a lot of stores, so it takes getting people motivated enough to ask for them or order them online. Writing letters to the publisher won't do a lot of good. They know exactly how many copies have sold, which gives them an absolute measure of popularity and profitability. They make just as much money from a book someone passionately loved as they do from a book someone liked okay, as long as the book was bought. The only thing that will matter to the publisher is the number of copies they sell.

If we want to help the cause by buying books or getting other people to buy books, where should we buy them to help the most?
Really, any sale is a good sale and goes to the bottom line, as long as it's not a used book sale (those don't count to the publisher or to me -- they're invisible and don't give me or the publisher any money). One issue in the decision by my publisher not to buy more books from me was the fact that a certain large chain dramatically cut the number of books they ordered. That then created a chain reaction, so the books weren't in a lot of stores, which made them less visible, which made people even less likely to buy them. So, depending on how you want to look at it, you might want to "punish" that chain by buying at other stores, or you might want to show them the error of their ways by asking for the books or special ordering them at that store. If a store gets enough special requests for a book, they may start carrying it.

If you were one of those people who marked the release date on your calendar, and then couldn't find the book in a store anywhere, especially if you were told the store just wasn't going to be carrying the book, or you otherwise had a frustrating shopping experience, then you might want to contact the customer service departments of the stores in question, letting them know how frustrating it was to not be able to find a book you really wanted to buy. For your convenience, here's the contact info for the major chains (and be polite, but specific, please):

Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Customer Service Department
122 Fifth Avenue, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10011

telephone: (800) 422-7717
e-mail: customerservice@bn.com
fax: (212) 352-3660

Borders Customer Service
100 Phoenix Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
1-888-81-BOOKS

What about a TV series or a movie based on these books? What's happening with that?
That is a long and sordid story that's apparently not unusual in Hollywood. Last year, we negotiated a deal to option my books for a TV series. And then after the deal was finalized and agreed upon, but before anything was signed, the executive who struck the deal left that company and nobody else in the company returned calls. So we were back to square one. There is a fairly prominent writer/director who would like to do a movie, and he even has an actress attached, but so far hasn't had a studio cough up the money. And then just a couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from a representative of a major studio asking if the rights were still available. So there is a possibility of something happening, and that would certainly help book sales, which then might lead to a book five.

Why are your books shelved in general fiction or fiction and literature when they're fantasy novels?
The books are a hybrid of chick lit and fantasy, and the first book in the series was really a send-up of the standard chick lit novel about a young woman in the city with an awful boss and a lot of bad dates. At the time, chick lit was the hottest thing in the market, while urban fantasy was mostly below the radar, or at least wasn't even being talked about as a unique subgenre. So, my agent positioned the book as a paranormal chick lit novel and sold it to a mainstream publisher. Since then, though, chick lit tanked, urban fantasy became one of the hottest things in publishing, and it seems that my books are more popular among fantasy and paranormal romance readers than they are among chick lit readers. I think the stories themselves have become more fantasy than chick lit as the series progresses. I'm no longer trying to write to any particular genre. I'm just writing stories about these characters. But publishers are really reluctant to change classification in mid-stream. One thing we are looking at, if we can find a willing publisher, is reissuing the first books in mass market paperback format and shelving them as fantasy, which then could lead to a book five if sales are good enough. For now, I guess you just have to make sure people know where to find the books in stores and tell your fantasy fan friends not to be scared away by the covers.

Any other questions? Ask them in comments, and I'll do another FAQ if warranted.

I got hit with an allergy flare-up over the weekend (probably a combo from ragweed being about the only plant that's thriving in the drought and not being able to resist playing with my friend's kittens Saturday night), resorted to taking allergy drugs, and now I've got the fun grogginess that comes from a Benadryl hangover. Ugh. It does give me very interesting, vivid dreams, though. For instance, last night I dreamed the ultimate television crossover -- mixing House with The Gilmore Girls. Lorelei Gilmore wasn't feeling well, and that sent Emily into overprotective mama bear mode, so she insisted that only Dr. House was good enough to treat her daughter, and then Emily Gilmore and House really butted heads. I don't think I got to see that part because I woke up or moved to another dream, but that's the kind of clash that tends to leave craters in its aftermath. We'll never see it because the shows are on different networks and now airing opposite each other, but wouldn't it be fun?

I'm almost done with my revisions. I'm down to the part that needs the most work, so it will probably go more slowly now. In other news, I got word this morning that Enchanted, Inc. was going back for a third printing. Yay! The fact that they're going back to press this long after the original release date is a good sign. It's nice not to be fading away into the obscurity of an out-of-print book.

Now for another trip to the mailbag, as I address questions that come up frequently in reader mail. Some of this is turning into a discourse on how the publishing world works, but I figure that aspiring authors and even some readers might be interested in a peek behind the curtain. Today's theme is geography.

Q: Why aren't your books published in (country)?/When will your books be published in (country)?
A: This actually works a lot like the other subsidiary rights (movies, TV, etc.) that I discussed in my previous mailbag post. There are agents who specialize in selling to foreign markets, and they submit my books to publishers in those markets, who then decide what they want to publish. It's a lot like getting the book published in the US in the first place -- you send it to publishers, and they then decide if they want it (usually based on whether they think it will make money for them). My foreign rights agents have been very aggressive in marketing my books, so if a country hasn't picked up the books, it's either because they said no or because they haven't yet made a decision.

Enchanted, Inc> has already been published in Dutch in The Netherlands and Belgium. It will be published in Germany in January 2007. It's also sold to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia. Once Upon Stilettos will be published in Dutch this November, and it's also sold to Japan. That book (and subsequent books) may ultimately sell in more markets, depending on how the first one does there. I don't yet have any foreign sales for Damsel Under Stress, but then, I don't have a finished manuscript. I hear that the Dutch publisher has been pleased with sales so far, so if the second book does well there, there is a strong chance they'll pick up the next book, too.

I do know that the publishers in the United Kingdom passed on the opportunity to publish Enchanted, Inc. I don't know about Australia (another country I get asked about a lot). I guess those of you in English-speaking countries outside the United States and Canada will just have to keep buying the US editions online or in shops that sell imported books. I'm not sure how you'd demonstrate to your country's publishers that there is demand for books like this there. I suppose it's like the "I've got to get me a piece of that" numbers that also come into play for film-type stuff. If it becomes big enough in the US, then foreign publishers might take another look. The whole industry is very "me too."

Q: Why don't you have a booksigning in (city)?
A: I know my booksigning locations have been pretty provincial, staying mostly within Texas, unless I'm at an out-of-town conference. That's because of one important thing: money.

I'm not the kind of author who gets sent on a book tour by my publisher. When I go out of town for a booksigning, I have to pay my own travel expenses, and for the most part, the economics don't work out. I earn about 90 cents in royalties for each copy sold. At my most successful local booksigning, one in town that all my friends came to, many of them buying multiple copies, I sold about 40 books. At my most successful out-of-town signing, I sold about 20 books (and several of those were to family members). More often, I sell around ten books. You don't have to be a math genius to figure out that this doesn't pay for even gas money when you're driving 200 miles to get there. However, there are other benefits to doing signings, which is why I do them, even at a loss. The big one is getting to meet readers, which is fun, and which I also think pays off in increased word of mouth, since you're more likely to talk about an author you've met. I also get to meet booksellers. There's usually a little publicity involved, like in the store's newsletter or posters in the store, which raises my profile. The store orders more than the usual six copies of the book, and the book gets displayed more prominently before and after the signing (at one signing, more books sold from the display before the signing itself than during the time I was at the store). I also try to get around to other stores in town to sign their stock and meet booksellers while I'm in the area. That makes it worth a couple of tanks of gas and a night in a relative's guest room or at whatever special deal I can get through hotels.com. I can't quite stretch to justify airfare -- which would more than triple the cost of the trip -- unless I have some other reason for going to that city, and there aren't a lot of places you can easily drive to from Dallas.

Publishers make more profit per copy than I do, but even publishers are cutting back on book tours. It's almost impossible to sell enough books that wouldn't have sold whether or not the author came to town to pay for the cost of hotel and airfare. I've gone to a couple of signings by high-profile authors, and there were maybe 35 people there (many of whom brought their own copies of the book that they'd already bought). The publishers also have to focus on intangible benefits like meeting fans, meeting booksellers and maybe getting some local publicity that wouldn't have happened without the author being in town. There seem to be two kinds of authors who usually get sent on book tours. One type is the big, bestselling author that people will line up to see. Then a lot of books do sell, and the author can usually get some good local media attention. Those kinds of tours are also sometimes treated as a perk for the chosen bookseller -- they get the chance to have a celebrity author in their store, which then helps build a better relationship between the publisher and the bookseller. There's also co-op money that comes into play and a lot of other behind-the-scenes stuff.

The other kind of author that gets sent on tour is the author the publisher wants to build into a big bestseller (and no, they don't really want to build all their authors into bestsellers. They wouldn't complain if it happens, but they only pull out the big guns to make an effort to create bestsellers for a chosen few). In this case, it isn't so much about selling enough books to pay for the tour. It's more about making connections, making the booksellers know that the publisher is really pushing this author, and generally raising the author's profile to lay the groundwork for what might happen with future books by that author.

Most of the authors who get tours are published in hardcover, since those books are more profitable for publishers. You can pay for the tour faster in sales of hardcover books than with trade paperbacks or mass market paperbacks.

There are a few exceptions to the above trends. Authors who live in places where you can get to a lot of cities in a short amount of time might get at least a mini tour among the major cities there. It's a lot easier to send someone to hit DC, Philadelphia, New York and Boston when the author is already in one of those cities than it is to fly someone in from another part of the country to visit all those cities. Authors whose books have strong regional ties may get a regional tour. Southern authors who write about the South (and especially who already live there) might get sent to Atlanta, Memphis, Charleston, and so forth.

What does that mean for me? Unless my publisher has been so blown away by sales of the last book and really thinks the next one will be my big breakout (so far, they're pleased but not really blown away), chances are that I won't be doing a lot of booksignings in other parts of the country, unless I can find some other reason to be in those cities. I'm thinking about maybe trying to do one big out-of-Texas event (out of my own budget) with the next book if I can find the right combination of factors that could allow me to justify it -- like a really great bookstore that could draw a crowd through their own efforts, a big concentration of existing fans who promise to show up, maybe a writing conference or sf/fantasy convention where I could speak (especially if they cover part of the travel costs for their speakers), and a good chance for local media coverage if I go there.

So, if you want me to come to your town for a booksigning or other event, there are two things you can do. You can continue telling people about my books and maybe helping boost the sales to the point the publisher decides that a book tour would be a good idea. Or you can look for events like conferences and conventions in the May/June timeframe next year when the next book comes out and suggest that they invite me as a guest speaker (especially if they pay some travel expenses).

I may do a poll to see how many people might show up for signings in which places when I start working on PR plans for the next book.

I'm nearly halfway done with revisions on Damsel Under Stress, and I'm having fun. I caught myself a few times forgetting that I'm supposed to be checking against edits as I read because I've gotten into the story and just started reading without looking to see if there's something I'm supposed to be changing. I figure that's a good sign.

I've been getting a fair amount of e-mail from readers, and I try to answer it all personally, but I keep getting behind because I can't seem to get around to it when I'm busy writing. There are some questions that keep coming up, and I figure that if a few people bother to write about them, then there are a lot more people who might have the same question who haven't written. So, on days when I can't think of anything else to write about, I'll do Questions from the Mailbag. This won't replace me actually responding to individual e-mails, but at least it might take care of the questions until I get around to dealing with my e-mail. I'm not picking on any particular question (or questioner) specifically. These are composite questions I've pulled together from a lot of messages. Today I'll hit the two questions I get asked most often (in various forms).

Q: Will there be more books in this series?
A: Yes. Books three and four have already been bought (and written). Book three, which is now called Damsel Under Stress, is scheduled for release the last week in April 2007. I don't have a release date for book 4 yet. I do plan to do more books in the series (if my publisher will let me), but I'd like to take a little break first to write something else. Right now, I'm thinking that I'll do one more book to wrap up the story arcs I've already established -- kind of like a season finale of a TV series -- and then maybe start a new "season" with some new stories that kick off to deal with the situations established in that book. The TV series model of resolving some story arcs along the way and then dealing with the new situations may be what works best to be able to keep the series going without dragging out any story lines to the point of ridiculousness (one of my pet peeves with some series as a reader).

Q: Why don't you have your books turned into movies/TV shows/cartoons/anime/audiobooks/manga/calendars/comic books/etc.?
A: Believe it or not, I actually have very little say in the matter, beyond saying yes or no when someone makes an offer. I have a team of subrights agents working under my agent (I have "people"!) to find every possible opportunity. The trick is finding someone who's willing to put up the money to do any of these things. That's not just about putting up the money to pay me for the rights. My share in it all is relatively minimal. The real cost is in producing all these things. The people who make movies, TV, manga, comic books and so forth have to think that there's enough of an audience demand that they'll make money on the enterprise. And, quite frankly, the sales numbers so far on the books don't provide much evidence that there is. Y'all may love these books, and I love you for it, but I got the latest sales figures on Enchanted, Inc. yesterday, and while they're apparently okay for a book of that type, they're definitely not in the "I've got to get me a piece of that action!" realm (let's just say you're all part of a small, elite group for having bought that book). Sales are better on Once Upon Stilettos, but still not anything to make eyeballs pop out. At this point, any non-book stuff that's produced would be more likely to build the audience for the books rather than capitalize on the existing fan base of the books. That's great for me, but it's a big risk for anyone who tries to produce something else, since the existing fan base of the books isn't big enough for anything based on them to earn any money at all.

The rights have been optioned for a television series, and though I haven't seen the contract yet, that option would likely allow either live action or animation, so pretty much everything visual is currently off the table. I doubt I'll have much creative input or control -- probably only as much as they deign to give me. The people optioning the TV rights have said they want to set up a conference call with me, which bodes well, but they generally are allowed to do anything they want to with the basic setting and characters.

As for printed visual stuff, my publisher (Random House) is doing a lot with manga, and I have a feeling if they thought there was a market for it, they'd be pursuing it. Again, the current market size isn't big enough to get anyone excited. Ditto with audiobooks. Those are expensive to produce, and they'd have to tap into a much bigger market to make that profitable.

About all I can say is that if you want to see more stuff spun off from these books, you'd have to spread enough word of mouth to get more people to buy books so that the sales numbers move into "I've got to get me a piece of that action!" territory. (And remember that buying used books, swapping books and lending books doesn't count toward those kinds of numbers.) We're not turning down legitimate offers, but the offers do have to be made in the first place. It's really cool that y'all want all this stuff, though.