“Terminal Degree” is up for preorder!

Hi All!

Well, after a couple of busy months, I’m excited to announce that Terminal Degree is finally available for preorder! Yes, at last, it’s (almost) here! The official release date is December 31st.

Funnily enough, it starts on December 31, 2016, at a time when the US was in a state of doubt and confusion during the interregnum period between the election of Donald Trump and the start of his administration. And where do we find ourselves now? That wasn’t what I was consciously expecting when I was actually writing the book, but art is often smarter than logic that way. The book is about a lot of things, but one of them is what it’s like to be living in modern-day America, and, well, I guess we still have a lot of the same problems.

Anyway, the cover and blurb are below, and the link to preorder it is here. And if you’re not on my ARC team but you’d like to be, reply to this email and I’ll add you. I’m planning to send out the ARCs in a couple of weeks, so a month before the release. Hopefully I’ll be finished at least with the recording of the audiobook by then–I’ve had some annoying technical difficulties that have delayed me. I now have a new, more expensive microphone, and have been hard at work recording as much as time and my throat permits (doing John and Dima’s voices tends to frack up my vocal cords, and they both feature heavily in this book).

Cover and blurb below!

Rowena Halley has hit a dead end. Will it leave her dead?

Russian professor Rowena Halley is at the end of her money, the end of her job contract, the end of her romantic hopes…the end of her tether. And just when she thinks she can’t take any more, she gets dragged into not one, but two sticky situations by her nearest and dearest. Her friend Mel needs her help dealing with a scammer, and her long-lost paternal grandparents want her back in their lives—with cultish strings attached.

But Rowena has even bigger problems. Her ex-fiancé, opposition Russian journalist Dima Kuznetsov, comes to America, bringing old history and new danger with him. Rowena wants to believe they have a future as a couple. The mercenaries and hitmen Dima has been tangling with over the years could mean they don’t have a future, period. And revelations about Dima’s most recent deal with the Devil cause Rowena to doubt their chances to make a life together, even if they do survive.

Rowena wants a happy ending for everyone. But with this many bad guys mad at her, the ending she’s most likely to get is the terminal kind.

Content warning: This book contains an Air Force veteran, an officer in the Marines, and an ex-member of the Russian OMON. The language is accordingly salty.

***

There you have it! This book has been a long time in the making (and is, fair warning, accordingly long), but I’m glad it’s finally almost ready to go out into the world. Here‘s the preorder link again, and please let me know if you’d like to join the ARC team!

Happy reading,

Sid Stark

Living in Interesting Times

Hi All!

I hope everyone is safe and sound and at home. We live in interesting times, do we not? Of course, so do most people. If you’re feeling apprehensive/panicky/outraged at how everyone’s losing their dang minds, maybe now is the time to watch my favorite inspirational speech of all time:

There are other forces at work besides the will of evil.

The good news, from my point of view, is that my university, like many other universities around the country, has mandated a switch to remote learning for an indefinite period into the future. This is good because proactive closing of schools is supposed to be one of the most effective measures you can take to stop the spread of disease. It’s a little irritating for those of us who had our disability accommodations request to study or teach remotely denied because it just “didn’t meet our rigorous standards” or was a “hardship” for our programs, but it is an amusing lesson in karma, I suppose.

It is my sincere hope that in a few weeks we’ll all look back on this and wonder what the big fuss was about. Successful contagion-containment measures always look like overkill. And that’s okay. Better to be safe than sorry.

Meanwhile, for those of us who do mainly intellectual/creative labor, perhaps being trapped at home will bring about a tremendous burst of productivity! As someone who’s mainly trapped at home all the time, I can testify that there’s nothing like it for getting your creative/intellectual work done.

For example, Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s most beloved writer, had one of his most famous bursts of inspiration and productivity while under quarantine at a family estate in the country, as cholera ravaged Russia. He was untouched by it, and wrote some of his most magnificent works, including the wonderful A Feast in Time of Plague. If you’re casting about for something to do while in self-isolation, maybe check it out! Get the entire collection of his Little Tragedies! See what wonderful things can come of quarantine, alongside all the bad stuff.

This also, of course, seems like a great time to plug my own writing, so as a reminder, Trigger Warning, book 4 in the Doctor Rowena Halley series, is currently on pre-order. I’m in the process of transitioning everything to “wide,” meaning available on all stores, not just Amazon, so the link for Trigger Warning is a universal link that will take you to your preferred store.

Currently trialing yet another cover.

And if you preorder Trigger Warning now (it’s just 99c!) and send me your proof of preorder, I’ll send you an exclusive short story, completely free! What’s not to like? Email me your proof of preorder to sidstark@sidstarkauthor.com or reply to this post, and I’ll send you the link for Summer Break, a little side story set in the war zone in the Donbass.

Stay safe, everyone!

And last but not least, here are this week’s selection of giveaways:

Check out the Sneak Peek Giveaway to get an exclusive preview of upcoming releases

Get an armful of murder mysteries in the Art of Murder Giveaway!

Preorder “Trigger Warning” and Get an Exclusive Free Story

Hi everyone! Happy March!

In Russia it’s the first day of spring. Feels a lot more spring-like here in North Carolina, however, than I imagine it does in Russia. Wherever you are, I hope you’re enjoying the changing seasons.

I have another short and to the point post today: Trigger Warning is on preorder! For 99c! I’ve decided to “go wide” with the series, so it’s available at most major retailers (Google Play is being a little slow, but it should appear there soon). The universal link is here.

And, as a special exclusive treat, I’ve written a short story that I’ll be giving away just to people who preorder Trigger Warning. Just send me your proof of preorder to sidstark@sidstarkauthor.com and I’ll send you a link to download your copy of “Summer Break,” a short story from Dima’s point of view.

Happy reading, everyone!

Tag: Preorder