The trees are changing colors and everything is painted those beautiful autumn reds, oranges, and yellows. I grew up in the desert so one of my favorite things is the changing seasons and getting to see fall leaves.
And for November, we have release news and a look ahead because things are likely going to be changing around here over the next year, and I want to keep everyone updated. The update below is a little long, though, so if you just want the basics: things will continue as-is for the beginning of 2027, but there will be some stuff going on in the background and some changes happening throughout 2027, including slowing down my publishing schedule for a bit.
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NEW RELEASE
A vivid imagination, a noise in the basement, and a
choice…
When something goes bump in the basement late at night, a
smart hero runs away and calls for help. A dumb hero goes into the basement to
investigate. Jaylen never considered himself a dumb hero, and as a comic book
artist, he knows a thing or two about smart heroes. But he also knows his
imagination plays tricks. His imagination has gotten him into trouble.
His imagination can be dangerous.
Investigating that noise in the basement would rank right up
there as one of his most idiotic decisions. But not checking things out could
be worse. He must put his mind at ease. Or risk what happens when his
imagination gets away from him.
In this darkly mysterious contemporary fantasy tale from
acclaimed author Kat Simons, reality blurs into something deadly, dragging an
artist into the scarier corners of his own mind, until he can no longer judge
truth from fiction.
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Also a reminder to check out the
latest Cafe stories! There are still a few days left for PATRICK AT THE CAFE and it's a good one! (I'm bias, I know, but it is!) And on the 15th the new Cafe story will go live.
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NEWS AND UPDATES
SO, I'm still mulling over some changes around the publishing, and I don't have any definitive things happening that aren't behind the scenes yet. I know I've been talking about upcoming changes, but frankly, a lot of things are still up in the air, so I'll just have to keep you updated as I go along.
One background thing I'm contemplating is moving my author website to a different provider. If that happens, I'm hoping readers won't even notice, just a matter of redirecting the URL. But we'll have to see how that works out. And if I even commit to the move. I've been using this same site for ages and change is a pain, even when it'll be good for me *grin*
I'm also contemplating some rejigging of my store along with the website, but I'm not convinced of the changes yet, so nothing will be happening in the immediate months.
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For the publishing, I will still be posting twice monthly Cafe stories through 2027 (almost have them all written--I write out ahead to make sure the stories are there). And the end of 2026 and first part of 2027 will go as usual for my publishing schedule. I have a new
Percy James Mystery coming out in December--check back for the details!--and I'll have the new
Joan of Kerry story out in eBook early in 2027 (January or February, depending on editorial turnaround, but most likely February).
I'll also be getting
Joan of Kerry into Print Editions finally next year! Either as standalone books, or as an omnibus, or I might do both (feel free to email me your opinion on the matter, if you want to!). But print editions for that series are
finally coming! If I do an omnibus of all the current shorts and novellas, I'll launch that with a Kickstarter. Maybe even do a pretty hardback edition because those are fun. Again, this is up in the air and if it happens it'll be around April or May, so check back for that.
I've written the first two novellas in the
Dragon Thief series Season Three. It looks like this season will only have 4 individual episodes (books), but that's because they're all coming out much longer than I expected! LOL. There are threads from the first two seasons that are getting pulled together in this season so it's taking longer stories. I'll keep you updated on that, but know that more
DRAGON THIEF is coming in 2027.
AND I'm working on Book 10 in the
CARY REDMOND series as I type this. I'm having sooo much fun, too. I love writing Cary. We finally meet more of the Protectors in this story, get an update on Angie, and other fun stuff happens that I'm not gonna talk about yet (mostly because of the way I write, I actually don't know everything that will happen yet. That's why it's so fun! LOL) This novel will probably be released in 2028 because of background publishing changes, so look out for that announcement.
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Finally, after the first quarter of 2027, I will have to slow down publishing. Since I write a lot and so far ahead of myself, this is not optimal. I have a lot of lovely stories I want to get out for readers (including another contemporary romance novel that I finished over the summer)! But needs must and life changes happen.
I'm not sure where that will leave things over the course of 2027 yet either, so we'll be working by quarters until we know what kind of schedule will work for all the changes. I'm also going to be trying to finish some multi-book projects that are currently sitting at half done. So there's still plenty of fiction on its way from me, it'll just take a little longer to get it all released.
With luck, most of these changes will be behind the scenes and readers won't even notice, but if things do start to look weird or different, at least you'll know why.
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Oh and also, I've officially published a statement on AI--
see the link on the sidebar--so readers will know where I stand on using AI and AI tools.
TL;DR I don't use AI for anything, including art and marketing, at the moment and have no intention of changing that for the foreseeable future. Most of what AI can do for writers is stuff my own brain already does (*grin*) or that I can manage without AI (creating graphics, covers, etc...). The current art and LLM gen-AI models have been trained using stolen copyright, so I'm not inclined to participate in that. All that said, I may occasionally have some piece of AI art or marketing slip through, and if I'm made aware of that fact, I will change that out. The
full statement is here.
Finally finally, I just wanted to thank everyone who participated in the SPOOKY SEASON CALENDAR event over at KatSimonsBooks! I had a lot of fun with that, so I will be doing another next year.
And with all that, I think I'd better stop for now. Until next month, I hope November treats you well!
Happy Reading!
~Kat
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