Peschel Press Newsletter for September 2023

teresa at haunting in venice
Guess what we saw at the movies? More about that below.

We’re back again. Bill published Escape to HighTower as an eBook to go with our gorgeous trade paperback. It’s available for sale at Amazon and, if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free in KU along with my other three Odessa Moon novels.

If you’re not familiar with Kindle Unlimited, it’s a subscription service. Each month, you pay Amazon $11.99 (the current cost) and you can download up to twenty books per month to your Kindle and read them at your leisure. This is a separate program from Amazon Prime so it’s got a separate fee. If you’re a voracious reader and like eBooks, this is a program you might like. Here’s the link for more information.

Your monthly subscription is what pays the writer (that would be us) about 1/10 of a penny per page read. Writers do earn some money from KU; some writers are very successful. We are not, because nobody knows who we are. The great advantage of KU is it lets you, dear reader, easily try new authors. You can see if you like a subgenre that’s new to you. If you don’t, you delete that book and move on to the next one.

Many of our titles are available in KU, but not all. It depends on whether an eBook was possible (it wasn’t for Sew Cloth Grocery Bags because of the extensive pattern layouts) or allowed by Amazon (none of our annotated titles) or we wanted to try a wider distribution for eBooks (The Casebook of Twain & Holmes).

This is a decision that you, dear writer, must make for each book. Is KU worth it? It does make it more confusing for many readers so you want to give it some thought. In our case, as I noted above, we use it for some books but not for others. It depends.
As for upcoming projects?

Upcoming Projects

cover the complete annotated clouds of witness dorothy sayers bill peschel

Bill is still hard at work at finishing up The Complete, Annotated Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers. As always, it will contain the complete text and hundreds of footnotes, maps, period illustrations, and explanatory essays. Clouds, like our other annotated classic mysteries will be a trade paperback and an eBook, but because it’s public domain material, we can’t put the book in KU. So, we’ll release it as an eBook at all the usual online venues.

Odessa Moon’s New Novella

I’m slaving away on The Bitch Queen of Atto, a novella set in the domed city of Panschin. I’m not sure exactly how we’ll release it but we will. When I’m done. And then it’s on to Ulla DelFino’s adventures and wrapping up the story line she started in The Vanished Pearls of Orlov and continued in Escape to HighTower.

Little Murders of Agatha Christie cast
A typical scene from the French “Little Murders of Agatha Christie” in which the police inspector yuks it up with his secretary and a reporter.

International Agatha Christie, She Watched

We’re continuing with International Agatha Christie, She Watched. If you’re familiar with her films in English (that is those filmed in England and the U.S.) you haven’t seen how universal she is and how a different culture changes her around. We’ve got some of the international films in AC,SW but only a few. For International, we’ll include those, plus we’re watching all The Little Murders of Agatha Christie (French), along with Indian, Swedish, Japanese, Chinese, Hungarian, and whatever other films we can find.

If you have access to Agatha Christie films — WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES — we’d like to know about it! We’d like to see them, review them, and put them in the book. Many of the Indian films including the newest one remaking The Sittaford Mystery are simply not available in the U.S. Another series we’d like to see is South Korea’s Ms. Ma: Nemesis. It’s Miss Marple reinterpreted and it sounds great. But we can’t get it. Nor can we get old German, Austrian, or Russian films among others.

We have the complete list of international Agatha Christie movies,https://peschelpress.com/agatha-christie-foreign-movie-adaptations/ plus whether or not we can find them here.

If you, dear reader, can help us out with International Agatha films we don’t already have, we’ll include you in the acknowledgments and give you a copy of the finished trade paperback. Email us at [email protected] with the details of what you’ve got on hand.

Talk, Talk

We’ve also been busy with podcasts. We’ve been interviewed on three other podcasts to date if you want to give us a listen:

The Dark and Stormy Book Club interviews a wide range of mystery and thriller writers. They’ve interviewed us twice!

Tory Gates of Sunbury Press interviewed us as part of Sunbury’s Brown Posey imprint. Sunbury has dozens of interviews with writers that you might enjoy. Our interview can be found on Spotify here.

Caroline Crampton of the Shedunnit Show interviewed me via Zoom so you can see me as well as listen to me discuss Agatha Christie, She Watched. Caroline focuses on a wide range of golden-age mysteries and their authors.

I’ve got another podcast interview coming up in October with Brook Peterson and Sarah Stephen of Clued-In Mysteries. They also interview a wide variety of mystery writers. When the episode drops, I’ll let you know.

We have our own podcast: https://peschelpress.com/agatha-christie-she-watched-podcast/ where we discuss the Agatha Christie films we’ve seen. We just released A Haunting in Venice which was a much better film than we anticipated. It was good! Agatha goes gothic. Kenneth Branagh rewrote Hallowe’en Party, added the motive behind Nemesis, and it worked beautifully. The film has its flaws (such as Poirot as an atheist!) but we still recommend it.

And of course, Bill interviews other mystery writers for the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop. You can find these podcasts two ways. Visit the bookstore’s website or you can visit our website where Bill reposts the links.

Why am I talking about podcasts? Because this is another way to learn more about us and you can listen to interesting podcasts you might not have known about. Think of podcasts as an event but not one where you must be in a physical location on a certain date within a specific time window. Podcasts can be accessed whenever it’s convenient to you.

And speaking of events, we’ve got a few coming up.

On Saturday, 23 September 2023, we’ll join 70 other authors at Books, Books, Books from noon to 4pm in Rock Lititz! Tickets are only $5, too. If you buy them in advance at the link, you’ll be eligible for great swag and raffle items. Whatever your taste in reading, someone at Books, Books, Books will write exactly what you like.

Then in October, we’ve got two events.

On Saturday, 7 October 2023, we’ll be at the Chocolate Town book festival with 60+ other writers! This event is free and takes place at the Hershey Public Library. See the library’s Facebook page or their Instagram page for details. This book festival kicks off on Friday, 6 October 2023 when Isaac Fitzgerald has a meet and greet at Cassel Vineyards north of Hershey. This event is also free. Bring a picnic supper. We’ll be visiting too, with our picnic supper.

The following Saturday, 14 October 2023, we’ll join a great group of cozy mystery writers at Cozy Con, sponsored by the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop! If you’re a cozy mystery fan, this is the place to be. Tickets are $5 in advance or $10 at the door so register in advance and get the discount. There’s great swag too. You’ll meet an array of cozy authors including names like Korina Moss, Mindy Quigly, and Gabby Allan (aka Misty Simon). There are lots more I haven’t listed. We’ll be there too. I’ll man our table while Bill emcee’s the con.

We hope we’ll see you in person at one of our events, or, give us a listen at the podcasts. Either way, we can’t do it without you.
Thanks again for joining us!