Haunted bookstore dates and win a free ARC!

Some of you know that I'm now writing young adult fiction under a pen name, Lynn Carthage. My rule is going to be that I'll promote from Erika to Lynn, but not vice-versa. As an author with a historical novel featuring an unapologetic prostitute narrator (Woman of Ill Fame), I don't want young readers to google me and read that too. Of course, nothing on the internetz is secret, and I noted in the Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) that the title page just outright lists me as the author, but it's my attempt to keep the innocent sort of innocent.

I have two readings arranged to launch the first book in the series: Haunted: The Arnaud Legacy. The book launches Feb. 24, 2015, and I'll read in El Dorado Hills and Oakland. I'm also arranging an event in Morgan Hill and possibly one in San Francisco (all of these in Northern California). Haunted is a neo-Gothic thriller about a teen who moves to England with her family into the ancestral mansion that isn't...exactly...abandoned. Danielle Paige and Michelle Gagnon gave me great cover blurbs for the book. So the two events are:

• 6:30 p.m., Friday, March 6 at Face In A Book bookstore, 4359 Town Center Boulevard, El Dorado Hills, CA, (916) 941-9401.
• 7 p.m., Saturday, March 14 at A Great Good Place for Books, 6120 LaSalle Ave., Oakland, CA, (510) 339-8210.

And now about the ARCs. These are copies created in advance of the book's actual printing, to send along to book reviewers and newspapers and bloggers. My publisher Kensington is giving away 25 free ARCs now. You can visit the Goodreads page for Haunted to enter to win one. While you're there, please friend me and mark the book as "want to read" if in fact you want to read it!

After several years off from the publishing world to raise some offspring and oh, move, a couple dozen times, I'm thrilled beyond belief to have another book hit the world! I hope you will enjoy it.

. . . .