Another Orange Wednesday!  And it would be simple enough to print this entire newsletter with an orange background (now that I’ve figured out how), but that would make it harder to read. And why on earth would I want to do that?

So let’s get to it, shall we? If it’s really Orange Wednesday, I’d better give something away. Free to all Kindlefolk for the next several days is this classic work by John Warren Wells. (Not John Wellington Wells, Gilbert & Sullivan’s “dealer in magick and spells.” Our JWW is an eager student of and enthusiastic reporter on human sexual behavior, author of 17 books published in the 60s and 70s, and all of them now eVailable for Kindle.)

Back then, Versatile Ladies bore the publisher’s title, “Women Who Swing Both Ways.” It got its point across, to be sure, but I always thought it was a wee bit tacky, and I’m happy to see its original title restored here. The book consists of interviews and case histories of bisexual women, and whether it’s popular psychology or erotica is in the eye (or whatever) of the beholder. JWW would probably quote the late Faubion Bowers: “Sex is the one interesting activity of otherwise boring people.”

This is not the first JWW title I’ve given away of an Orange Wednesday, but it seems particularly appropriate because, starting in a matter of days, my ePublishers at Open Road will be giving star treatment to Jill Emerson—and it was Jill to whom JWW dedicated Versatile Ladies. (If you’re doomed to have multiple personalities, it’s easier on everybody if they all get along.)

There have been eight Jill Emerson novels, and they run a hell of a gamut. Warm & Willing and Enough of Sorrow are sensitive novels of the lesbian experience; Thirty, Threesome, and A Madwoman’s Diary are sophisticated erotica; The Trouble With Eden ranges somewhere between Peyton Pace and John O’Hara; and A Week as Andrea Benstock is female-viewpoint mainstream fiction. (Those are the Open Road titles, all originally published many years ago. Getting Off is an ovaries-to-the-wall novel of sex and violence, published a little over a year ago by Hard Case Crime.)

The Open Road Jill Emerson titles are all priced low, at either $2.99 or $2.51. ($2.51?? Yeah, I know. Makes no sense to me either.) The prices will definitely increase, probably to $4.99, by the time the promotion ends. The links are to Amazon, but I should stress that these books (unlike JWW’s) are eVailable for all platforms—Nook, Apple, Kobo, Sony Reader, etc. Just search for the individual titles and they’ll show up.

But wait…there’s more!

Matthew Scudder has been the subject of seventeen novels over the years—the most recent is A Drop of the Hard Stuff. And he’s also starred in eleven novelettes and short stories, from Out the Window (1977) to One Last Night at Grogan’s (2011). The stories, gathered together as The Night and the Music, essentially constitute an 18th novel; I self-published it a year and a half ago, and it’s become a bestseller.

More recently I made the individual stories available for Kindle, and on this Orange Wednesday you can pick up the lead novelette, “Out the Window,” absolutely free. It was first published in AHMM in 1977, and takes place in time somewhere between In the Midst of Death and A Stab in the Dark; Paula, a waitress at Armstrong’s, has apparently committed suicide, but her kid sister thinks otherwise, and hires Scudder to have a look.

If you like the story and want more, you can pick up the others one by one at $2.99—but you’d be much better advised to spring for $4.99 and get them all. And if you’ve somehow missed Scudder altogether, this is a good (and risk-free) place to start.

Note too that, while the individual stories are Kindle Exclusives, the collection is eVailable for all eReaders. Here’s a Nook link, and I’m sure y’all are resourceful enough to find it for your eReader of choice.

And one more quick note about John Warren Wells: The first JWW title republished was Different Strokes, and I priced it at $6.99. All of the subsequent books were pegged at $4.99, and just the other day it struck me that there was no persuasive reason to charge two bucks more for Different Strokes. So it’s now $4.99. That may not make you rush out and buy it, but I have to say I feel better about the whole thing.

That’s all I have to say about the free stuff, and I’m turning this over to the ever-helpful David Trevor, for a quick report on LB’s eBay Bookstore.

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Ever-helpful? Last time I was “the indispensable David Trevor.” Have I just been demoted?

Never mind.

Last I checked, we had 149 items on offer in the eBay store. I’ll be adding some more as soon as I get a chance. I’ll also be adjusting some prices—in both directions.

And I should let you know that the first order of business will be to boost the price of The Specialists from its steal-this-book price of $4.99 to the still-a-good-deal price of $9.99.

With the fifth Keller book, Hit Me, hitting the stores in two weeks, LB’s Special Limited Philatelic Edition is selling at a brisk pace; we’re down to 87 copies, and they won’t last very long.

We’ve got signed copies of the earier Keller titles. Plenty of Scudder and Burglar books, too. Prices vary considerably. It’s worth browsing the listings.

You know, he hardly ever lets me write anything, and now I’ve got the chance, and I can’t think of anything to say.

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The ever-helpful and always eloquent David Trevor. What would I do without him?

That’s it for this particular Orange Wednesday. Grab the freebies, hunt for bargains, and let’s hope for overcast skies on Saturday, when the prognosticative rodent emerges from his winter quarters.

LB