Sunday, March 15, 2020

Reading options for your coronavirus cabin fever.

What a difference a couple of weeks makes. When I blogged about Mercury retrograde and the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 two weeks ago, the situation was a lot more uncertain. Now, health officials are telling people to stay home. Schools are closed, professional sports leagues have suspended their seasons, and lots of entertainment events have been either postponed or canceled outright. Social distancing is one new buzzword, and flattening the curve is another. The idea is to keep everybody from being sick at the same time, because too many cases requiring hospitalization would overwhelm our healthcare system and lead to a situation like Italy's, where they're in danger of running out of intensive care beds. The country reported 368 new deaths from the virus today.

As I type this, the Centers for Disease Control has recommended canceling gatherings of 50 or more people (not counting schools and businesses, inexplicably) for the next two weeks.

This is a serious situation. But of course there are opportunists out there like this clown: He and his brother cleaned out the stocks of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes from the shelves of every store in several counties, and then sold the stuff online at a stiff markup. Ah, capitalism. But now he's being investigated for price gouging. And he has donated all the stock he couldn't sell (because Amazon and eBay cracked down) -- including nearly 18,000 bottles of hand sanitizer -- to churches in Tennessee and Kentucky.

We at hearth/myth would never stoop to that sort of crass commercialism. But we sympathize with those who will be stuck at home with very little to do for next several weeks, and so I have discounted the price of the Kindle version of the Pipe Woman Chronicles Omnibus to just 99 cents starting tomorrow through the end of the month. That's about 20 cents per book. Even if you've read them all, maybe it's time for a re-read?

In addition, I'm rebooting the Elemental Keys series with new covers and titles. The book that used to be called Rivers Run is now entitled River Magic. It was released this week and it's just $2.99. Isn't the new cover spiffy?

The rest of the series is getting similar cover treatment, and the new versions will be coming out directly. And when I say directly, I mean directly. Book 2, which used to be Treacherous Ground but is now Bog Magic, will be out this week. Book 3, formerly Molten Trail and now Gecko Magic, follows next week. And Book 4, which nobody's read except my editor and me, will be out April 9th.

I may do a preorder for the final book. If so, I'll let you know.

So now you're all set with reading material for the next few weeks, right? And I'll be busy getting the new versions of the Elemental Keys books ready to go. We'll get through this together.

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These moments of virtually close blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

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