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With gratitude to all the authors
I live in New Jersey, a mere twelve miles away from New York City, so my area has been hit very hard by COVID-19. We wear masks; we social distance; we wash our hands until our skin is about to flake off; and we stay home as much as possible.
Since I am a writer and sit at my home computer for work even in normal times, my job has changed virtually not at all. That makes me lucky. (On the other hand, I am grateful and admiring of the folks who continue to staff the grocery stores, the post offices, and all the health care facilities for being selfless and courageous. We could not survive without them. A big thank you!)
However, all the terrible and tragic news often overwhelms me, so I have sought the things that have brought me comfort all my life: books.
Recently, I discovered—and ripped through at light speed—the many volumes of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, an incredible science fiction series with some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever encountered in literature. I literally wept when I read the last book because I would miss all my friends from the Vorkiverse.
Even more than that, I needed to be on another planet, in another time, and that was the enormous gift Ms. Bujold gave me.
I want to say thank you to her and to all the other authors who have swept me away from reality when it became too much. I have depended on the kindness of these strangers my entire life. They have broadened my horizons, reassured me, made me laugh when I felt more like crying, made me cry but in a good way, and made me believe in the human race again, which isn’t so easy these days.
I thank them from a place of profound understanding of what it takes to make that gift to a reader since I am a writer myself. My heartfelt gratitude goes to all those who have spilled their imaginations and guts onto the page, so that I could use them to refill my well and go forward in my life with a refreshed spirit.
Your support increased my donation!
Wonderful news! Because of you, my enthusiastic and generous readers, I was able to increase my donation to the three chosen animal rescue organizations from $1,000 each to $1,500 each. Thank you for buying The Money Man in the two weeks after its release (or anytime before its publication date)! Since I base my donation on a percentage of my royalties during that time period, your purchase of my book added extra to my guaranteed donation. You guys rock!
These are the three organizations which just received donations of $1,500 each (nominated by my amazing newsletter subscribers):
Cat Team 7, Norfolk Naval Station, VA
Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, Medford, NJ
Wisconsin Humane Society, Milwaukee campus
I also donated $250 each to these equally worthy groups (again thanks to nominations by my newsletter subscribers):
Hobo Hotel for Cats, Lake Charles, LA
Brownie Blondie Foundation, Puerto Rico
Exotic Feline Rescue Center, Center Point, IN (because of my trip to Africa!)
Heaven Can Wait, Ontario, Canada (because horses!)
Lothian Cat Rescue, Edinburgh, Scotland
My readers are the most amazing readers in the world! Thank you for your support!
THE MONEY MAN is available now!
Woohoo! THE MONEY MAN is finally out in the world! It’s always an exciting day for an author when her book baby gets released into the hands of readers. That closes the circle of her creation. A huge thank you to everyone who buys, reads, and enjoys my new book! I hope you love spending time with my characters as much as I did.
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ou can buy it here:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/2BbBqFo
Print: https://amzn.to/2OR3mX2
Audio: https://amzn.to/2IUlhZa
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-money-man-nancy-herkness/1132798099
My newsletter subscribers nominated over 50 animal rescue groups!
I am thrilled by how many of my fabulous readers are animal lovers. I recently sent out a newsletter saying that I would donate $1,000 or more of my royalties from THE MONEY MAN to each of three animal rescue groups. (If you don’t get my newsletter, you can sign up here.) When I asked my subscribers to nominate their favorite organizations, I was overwhelmed with the response. More than 50 nominations poured in!
Honestly I wanted to choose all of them. Every single group is doing amazing work and deserves support. It took me hours of agonizing to make the final decision as to which ones I would choose. Even then, I expanded my recipients, adding six more to receive smaller donations.
Since I can’t give to them all, I want to share links to all the organizations nominated by my incredibly big-hearted readers. I hope you’ll take a look and perhaps choose one or two to support yourself.
I will donate a minimum of $1,000 to:
Cat Team 7, Norfolk Naval Station, VA
Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, Medford, NJ
Wisconsin Humane Society, Milwaukee campus
I will donate $250 to:
Here are the many more just as worthy of donations (in no particular order):
Newsletter upgrade
Since it’s a new decade and things change along with the passage of time, I’ve decided to up my game on my newsletter to—wait for it!—once a month. Crazy frequent, right? LOL! I hope I can keep up the pace. (Sign up here!)
Here’s what you’ll find each month:
- A writing update: where I am with my writing projects and when you can expect the next book. Expect teasers and excerpts!
- Something about animals. You know I love them. Most of my readers do too. So you’ll be hearing about mine and other people’s. Because who doesn’t enjoy a good cat meme?
- Food, a topic near and dear to most of our hearts. Right now I’m cooking HelloFresh and on Weight Watchers.
- Any other topic I think would interest you, my wonderful readers. But I’ll keep it brief, I swear.
So, if you haven’t signed up, I hope you will join the fun! You’ll get a free novella when you do. If you aren’t sure whether you’re on the list or not, sign up again because my email service weeds out duplicates.
Note: I never share my newsletter email list with anyone else. It’s just you and me, wonderful readers!
Collaborating with my daughter
My latest release, SECOND ACT, features a heroine who’s a veterinarian. By a strange coincidence, my Darling Daughter was in her final year of veterinary school when I was writing this book. The truth is that I probably couldn’t have written it without her, but the more important truth is that it was so much fun to work with her on the medical scenes.
I give Darling Daughter major credit for taking the time to answer my questions and check my accuracy when she was in the midst of crazy rotations, doing things like vaccinating evil, biting piglets or helping “dummy foals” (yes, that’s what they call them) learn how to nurse from their mothers on night shift at the ICU. Yet she was always patient with my inquiries and mistakes and cluelessness.
Darling Daughter admits that she enlisted her fellow vet students when I would set her a problem like this one: “What kind of ailment could a cat have that would require an emergency visit, would not kill the cat, but meant that the cat needed to stay at the vet for X number of days?” (I insisted that no animal would die in the making of this book.) Evidently, a group of students would sit around and brainstorm on these kinds of requests. Sometimes, the response was that nothing fit my parameters but here were some possibilities if I could be a little flexible.
The emails would fly thick and fast as we tried to work out a viable solution for my story line problem. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to see my child’s expertise at work, especially as she generously shared it with me.
Once we had the ailment nailed down, Darling Daughter would walk me through the problem and the treatment step-by-step. In the scene where Jessica and Hugh operate on a cat in the middle of the night, Darling Daughter made sure that I kept the procedure sterile and sent me photos of all the equipment that would be used. I even got a video of how to anesthetize a cat. Then she read the scene after I’d written it and corrected all my mistakes—of which there were many, sometimes in the service of the fiction. But Darling Daughter was not going to let me get anything wrong, although she did allow me to gloss over a few steps to keep the pacing swifter.
We spend so much time teaching our children as we raise them. It was such a joy to have the favor returned in spades as my child educated me.
The dogs thank you!
Even though Brodie is a purebred golden retriever, he is a rescue. I adopted him after he’d been through four previous owners. He had some behavioral issues but he’s always been a sweet boy.
Brodie and I thank all my fantastic readers for buying SECOND ACT so I could donate to three terrific animal assistance organizations. You all made it possible for me to donate $1,000 to each of these groups:
National Police Dog Foundation
I so appreciate my fabulous newsletter subscribers for nominating these worthy organizations! I love getting know the folks who do such amazing work for our critter friends.
SECOND ACT is “eagerly anticipated”!
Here’s something new and different: my new book, SECOND ACT, has been chosen as one of the most eagerly anticipated romance novels of 2019 by a dating website in the UK! I’m very flattered because who would be more interested in reading a love story than folks looking for a new romantic partner?
Check out the website post here and read about the other books they’re looking forward to.
Buy a book, help an animal!
A huge thank you to all my wonderful New Book Alert subscribers who nominated the most amazing organizations which help animals! It was so hard to choose among such worthy causes. After much thought and research, I have selected three organizations to receive a percentage of my royalties for the first two weeks after the publication date (including pre-orders and foreign sales) of SECOND ACT:
Greyhound Angels Adoption: dedicated to the placement of retired racing greyhounds into loving adoptive forever homes.
Jacksonville Humane Society: a no-kill animal shelter.
National Police Dog Foundation: promotes awareness and raises funds for the purchase, training, and veterinary care for active and retired law enforcement K-9s.
I guarantee a minimum donation of $1,000 to each organization. Last year my enthusiastic readers increased my donations to $1,500 each.
The more books I sell, the more money goes to our fur friends. So please spread the word about SECOND ACT and my donations!
I love this cover!
My terrific publisher, Montlake Romance, always gives me great covers, but the cover for my upcoming release, SECOND ACT, (April 2, 2019, but you can pre-order it now on Kindle, in print, and in audio) is one of my favorites. Why? Because they found exactly the right model to portray Hugh Baker, my movie star hero with the dark past. The model exudes the kind of confidence a star would have, he’s convincing as a charismatic leading man (and quite nice to look at!), but there is a slight edge to him that hints at the secrets lurking beneath the surface. Honestly, I even like his watch. LOL!
Not to mention the fact that the cover designer chose this model right off the bat which makes the cover design process go so smoothly. All we had to do was find the background of paparazzi and we were done. Love that!
So here’s the gorgeousness in large format for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
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