How do I prefer to have my books published?

Today! That's how. And that's why this post is a wee bit late going live. 

Dandy Gilver No. 8 - A DEADLY MEASURE OF BRIMSTONE - is out today and I'm preparing for a launch party tonight. The eggs and butter are coming to room temperature and soon there will be cakes.

BRIMSTONE is stuffed to the brim with technology.  It's set in 1929 in Laidlaw's Hydropathic Hotel in the hills of Moffat, where affluent and sickly patrons go for the likes of Faradaic, ultraviolet and galvanic heat baths. It's basically sulphurous spring water so disgusting it must be good for you and electricity - new and exciting! 

Water and electricity combined - how could it possibly go wrong? Well, it does. The Moffat Hydro is pretty luxurious but it shares one feature with every motel in mystery fiction. Guests check in . . . and you can guess the rest.

I'm not so much for technology, me.  I don't own an e-reader and don't have any plans to, even though that meant that over the summer I took five paper books to Scotland with me to prepare for Bouchercon moderating and then brought them back again in case I needed to check anything.

I like the double-page spread of a book. I enjoy seeing the jacket design while I'm reading one. I would miss the way your fingers tell you how much of a book is left and so you can plan the last reading session, with a cup of tea and guaranteed quiet while you race to the end.

I *can* read online, but it always feels like work, never pleasure. Likewise I can use a clothes drier, but I don't own one and the smell of line-dried clothes is one of my life's pleasures. I can use a microwave but I don't own one and the sound of a bubbling pot on the stove makes me happy. I always say I'd make a great Amish housewife if it weren't for the fundamentalism.

And the small matter of being a crimewriter too.