All Together Now

My co-author, Shannon Page, has collected all five of the Orcas Island mysteries, AKA THE CHAMELEON CHRONICLES, into one e-book edition. So, it’s an invisible box, but it’s completely a boxed set. Load this Orcas Omnibus on your e-reader, and you can enjoy the adventures of Cam, Jen, and JoJo all summer long.

In her latest newsletter, Shannon explains: At last! The author’s preferred version of all five Orcas Island cozy mystery books, in one omnibus edition! What does “author’s preferred” mean? Well, in this case, it means that after the final book, Orcas Intermission, was published last December, I carefully went through all five volumes of this beloved series, tweaking a few details here and there in the earlier books that had gained clarity as the series progressed, and fixing some typos. And then I bundled all five ebooks together into this giant box set. Whew!

Partnership and friendship

These books have been a labor of fun and friendship. Shannon is a dream collaborator and our writing meshed with surprising ease. Shannon created this fun Cam Tate voice and we both wrote in it freely. I’ve had people ask which parts I wrote, and which parts she wrote, and then hazard guesses that are almost always wrong.

The only hard and fast rule in this series about who-wrote-what is if it involved finding a dead body, that was me. Don’t misunderstand; Shannon is completely capable of writing dead body discovery! She sent me a draft with a long passage about finding and disposing of a dead body that was downright graphic. Stuff was sloshing. But after I read it, I lobbied for cutting it because I thought it didn’t fit, and she agreed. Agreeably.

This went both ways: Shannon cut an entire ending that I wrote. She also killed characters in draft that I later resurrected. We also went to bat for inclusion of scenes we’d written that the other wondered about, and we both had victories there. When I say these books were collaborative, they were. It was fun, challenging, rewarding.

So clearly we need another project.

Further Orcas Island Mysteries Adventures

If you’re wondering, the Orcas adventures penned by Laura Gayle will continue. Here are Shannon’s thoughts on it: The Chameleon Chronicles is all wrapped up, yes. BUT, cozy mysteries set on Orcas Island, starring Cam and Jen and Lisa and James and Kip and so many more of your favorite characters, are not at all finished! As of this writing, I am deep in drafting Orcas Afterlife, set a few years after the end of Intermission–so I’m able to update a lot of details about what Orcas Island is currently like. (And if this involves some dining out in new restaurants so I can write about them, well ::shrug:: research, eh?) The book is already proving to be tons of fun, and full of surprises!

I’ll probably help edit that series, but I’m off on my own authorly tangents…for now. And Shannon and I have other collaborative projects in the works. Well, in our brains. Somewhere. Brewing and coalescing.

Where to purchase the Orcas Island Omnibus edition:

Buy at Book View Cafe: The Chameleon Chronicles (this can be side-loaded to Kindle)

Buy on Amazon: The Chameleon Chronicles

Shannon’s site: Shannon Page