Celebrating 10 Years of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles

To celebrate 10 years of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles, enjoy FREE copies of ALL four books! (Scroll to the bottom for the four individual links.)

The adventure started with this, my 2015 New Year’s resolution, in a blog of its own but paraphrased here with the choice bits:

Do I want this blog to be the story of the fiery, relentless energy of the ten years in which I produced five muse-inspired novels? The aching loss as the decade-long dream of being traditionally published got pounded down into nothingness?

Nah.

The New Year is a great opportunity to end a pity party over what didn’t work, and move on. It’s what I did in January 2013 when my second ballet novel was on submission with editors, the third such process in four years, with the same discouraging results. I love writing novels; it was what I wanted to keep doing forever. But writing novel #6 wasn’t going well. Neither was writing #7. Or attempting revised versions of both. Hobbled by continued editorial rejection, my attempts to create new material felt awkward and disingenuous, like operating ventriloquists’ dummies where once there’d been flesh and blood characters.

Alas, these are the perils of a creative vocation. The muse no-shows, for whatever reason, and you’re screwed, or at least embarrassed into silence about the dreck you’re producing. And what I missed, in truth, was writing about ballet and classical music, even as, fiction-wise, no new ideas had sprung up. Fine, I thought, a dance and music-related blog. That I could do, with or without editorial approval. So I did just that in 2013, with The Classical Girl. (And in 2025 it’s still going strong, but that’s another blog for another day!)

My 2015 New Year’s resolution: to self-publish the ballet novels instead of letting them languish in the drawer. Therefore, in May 2015, dear reader, out goes the first one, Off Balance. In October of 2016, it will be followed by the sequel-but-not, Outside the Limelight.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

The third book of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles, Ballet Orphans, was published in 2021 and the final book, Other Stages, was published in 2024. (Between books 2 and 3 you’ll find a non-series novel, A Dancer’s Guide to Africa, that factors in delightfully to the series. I’d recommend reading it before Ballet Orphans, and lucky you, this book is free too, HERE.

Please enjoy these novels and share the links with your friends. They will remain FREE for the next five days, my gift to readers past, present and future. Without the enthusiasm of all those readers out there who gave me books a chance, I wouldn’t have seen this dream of mine come true. And let that serve as a reminder to all of you: don’t be afraid to dream BIG.

Here are the links I promised; just click on each book’s title

Note that while Ballet Orphans is the third book in the series, it’s a prequel, so you can start the reading with that one if you prefer. (And consider reading A Dancer’s Guide to Africa first!)

• Off Balance, Book 1 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles —  May, 2015
• Outside the Limelight, Book 2 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles — October, 2016
• A Dancer’s Guide to Africa, a novel — Oct, 2018
• Ballet Orphans, a prequel, Book 3 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles — January, 2021
• Other Stages, Book 4 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles — January, 2024

And now, time for me to celebrate. Care to join me in a glass of bubbly?

Are you new to the Ballet Theatre Chronicles? You can find book descriptions and praise for each book by going to my “Novels” page. Additionally, the books all have ample reviews on Amazon, so take a peek at what readers have been saying about each novel over the past ten years.