My Queen Esther Moment

Dog of Deliverance releases today

Neil S. Plakcy

Jun 30, 2025

It’s been called a “Queen Esther moment,” a time when someone feels compelled to stand up for his or her people. It refers to the Jewish holiday of Purim, when Esther, wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus, revealed her Jewish identity to the king. This was dangerous because the king’s vizier, Haman, was trying to have all the Jews in the kingdom killed.

My moment has been coming for a while, spurred by the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. Steve Levitan, the human hero of the golden retriever mysteries, has always been Jewish, and holidays like Hanukkah have come up in the series.

Of late, though, Judaism has become more important to me, and thus to Steve. In Blessing of the Dogs, Steve and Lili had a wedding at Shomrei Torah, the synagogue where Steve grew up. I gave them the wedding I wish I’d been able to have.

In Dog Grant Me, I explored Lili’s cultural background as a Juban—a Cuban Jew. Now in Dog of Deliverance, I’m using the Purim spiel (or story) as the structure for the novel. You don’t need to know anything about Purim, or Orthodox Judaism, to enjoy the mystery, but I thought I’d provide a little background.

Some time ago, my friend Zita Goldfinger told me about a visit to the Orthodox Jewish community of Kiryas Joel, outside New York City, where the leaders’ strict interpretation of doctrine left many community members lacking in education, health care, and basic civic services.

I spun that into a young woman’s crusade to overthrow the leadership of her community and make things better for everyone. A Queen Esther moment. Then I built the mystery around her and her crusade, adding in a subplot about another powerful man with bad intentions.

Lots of research went into the book, and I was fortunate to have Zita review the manuscript and correct many errors about Orthodox Judaism. Any that remain, of course, are my own responsibility.

I love mysteries that expose me to different cultures, so I hope readers will enjoy this dive into an aspect of Judaism that is mysterious to many. There is much joy in such communities—I love watching YouTube videos of Orthodox men in long coats and fur hats dancing with abandon. I hope I’ve shown all sides.

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Other Retailers

Dog of Deliverance released today on Amazon and all other e-booksellers. It will remain widely available for at least ninety days, when I’ll enroll it in Kindle Unlimited along with the rest of the series, which is already there.

Until next week, with love and gratitude,

Neil

 

Next Golden Mystery

Pre-order now for June 30 release

Neil S. Plakcy

Jun 23, 2025

Lots of good news to share today. I joined a massive free e-book promotion from ZoeBub and gave away over 3,000 copies of The Gentleman and the Spy, the first of my four Ormond Yard Victorian MM romances.

The Zoebub promo was free to join and focused on all different subgenres of romance novels. I had to take the book down from all retailers other than Amazon and enroll in the Kindle Select program for authors. That allows me to price the book at $0.00 for five days of the 90-day term. Otherwise, Amazon won’t let me make a book free on their site.

Why do authors give away books like that? Some feel that it diminishes the value of our work by making books free. My hope is that once readers are introduced to my work, they’ll want to continue the series and buy the following books, or other books I’ve written. I also got some visibility—The Gentleman and the Spy was #2 in one of Amazon’s best-seller lists (British Historical Fiction.) Supposedly, when the Amazon algorithm sees a big boost in sales for a book, even at $0.00, it pushes that book toward KU readers.

Kindle Select connects to Kindle Unlimited for readers. Readers who pay $11.99 a month can borrow up to 20 titles at a time, and can return them at any time during the month to borrow more. I get paid something like $.004 per page read, which adds up! This month, for example, I have about 56,000 page reads for all the books I’ve ever had in KU.

My other big news is that Bless Our Sleep, the George Clay gay private eye book I published last year, is a finalist for the Shamus Award for best paperback original book featuring a private investigator. The award is given by the Private Eye Writers of America, so it’s wonderful to be recognized by a group of my peers. The news that Bless Our Sleep is considered one of the top five books in its category is very meaningful, and the publicity surrounding the award nominations has given some new life to that title.

Buy Bless Our Sleep at Amazon

Last week I drove three hours upstate to Cape Canaveral for the Space Coast Book Lovers convention. About 300 readers and fifty authors gathered to talk about books, and I was pleased by how many readers came up to compliment me on the panel I participated in, and then buy books from me.

I’m accustomed to attending mystery fan conventions, where there is one bookseller who controls what titles sell, and collects a hefty (often 50-60%) commission. At Space Coast, all the authors gathered in a ballroom to hand-sell our books. I went prepared with cash (lots of singles!) and a way to take credit card payments through my phone.

Though I had to drag bags of books myself, I enjoyed talking to readers directly. I sold twenty paperbacks across several series and it was fascinating to hear what other readers enjoy, and see which of my books they picked.

Next Monday marks the launch of my 21^st golden retriever mystery, Dog of Deliverance. I used the Jewish holiday of Purim as a structure for the book, but you don’t need to know anything about Judaism or Esther, Mordecai, Ahasuerus or Haman to enjoy the mystery and the clues Rochester digs up. I’ll write more about the book and how I came to write it next week, but it’s up for pre-order now at Amazon and most other e-bookstores.

Amazon Pre-Order

Other Vendor Pre-Order

I should have mentioned this earlier, but I’m changing my bookselling strategy for a while. I’ve taken down all the golden retriever mysteries (except the new one) from that worldwide network of e-retailers to make them exclusive to Amazon. Because of the KU program, it’s just more profitable to be exclusive there. My plan is to make every new book widely available for at least 90 days before putting it in KU.

Being in KU allows me to do more targeted marketing as well. I hate shutting out any possible readers, but Brody and Griffin need their chow! (And their hard-boiled eggs, sweet potatoes, and bi-weekly acupuncture treatments.)

As always, thank you for your support.

Neil