The Joy of Foreign Editions

In 2019 I received an email that almost went straight to my spam folder. The person contacting me purported to work for a publisher interested in publishing my High Seas series in French and distributing it around the world. Fortunately for me, I gave it a second look.

It was indeed an offer from J'ai Lu Pour Elle to publish my books. A writer friend said, "Foreign rights are like a smiling stranger speaking a language you don't know shoving money in your pocket." As an author, you don't have to do the work. The book is already published in English, the non-English publisher hires translators and markets it, and et voilà. My agent handled the nuts and bolts of the finances and I have to say, when I was in a writing dry spell during COVID those French sales helped keep me going. My books were now available to readers literally all over the world, because Lingua Franca is still a thing: Viet Nam, Morocco, other parts of Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and, of course, Canada. Lots of people outside of France are francophones. 

One blip in this joy is that I was supposed to fly to Paris for a conference where I'd be able to meet my new readers. Sadly, the conference was scheduled for spring of 2020 and the pandemic shut everything down. I'd even been learning French with Duolingo! But we make plans and life interferes. C'est la vie 

That's not my only foreign rights sale. Early in my career I received another suspicious looking email, this time from a German publisher. I checked it out, discovered it was legit, and had my first three books published in German by Heyne. Their cover art for my historical romance Smuggler's Bride remains a favorite of mine. The killer flamingo looming in the background just screams, "It's Florida!" and I love it. 

I even had a foreign rights sale to Estonia. I'm guessing those long winter nights make for a lot of reading time. The neat thing about the Estonian editions is that they included footnotes explaining some Florida and US history to help the readers. 

I love all of my foreign editions, but when it comes to cover art, I have a special spot for Tourmentes (Tome 2) - Cœurs au large (High Seas 2--Castaway Dreams). It captured the essence of the story, and the joie de vivre of Daphne dancing on the beach with Pompom makes me smile every time I see it.

I'm still practicing my French lessons every day because some day I'll get to take that trip to Paris and see my French books in their elegant setting. Until then, I'm giving all of the suspicious emails a second glance, because who wouldn't love to have a nice person shove money in your direction? 

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Darlene Marshall writes award-winning historical romance featuring pirates, privateers, smugglers, and the occasional possum. She loves working at a job where business attire is shorts and a shirt festooned with pink flamingos and palm trees. She lives in North Central Florida, a convenient location for putting the convertible top down and researching sites of great historical significance, which also happen to be at the beach and serve mojitos.

Marshall has worked as a broadcast and print journalist, news anchor, radio station owner, obituary writer, and a few other odd jobs. She became a novelist because there were fake people in her head having adventures, so it was either write it down or check into therapy. She’s never been a pirate, but the day is not yet over.

Her books have been published in English, German, French, and Estonian, and she’s Membership Director of Regency Fiction Writers, and Section Leader of Erotic Writing at the LitForum.com.

Represented by Barbara Collins Rosenberg of The Rosenberg Group.