I had to recheck that title a couple of times lest there be an unfortunate (but not entirely inaccurate) typo. Somehow I managed to rub some kind of lotion or oil in my eyes this morning and my vision is infuriatingly blurry. I've tried rinsing my eyes, eye drops, etc. but...the blurriness persists. I said DUCKS, right?
I was going to discuss...well, it doesn't matter. I'm going to settle for a quickish update on what you can expect to see from me over the next few months.
I'm currently working on
Fair Chance, the final book in the All's Fair trilogy (and on Wednesday I'll be blogging a bit more on the pressures of wrapping up a mini-series over at
Not Your Usual Suspects) but that's not due out until next March or so.
What
is coming out this year?
First up is
Murder Between the Pages. It's...nutty. It's a post World War 2 bit of kooky amateur sleuthing by two rival mystery writers.
Felix Day, author of the Constantine Sphinx mysteries, and
Leonard Fuller, author of the Inspector Fez mysteries, are bitter rivals and
the best of enemies. Both happen to be present when a notorious author of roman
à clef is shot by an invisible assailant during a signing at historic
Marlborough Bookstore.
Even if they weren’t both suspects, it’s the perfect
opportunity to match wits and sleuthing skills.
If only the murderer was equally amused.
Here's a snippet from Chapter Two...
The bell jingled as Harp yanked
open the door and breezed out, and to my astonishment, Day let him leave
without so much as a peep.
“What the hell?” I said as I reached
him. “You let him go?”
Day seemed almost distracted as he replied,
“He’s with the police.”
“Are you kidding me? That’s the oldest
trick in the book!” I grabbed the door handle--and Day grabbed my arm with
bony but surprisingly strong fingers.
He was scowling--which is his usual
expression with me--and I scowled back.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said.
“If you don’t want a punch in the
nose, let go my arm,” I warned him.
“Just try it.” Day's black eyes
were narrow and hostile. Again, perfectly normal for him. “Where were you when
that shot went off?”
“Me?” I gaped at him. “That shot came from the back of the room. As
you very well know.”
“I don’t know any such thing.”
“Where were you? That’s the
question.”
His eyes blazed. “Had I been
planning to shoot anyone today, it wouldn’t have been Josiah Shelton.”
“Oh, very nice!” I retorted. “Well,
maybe you missed and shot Shelton
by mistake.”
“I don’t miss.”
“That’s not what the critics say.”
Day’s face turned a nice healthy
red.
This is my
Kindle Unlimited experiment, which I consider to be something of a disaster already. By now I would typically have about 2000 preorders. Instead we're looking at a very scary and unsustainable 700ish. But I'm locked in and anyway this all started because I'm so tired of so many writers insisting the only way they can make money is through KU, so the experiment shall continue. And I'll be honest about the results, biased though I am. I mean, what's the point of an experiment if you're not going to really look at what's in the test tube?
So there's that. And then there's
The Curse of the Blue Scarab, which is even kookier. But I'vealready chatted about that one (which, if you missed, you can read about
here). I haven't listed it for preorders yet on Amazon, but probably in the next day or so.
And then we've got the much anticipated (or maybe just long delayed) Adrien English holiday novella. So This is Christmas. If you're on my mailing list, you got a teeny sneak peek at that. It's also available for preorder, though again not yet at Amazon.
And then lastly we have the final release of 2016:
Christmas Waltz, the second collection of holiday codas. Like the first collection the existing codas have been edited and expanded. And of course there will be several new codas as well as some other bits and bobs.
Not my most productive writing year, I agree. But definitely some interesting stuff (or at least, I hope you'll think so too).
Next year... well, the plan next year is to finish off a lot of these long promised titles, particularly the sequels and series. So it should be fairly busy.
But why worry today about what we can worry about even more tomorrow?
We're in the process of doing a major updating of my website, so if you're wondering about the fate of a particular title, you can always check in there. It's quite a study in optimism and my faith in the power of positive thinking. ;-)
