Thursday, June 30, 2011

I finally wrote THE END to my new Sid Chance book, and it's now in the works for publication late this fall. We've had a slight change in the name. It's now The Good, The Bad and The Murderous. I suppose I subliminally thought of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly when I came up with the idea for the name, leaving off the three "the"s. My editor said if we're going to do a takeoff on the movie title, let's go all the way. So there you have it.

The book took some turns toward the end that I hadn't considered earlier. That's the beauty of plotting by the seat of your pants. The author is just as surprised as the reader the way things turn out. If you've read The Surest Poison, the first Sid Chance mystery (and if not, why haven't you?), you'll recall that the story began at the rustic hillside cabin  in the woods where he had made his home for three years. Well, it turns out that the new book winds up at the same location.

The cover, shown above, is simple but dramatic. It features the hit man who is a central figure in the plot. For most of the book, he is a shadowy figure in the background. It's a lot like the antagonist in the third Greg McKenzie mystery, Deadly Illusions. Damon Saint, the bad guy in that book, didn't show his face until toward the end of the story.

Although the paperback edition of The Good, The Bad and The Murderous won't be out until late in the fall, plans are to release the e-book version by the end of the summer. So look for it in a couple of months.

In the next few weeks, I'll have another publishing landmark. My first book, Secret of the Scroll, which kicked off the Greg McKenzie series, has been out of print for the past few years since I parted company with my previous publisher. I got a supply of books from him and have made them available on Amazon.com and at various signing events. But they're now all gone. So the book is being re-issued by Night Shadows Press.

All of my books, of course, are available in e-book format on Amazon.com for the Kindle. Three are also currently on Smashwords.com in various other e-book formats, such as for Barnes & Noble's Nook. All of them will be available from Smashwords shortly.