Greetings and congratulations on surviving to cross into another year. Of course, if you celebrate the Jewish New Year, 5779 began back at sunset on September 9. Or the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Pig starts February 5. Islamic New Year will be coming up August 30 this year. For us pagans, we celebrated our New Year on Samhain, October 31, but we don't keep track of a number. It's just part of the celestial wheel. So, maybe that Happy New Year greeting is as irrelevant as the arbitrary line we draw in the sand to mark off time.
I mused about that a lot in my First Exit blog post today and if you want to see more pictures of my adventures in Arizona with my daughter, you can get the whole story at http://firstexit0.blogspot.com/2018/12/another-imaginary-line-in-sand.html.
But that's not what this posting is all about. First, I would like to thank you all for the warm welcome to SOL this year. I've posted three stories and all have been well-received. Thank you. Thank you. Of course, I've been posting stories as aroslav on SOL for seven years now, but this is the first year of Wayzgoose stories from my backlist of commercial fiction.
These stories, City Limits, For Money or Mayhem, and The Gutenberg Rubric are all available in eBook and paperback. But it has become increasingly important to me to broaden my readership and to give something to the community. Not only the SOL community, but the world at large. I'm not claiming that my stories are classics or that they add significantly to the well-being of either readers or the world. But as I age, I have realized that there are a lot of readers who either cannot or will not afford books. I'm happy to sell them to those who can buy but I want to make all my books available for free online reading.
So, next is what to expect in the coming months. January 12, I'll begin posting For Blood or Money, the sequel to my Dag Hamar mystery, For Money or Mayhem. According to my calendar, it should post every three days until March 22. Here's the blurb.
You're a hard-boiled detective with all the trimmings. You've got the Seattle Waterfront office, the sexy young assistant who adores you, and an attitude to match the constant gray drizzle outside your window.
Into your office blows this high-society dame boo-hooing about her missing husband and how he always said that if anything happened to him she should come to you, Dag Hamar. The only problem is you're a middle-aged computer geek who doesn't do missing persons. Doc has told you to stay close to home while you wait for a replacement for your failing ticker. And the only clue the lady brought you was the missing man's laptop.
Did I mention she's your ex-wife and the missing man is the former best friend she ran off with twenty years ago? You can't wait to get your hands on that computer!
Enter the world of Dag Hamar and Deb Riley, computer forensics detectives who discover hidden files and computer code can be as dangerous as dark alleys and flying bullets as they enter the high-stakes game of Seattle's business world to trace a missing friend and the billion-dollar fortune that disappeared with him.
Back in 2007, when this book was first released by Long Tale Press, it became my first success in commercial fiction. Yes, even though its timeline is fifteen years after For Money or Mayhem, For Blood or Money was published five years before. That happens a lot to me. The good news (for me) is that I have two more sequels that have never been published and I'll be releasing them here in the next year!
Okay, the question that some of my most faithful readers have to ask is, "Will this have another gut-wrenching emotional downer for an ending?" (Like FMOM.) Well, things never work out quite the way Dag would like them to. So, yes, the ending won't be a happy one. On the other hand, it will probably not hit as hard as the ending to FMOM. It was, however, the clamor that readers set up at the end of For Blood or Money that convinced me I had to go back in time and write a prequel. Someday, I will also finish writing the book that comes between the two, For Mayhem or Madness.
What's next?
If all goes well, I'll begin serialized release of Wild Woods, the sequel to City Limits, sometime in April in preparation for its June commercial release. Yes, you get to read it here before it is released to the world. Chapters have started coming back from my editors and I expect to start the rewrite of my November draft in the next week or so. One of the things I will be working on during the rewrite is making sure all the loose ends of the storyline are tied up as I do not expect a third book in this series. What happened to the children? Who is Gee really? Are the families culpable? Will the preacher get his? Will the Wild Woods become part of the Forest? Anything else that needs to be covered, I'm making sure is answered in this volume.
The draft is just as long as City Limits was and follows the same thirteen-episode mini-series format.
City Limits gathered some critical praise, but nowhere near the sales that I had hoped for. I can't imagine that Wild Woods will fare better in the marketplace, but when I start a story and leave an open end, I feel honor-bound to finish it.
So, now that we have stepped over this imaginary line in the sand we call 2019, you know what to expect from me.
Thank you.
I will mention that even though many of you have been very complimentary about my stories, these stories are not eligible for Clitorides Awards. Please don't nominate them as I will remove the nominations. These are No Sex stories and the rules on the Clitorides are very clear. "Any complete and freely accessible sex story on the net, posted in their entirety or concluded during the award year is eligible. Stories in progress aren't eligible. No-sex stories aren't eligible either."
My alter ego, aroslav completed three stories on SOL in 2018 and all are eligible if you'd like to help promote my writing. This includes the recently completed Living Next Door to Heaven 3: What Were They Thinking? Thank you!
Okay. I'm a thousand words short of my writing goal for today. I need to return to my regularly scheduled story!