Craig Schaefer's Blog, page 4

Revised Reading Order (now with charts!)

This space between week-apart holidays always feels like a strange limbo to me; do you ever get that feeling? Anyway, I'm doing some gardening (figuratively) and getting everything ship-shape for the new year to come, starting with revising the long-neglected reading order list for both of my fictional settings.

Instead of just a straight list of titles (boring), I tried to work up a little more visual flair (and to make it clear that no, you don't HAVE to read the entire canon, here are all the books where you can jump right in if something about them catches your eye.)

The first draft illustrated direct links between different series and their books down to cameos and Easter eggs, but the chart turned into an unreadable mess of dotted lines, as one might predict. I'll figure it out for the next revision.

I hope you're all having a good week and staying warm out there!

Down Among the Dead Men: Now on Audible!

Spooky season continues and we’re doing our part over here, just in time for the weekend: the audiobook version of Down Among the Dead Men, narrated by the always-excellent Adam Verner, is now available! Just like I said when the novel came out, I promise I won’t keep you waiting this long for the next one.

Have a great weekend, and stay warm!

Quick Updates, and a Freebie

Happy Spooky Month, all! I’ve got some quick updates for you today. First up, I’m still working on the manuscript for the new Harmony Black adventure, Never Send Roses. That’s about all I can say right now, save that it’s shaping up nicely.

The audiobook version of Down Among the Dead Men (narrated by Adam Verner) is completely finished, reviewed and approved (by me, anyway.) Now we’re just waiting for Audible to run it through their own final checks. Only problem is that it’s impossible to know how long that’ll take; in the past, sometimes the queue takes a month to get through, sometimes just a couple of days, and all they’ll send me is a surprise “It’s in the store now!” email when they’re done. I’ll let you know when I know.

Meanwhile, recording for the audiobook version of Any Minor World (narrated by Susannah Jones) begins this coming weekend, so that’ll be out fast on DAtDM’s heels. We’re getting caught up!

Finally, if you don’t have it already, a random freebie: The White Gold Score is up for grabs all this week. A side-story set early in Daniel Faust’s career (and an alternate introduction to the series), it’s a sordid dive into a world of music, drugs, and occult mayhem.

I’d better get back to work. And make more coffee. Catch you soon!

Down Among the Dead Men: Available Now!

It's been a long time coming, but the tenth Daniel Faust novel is finally here. Down Among the Dead Men is out today, marking Daniel's triumphant return. (His return to the lands of the living? That'd be a spoiler.) You can find the ebook version at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6YD9MFM -- the paperback copy has been delayed due to Amazon being weird, but it should be available by the end of the day. Also, Adam Verner has signed on to handle the audiobook narration as soon as his schedule opens up, probably around the end of next month.

My thanks as always, and I hope you enjoy the story!

This Friday, Faust Returns

Kept you waiting, huh? Guess I should probably do something about that. I’m happy to announce that Down Among the Dead Men, the long-awaited return of Daniel Faust, is available for preorder now and will release this Friday, the twenty-second!

It’s been a long time coming, and I’m so excited to share this new adventure with you. Here’s the synopsis:

Daniel Faust’s last heist ended with a betrayal, a bullet in his heart, and a plunge from a lonely back-country bridge. Now he’s on life support, and the occult relic keeping him tethered to this world is counting down the last seconds to midnight.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, he just woke up in hell.

Marooned, lost, and hunted in an endless city of the damned, Daniel is racing against time. If he can’t make it back to his body before the clock runs out, he’ll be trapped in the netherworld forever. A host of enemies stand in his way. Some are desperate to silence him. Others, ghosts etched in blood and gun-smoke, are hungry for payback. Hell is the one place where you can never outrun your past.

And in the land of the living, Daniel’s family and crew gather to mount a desperate defense around his hospital bed as assassins close in from all sides. Survival will take a miracle, but this magician might have one last trick up his sleeve.

Prepare for action, chills, the return of some old friends and older enemies, and one scene that will probably make you say “oh, that’s just wrong.” See you on Friday!

New (ish?) Release: Die Geister von New York

Happy Monday, all! So here’s a nifty little milestone in my career as a writer: today marks the release of my very first foreign translation: Die Geister von New York, the German-language edition of Ghosts of Gotham. Hello, Germany, nice to meet you!

Will there be more translations in the future? As with everything in publishing, it mostly depends on how this one sells. We shall see.

Final edits on Down Among the Dead Men are in the “really soon now” stage; beyond that I can’t say, because it is never wise to risk the wrath of an editor. They have ways of hurting writers. Really soul-deep ways. And with that, I’d better get back to work; have a great week and I’ll see you soon.

Any Minor World: Available Now!

Good evening, all! First up, the question I know many folks will ask: yes, the new Daniel Faust novel IS on the way. The final draft is in Kira's hands, undergoing the last round of edits, and as soon as she's done it'll be unleashed upon the world. I'm so sorry for keeping you waiting, but I hope you'll agree that the final results were worth it.

The next Harmony Black adventure is underway, too; I'm writing the first draft right now.

But today I have an unexpected surprise (unexpected even by me at first -- to make a very long story short, this wasn't supposed to happen for a few months yet, but a happy accident made it possible.) Any Minor World, my first new release in nearly a year, is out right now! Yep, I stealth-released this one. I like to keep y'all on your toes. The ebook is out now, the paperback should be available by tomorrow night, and the audiobook version will hopefully be in production soon. What's it about? Here's the pitch:

"For Roy Mackey -- a recovering addict who makes his living as an unlicensed PI and occasional muscle for hire -- tracking down a dead writer's final manuscript should be a walk in the park. Too bad his client is a phony, the dead writer is a thief, and shadowy men are watching his every move. All clues lead to a canceled pulp-adventure comic, The Midnight Jury, and its mousy, reclusive author. Lucy Langenkamp is living a quiet life as an art restorer in Las Vegas; when Roy helps her escape from a crew of armed kidnappers, she's as baffled as he is.

Then one of her own characters, a flamethrower-wielding "human exterminator," steps out of the pages of her comic book and into the real world. He's intent on hunting her down, and he isn't alone. The pulp villains spawned from Lucy's childhood imagination are coming to life, searching for their long-lost author. Her most sinister creation, the Illustrated Duke, has a dark plan in motion.

This is a job for Lucy's two-fisted vigilante, the Midnight Jury. But the Jury is missing. To save the day, Lucy and Roy must descend into a noir-drenched nightmare city on a rescue mission. The walls between fiction and reality are shattered, there's wild magic in the air, and it's up to two unlikely heroes to risk it all and save the day."

(Oh, for the Faust readers...remember Chapter Tangerine, the weird and brief parallel-world jaunt from The Locust Job? Hint, hint. Several of you said you wanted to see more of that place, and so did I, so here we are. The story itself is a standalone piece with new characters.)

I hope you enjoy it. I'm excited, nervous, hopeful, grateful...but most of all, I'm back. And now I'm getting back to work. Can't keep Harmony and Jessie waiting.

Attempts Were Made

So I asked Major to help with the cover reveal for the next Daniel Faust novel. Unfortunately he didn’t quite understand the assignment and decided to reveal his favorite, most comfy covers instead, then took a nap. Still a very good boy, deserving of many belly rubs.

Speaking of, the final manuscript is in editing as we speak, and shouldn’t be far off now. I can’t wait to get this one out to y’all. Also, Adam Verner’s return as Faust’s ever-reliable audiobook narrator has been confirmed! No release dates just yet, but I’ll have something firmer as we get close to finished with edits.

Thank you all, so much and from the bottom of my heart, for the outpouring of love and support from my last update. It’s heartening to know that my readers have my back. You’ve inspired me (once again) to keep improving myself, and to put my all into writing the best stories I can.

On that note, work on the next Harmony Black novel is already underway. All I can say for now is that it picks up right where Black Tie Required left off, with Harmony and Jessie racing to stop Nadine before their demonic nemesis can vanish, leading to a sting operation and a scam that even Daniel would be proud of.

That’s all for me today, just a quick update and a big thank you. Have a great week!

Updates, I Have a Few

As promised, announcements! This post will be split into two parts, covering two very different updates. I’ll start with the bit that I think most everyone is more interested in.

Final rewrites on the long-awaited next Daniel Faust novel are done. In the can, wrapped up, finished, and I have an appointment with my ever-reliable editor Kira to go over them starting in April. As soon as she’s finished, it’ll be out and in your hands. No teases, no long pre-order periods, no malarkey.

I can’t apologize enough for keeping you waiting so long. As I’ve explained before (you can find old posts about this), the dawn of the pandemic was my brain’s cue to shut down for a bit and generally force me to come face to face with increasing levels of burnout and neglected mental health issues, and I needed to handle my shit before getting one more word down on the page.

I’m pleased to say that with modern chemistry and a damn good therapist, I’m back to work. And working with a more healthy, sustainable mindset than before, which should help me to both deliver regular books and better ones going forward.

Will it have been worth the wait? Gosh, I hope so, but that’s for you to decide. I can only tell you that it’s got action, violence, laughs, adventure, kissing, more violence, and visits from some very, very old but familiar foes.

My next book up at bat will be, naturally, the next (and also overdue) Harmony Black novel. Never Send Roses has been plotted out and I’ve gone so far as to reserve editing time for it in advance, as a show of confidence that I’m back on my feet. The outline’s done, and it’s going to be a blistering occult-spy chase that picks up right where Black Tie Required left off.

Not to leave the Sisters of New Amsterdam mythos behind, the next project on tap is a sequel to The Hungry Dreaming. There’s not much I can say about this right now, save that Nell, Tyler and Seelie will be back for a new adventure in NYC, along with the usual (and a few unusual) suspects.

Am I back at work? To quote John Wick, yeah, I’m thinking I’m back.

This marks the first half of the big update post. What remains is purely personal, so if you want to bail, now’s the time. Goodness knows I almost bailed on writing it — repeatedly — but my therapist had a poignant insight (as she so often does.) To wit: “Hiding yourself, burying yourself…it’s a form of psychic death. I get that you’re afraid, but you know your audience. They won’t abandon you.”

I’m a very private person, by nature, but sometimes there are good reasons not to be. So. Here we go.

Today is the annual Transgender Day of Visibility. Normally I would make a hopefully-amusing-but-supportive comment about seeing folks. Today is something a little different.

Hi. I’m trans. After spending my entire life in the closet, today I’m coming out. (Which makes this the scariest day of my life, even counting that one time when I was on the It’s a Small World ride at Disney and the ride broke down for nearly an hour. Nearly an hour with that song playing over, and over, and over, surrounded by dangling mannequins, and did you realize a ton of those dolls don’t have FACES? And people wonder how I ended up writing horror. Anyway, I digress.)

Really, that’s the gist of it, but I understand some folks (very reasonably) may have questions, and I’ll try to have answers.

Many of my earliest memories are of suffering from gender dysphoria. It is a level of pain that may be difficult for those who haven’t felt it to understand (which is not a judgment of any kind — I’ve never had kidney stones, for instance, and I certainly can’t grasp what that feels like outside of other people’s descriptions.) Suffice to say that when you hear about people, especially young people, being pushed to the brink of suicide over unresolved dysphoria, please understand that it is not an exaggeration. There were a number of points in my life where if I had chosen differently, if I hadn’t had cherished friends to get me through, I wouldn’t be here today.

To condense a very long journey into a paragraph or less, I finally reached the point some time ago in my adult life where it was just…time. So I sat down with my family of choice, the people of my heart, and shared how I felt. I was — have been, still am — unspeakably blessed to have their support. A bit later, because these things need to be carefully considered and tried out and tested, I officially changed my name to Heather. Hi. I’m Heather Schaefer. Hello. Nice to meet you.

Not that it’s a recent meeting, really. All that’s changed, and I cannot emphasize this enough, is that I’ve altered my outer life to match my inner one. I have always been the same person, inside, where it counts. Every book of mine that you’ve ever read was written by Heather Schaefer, they just had a pen name on the cover. (Or to put it in a much cooler way, you know how Batman is the real person, and Bruce Wayne is the mask? It’s like that. With less punching and more hugs.)

To put it another-another way, I’m the exact same person you’ve always known except my hair is a lot curlier and I dress a little like a stern-but-fair English Literature professor.

So, considering I’ve been cruising along just fine for quite a while maintaining the masquerade, and I have nothing to gain but a great deal to potentially lose from coming out, why am I coming out now?

It’s no secret that certain talking heads in the endless (and endlessly tedious) Culture Wars have decided to make trans people the #1 enemies of society. Which, if you’re old enough to remember, is staggeringly reminiscent of when the exact same people decided to make gay and lesbian folks the #1 enemies of society back in the 80s and 90s. Same talking points, same recycled bigotry…but then, they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t effective, right?

I can’t help anybody by sitting in the closet. Nobody but myself, playing it safe. A lot of people don’t have a choice in that matter, but I do. So here I am, coming out to show you that hey: if you didn’t already, now you know a trans person! Me! And I’m not scary or dangerous or weird — well, okay, I’m a writer, and all writers are weird — but you get my message. The best means I have to make a stand against bigotry, and to stand up for people who need it, is to just to be out and to be myself. Which leads to the second reason for coming out.

I believe that the best art comes from authenticity. Authenticity in the work itself, in the artist, and in how the artist relates to the world. And while I feel I bring that to my stories, every single time I interact with you all as readers while passing, pretending to be someone I’m not, no matter how well-intentioned, just felt…wrong. Deceitful. Which is not something I ever want to be.

So today’s the day to set things right and be myself, in view, all of me.

Which is not without risks. My old mask was a safety net, considering a not-insignificant portion of the population views trans folks as anything from an acceptable and fun target for bullying to murderously hating us. I may lose readers over this. Might lose business opportunities. I hope not, but I’d be painfully naïve to think otherwise. But writing and storytelling and creating is what I was put here to do, it’s my purpose in life, so authenticity in the pursuit of artistic and personal improvement is always the right choice to make.

I hope you’re cool with that, and I hope we can still be friends.

You might have questions! I’ve anticipated a few:

— So what changes, going forward?

Nothing whatsoever. Like I said, the me who wrote all my books is still the same me. Always has been, always will be.

The only thing that’s different is on my end. My world is a lot more dangerous, now. And a lot more beautiful, more fulfilling, happier. And a lot more me.

— Will your books start being released as Heather Schaefer?

Nope! “Craig Schaefer” is my established professional brand, and changing that would be nightmarish. First there’s the cost of revising covers for a ton of books and coordinating new covers with two different publishers. Then there’s The Holy Amazon Algorithm, which reacts very badly and weirdly to any dramatic changes. Just think of it like any other writer who openly uses a pen name, like the books that Stephen King writes as Richard Bachman. Same with social media and such; I’ll be updating my bios with a clarified description, but addresses and websites and such will all stay exactly the same. Super easy.

— Did your delay in releasing books last year have anything to do with your transition?

Nope, that was exactly as I described it: pandemic depression and severe burnout due to working myself into the ground (which was, itself, a symptom of untreated depression.) Drugs and therapy turned me around and got my head on right again. As right as it ever gets, anyway.

— In Red Knight Falling, Harmony Black uses a Glock 22 and mentions switching the safety off, but that model of handgun has a trigger safety which is not the same—

I know. I KNOW. Please stop emailing me about it, I am begging you.

— What does that have to do with anything?

Nothing, really, just wanted to bring it up.

To thank you for reading this far, here’s a picture of our Aussie dog Major. Major is a sweet fifty-pound potato boy who loves to give kisses and snuggle. This particular photo was taken when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, came back two minutes later, and…yeah. It’s fine, there was plenty of room on the other side of the bed.

The Hungry Dreaming: On Sale Now!

Another month is almost done! I try not to think about it too much. As it stands, I’m writing up a big announcement for Thursday, which includes a concrete answer to “where the heck is the new Faust book.” (All good news, I promise.)

In the meantime I’ve managed to get myself sick. No worries, it’s not the plague and I’ve felt steadily better each day since it laid me flat on my back, but I’m still on the mend (thanks to bedrest, modern medicine and old elixirs) and my voice currently sounds like Kermit the Frog’s shady chain-smoking cousin. (You know, the one who’s always playing scratch-off lottery tickets and says he can get you a great deal on some mostly-new stereo speakers.)

So I’m going to do what every other writer does when folks are waiting for a content drop: have a sale! As of today, the ebook version of The Hungry Dreaming is yours for ninety-nine cents. It’s my longest novel to date, filled with history and mystery and very nasty things, so that’s a lot of meaty story for a buck and it’ll be on sale all week and through the weekend.

This is usually the part of the update where I say I’m going back to work. Therapy has modified my negative self-impulses, so what I’m actually going to do is sit back, rest, let my immune system get the job done, and come back hard when I have the energy to do it. Hopefully tomorrow. Have a great week and I’ll see you on Thursday!