Craig Schaefer's Blog, page 7

The Locust Job: Now in Audio!

I’m pleased to announce that Audible has run their final checks and officially cleared the new audiobook for launch: The Locust Job, narrated by Adam Verner, is available now! Adam did a great job bringing Daniel Faust’s latest adventure to life, and I’m pleased with how it came out.

Speaking of Faust, at the moment I’m officially back to work. The move isn’t quite over yet, a few odds and ends left to deal with (aren’t there always?), but I’m ensconced at my new workstation and finding something akin to a normal schedule once again. The next Faust novel is coming along smoothly — no plot or character issues have popped up to destroy my outline just yet, though something always does, that’s just part of the process — and I think having it out by the end of the year is a very attainable goal.

This is going to be a fun one. Some old familiar faces and foes who haven’t been seen in a long time will be popping up in the next outing (and if you’ve gotten to the ending of The Locust Job, you can probably guess why.)

We’re still deep in editing on Black Tie Required, the next Harmony Black outing, but as it stands we still look good for an April release. And Thomas & Mercer Publishing still has The Insider, the second Charlie McCabe thriller, penciled in for July 7. That one’s basically finished and ready: it’s gone through rewrites, developmental editing, more rewrites, and copy-editing, and now all we have to do is the final proofreading pass.

(On the day it comes out, I’ll be heading for NYC to attend the annual Thrillerfest convention. I won’t know if The Loot is a finalist for the 2020 Thrillerfest awards for another couple of months, but fingers crossed.)

And now I must move some boxes, unpack some boxes, break down some boxes, and also write. If there are a lot of mentions of boxes in this new book, now you know why.

Movement.

I was going to rant tonight.

Moving is not going well. Misdelivered furniture, broken internet, an aging computer that decided to die somewhere on the road and stick me with an unexpected expense in the middle of an already-expensive endeavor, it’s…well, not remotely a unique experience, really. If you’ve ever moved, and I’m guessing you have, you know what I’m talking about. It sucks. It’s not a question of “will something go wrong” so much as “what particular surprise things-going-wrong will you have to deal with, and how many at once.”

Somewhere around a couple of hours ago, after maybe fourteen hours of moving-related-stuff, I realized I was feeling woozy because I hadn’t remembered to eat today. Then I came back to the old apartment, a wasteland of boxes and things half-done, to make camp for the night. Checked online, got smacked with a review that’s basically one extended personal attack. (I mean, to stress, this wasn't just "I didn't like the book" -- that's totally fair play and I respect every reviewer's right to say that -- it was some nasty imagined stuff about their view of me as a person.) And of course, I can’t respond, because that’s how this business works.

So I’m pissed. Muzzled. Imagine someone’s talking a ton of shit about you and you literally can’t respond or a not-insignificant number of drama mavens will brand you as unprofessional and awful and etc. I mean, that’s the way it works; I’m not asking for sympathy, I knew that going into this life. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. And while I can normally brush that stuff off with absolute ease, I might be a tiny bit stressed at the moment, making my calloused skin a little thinner than it should be.

I was all fired up. I was going to rant, gosh darn it. I was going to address each and every point, without naming the original critic, and make them look like the clueless dunderhead they were. Vindication. And then…

And then, I looked back over some recent comments, reviews, emails. There’s a psychological phenomenon with artists – not sure if there’s a formal name for it, probably is one – where positive feedback gets eclipsed by negative feedback. One bad review overshadows ten good ones. And while that might be a natural quirk of the human brain…it’s still wrong.

I was reminded, tonight, that I have a community of readers who has my back. That there are folks who are excited for my books to come out, who are as invested in these stories and these characters as I am. And that means more than I can possibly say. It’s everything to me. You don’t just keep me going; you encourage me to keep trying, to keep working harder to improve my skills and my art, to keep delivering better and better stories.

So I was going to rant tonight. I’m not. Instead, I just want to express my gratitude. To all my readers, to everyone who supports my work, who helps me to keep it flowing. Thank you.

Oh, so I should actually include some useful information in this post: 99% done reviewing the Locust Job audiobook, should approve it tomorrow, expect a release shortly.

And thank you.

Moving is awful. Also, an update.

Happy Monday, everybody! Hopefully. It’s Frantic Monday for me, as I’m presently in the middle of a move to a new apartment across town.

Moving is awful. It’s the worst. The last time I moved was halfway across the country; this time it’s a twenty-minute drive. I figured it’d be easier. Nope! It’s still endless checklists and to-do items and phone calls and “wait for this person to do a thing so this other person can do a thing, but also call these two other departments to make sure they do a thing first.”

I’m frazzled but still getting work done. Like proofing the audiobook version of The Locust Job, so we can get that out on Audible ASAP; I’m twenty chapters in and Adam’s doing his usual awesome job of narration. I’ve also finished reviewing copy-edits for The Insider, the second Charlie McCabe thriller, so all we have to do is the final proofread. On that note, looks like Thomas & Mercer Publishing finalized their back-cover blurb, so now I can share what Charlie’s second outing is about:

“Hard-bitten bodyguard Charlie McCabe is lucky to be alive after her recent foray into Boston’s criminal underworld. So she’s taking no chances with this next job: protecting Hayden Cobb, key witness in the trial against a trio of murderous cops known as the East Boston Three. If Cobb drops dead, the Three walk.

After an attempt on Cobb’s life, Charlie suspects the Three have somehow put a hit on him from behind bars, and the assassin’s still at large. And when notorious loan shark Jimmy Lassiter is dragged into the mix, he retaliates the only way he knows how—by striking at the heart of her family.

Now it’s personal. With her father held hostage and her client in profound danger, Charlie must act fast. Far too many lives are at stake, and though she knows she can’t protect everyone, she’s gonna try.”

That’s set for a July release. Meanwhile, the next Harmony Black novel — Black Tie Required — is still in heavy editing. I’m hoping for April on that one, fingers crossed.

Of course, my current major project is writing the first draft of the follow-up to The Locust Job, in between Running All the Errands and Doing All the Things. And with that, I’d better get to it.

The Locust Job: Launch Day!

I know I kept you waiting, but Daniel Faust is back. The Locust Job is the first of two Faust adventures scheduled for 2020 so – appropriately enough – it’s out on New Year’s morning. There’s even a scene where he battles an epic hangover, possibly in solidarity depending on what you were up to last night. The ebook and paperback versions are available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0834CZDWX (note, you may have to search by the title if the paperback isn’t showing up, it just went live and apparently the link is wonky for some folks). Adam Verner is in the studio this week, recording the audiobook version, so hopefully we’ll see that go live by mid-January.

This is a big installment in the series, with big changes in play, and I hope it puts a smile on your face. I’m currently hard at work on the next book, to make sure it can reach you by year’s end. I can’t tell you the title of that one just yet, though. It’s a spoiler.

Meanwhile I figured it’s the new year and lots of folks are unwrapping their shiny new Kindles, so why not have a sale? From now until Sunday morning, the first two books in the series – The Long Way Down and The White Gold Score – are free on the Amazon storefront along with Winter’s Reach (the first book of the Revanche Cycle). Sworn to the Night (the first book of the Wisdom’s Grave trilogy) is ninety-nine cents (though that sale doesn't go live for another few hours, because Amazon is weird). Boom.

2020. I still can’t get over how not-real that year looks. But here we all are, at the dawn of the new roaring twenties. So roar. Rise and shine. There’s a whole new year ahead of us, with highs and lows and mysteries and discoveries to be made, and it won’t be a party without you.

2019: A Letter at the Year's End

How is it almost 2020 already? And how is “2020” a real thing? Seriously, that’s a date from an 80s sci-fi movie, not a real, actual year that we’re going to live in. Oh, well; here comes the future, ready or not. Around this time of year I like to take a minute to look back over the past year’s work and then turn my attention to the road ahead.

I said last year that 2019 was going to be a year of experiments; I wanted (needed) to try some new things as an author, and I figured some people would be on board with it, some wouldn’t, some things would work out perfectly, some wouldn’t. It should be no surprise that this incredibly non-committal prediction came true.

Looking Back

Back in April, 47North published my first non-Faustverse novel, Ghosts of Gotham. This book was – is – personal to me. I mean, they all are (if art isn’t personally important to its creator, it’s probably not art and probably not good), but Ghosts is a love letter to someone very special in my life. I was pleased to see it got such a great response, and I’ll talk more about the future of that series in a bit, when we get to the “next year” part of this recap.

Then in August, Thomas & Mercer Publishing released The Loot, the first book in the Charlie McCabe series, and my first attempt at a non-fantasy crime novel. Writing it was a great experience and one that (I think) helped me to broaden my horizons as an author. Finally, October brought Right to the Kill, and the return of Harmony Black. In keeping with the theme of the year, I took some chances with this one instead of playing it safe (like switching from a first-person to a third-person perspective). I was beyond happy to hear so much positive feedback on this: writing is a process of constant failing, learning, failing again, and learning more. In this case, I think it was worth rolling the dice.

So that was my 2019: two totally new projects, and one sequel with a remix touch. I did not go with the safe and tested. Did it work out? I think so. Financially, I probably could have written three Faust sequels one after another and made a little more money, but none of this year’s releases were flops. Artistically? Hell yeah. Ghosts of Gotham was meaningful. The Loot put me in touch with the traditions of the crime writers who inspired me as a child. And Right to the Kill reinvigorated my own excitement for a series and characters who had been allowed to sleep for too long. So where do we go from here?

Looking Ahead

One week from today, Daniel Faust is back to help you through your New Year’s Eve hangover. Or just to share his. The Locust Job is the next installment in the series and…stuff is Happening. I think that in any long-running series, some books are going to be seen as more pivotal than others, and this is going to be one of the big ones. Without giving any spoilers away, I’m aiming to put a big smile on your face and make you curse my name, simultaneously. When you get there, let me know if I managed to pull that off.

While I inevitably juggle multiple projects at any given time, my current “on deck” manuscript is the follow-up book. I can’t even tell you the title, because it’s a major spoiler for something huge that happens in The Locust Job, but I can tell you that I’m going to do everything I can to have it out by the end of 2020. I felt bad about making fans wait while I experimented in 2019, and I’m aiming to make it up to you with a double dose.

The next Harmony Black adventure, Black Tie Required, is with my editor as we speak. While the last book was intended to serve as a new entry-point to the series, this one builds on the stories before it and brings some old familiar faces (and foes) back into the fray. When a string of abductions and assassinations target former employees of Talon Worldwide – including engineers who worked on a top secret dimension-gate project – Harmony and Jessie have to uncover the culprit and recover the stolen tech before it falls into enemy hands.

This story will definitively answer one of the longest-standing mysteries in all of my books. I speak, of course, of the mystery of what happened to Daniel Faust’s car.

Meanwhile, The Insider, the second Charlie McCabe novel, is nearly finished. We’ve completed developmental editing (which is where you sit down and hammer at the story itself, trying to punch it up and make it a stronger piece) and now we’re into the copy-editing phase (where you drill down into actual grammar, sentence structure, and proofreading for errors). Charlie’s sophomore outing involves a twisty little mystery, as she and her team are assigned to protect a critical witness in a police-corruption trial. An attempt on their client’s life results in a single bullet being fired…but two different guns are abandoned at the scene. Things get complicated fast, and what looked like a clear-cut situation is nothing of the kind.

Will there be more after this? I hope so! Thomas & Mercer originally contracted me for two books, and if book two is a strong seller, hopefully they’ll sign me on for more installments after this.

One project from 2019 doesn’t have a release window yet. This year I completed The Hungry Dreaming, a stand-alone novel set in the world of Ghosts of Gotham. It’s an odd beast, a sprawling story with a plot that runs through three ages of New York City, from the Revolutionary War, to the mid-1800s, to the modern day. And it’s big; nearly 200,000 words (where most of my novels run 90,000 words, for comparison). It’s about ancient Greek myth and modern surveillance culture, and what a commitment to truth means in an age when disinformation spreads like wildfire at the click of a button.

Anyway, I’m shopping it around, trying to find a good publisher-home for it. We’ll see how that goes. Writing is a business for gamblers, and the only sure thing is that when one project is done, you’ve got to start plugging away at the next one. And on that note, I’m in the very early stages of a direct follow-up to Ghosts of Gotham. It’s going to happen. Not soon, because I need to take a lot of time and reflection and get this exactly right, but it’s going to happen.

(Rumors that my outlining process involves sitting in a dark room, drinking gin from a water-spotted glass and listening to 1920s jazz on Radio Dismuke are grossly overblown. That’s only 20-30% of my process.)

It’ll get written. But it can’t just be a sequel; it has to be better than the original. So figuring out how to make that happen is my big goal for 2020 (and my gradually mounting pile of notes suggests this may actually end up as two books, one direct follow-up and another stand-alone set in the same world). It’s funny; I’m really displaced from time, in a sense. Most of what you’ll see from me this year is already written, done or in final edits right now. Most of what I’ll be working on now will go unseen until 2021 or beyond. And so I move like a ghost, trailed by manuscripts that show not where I am, but where I was a year ago.

And with that, I return to the story-hunt. Stay warm and stay safe. Be good to each other, okay? We are all we have.

Love always,

Craig

The Locust Job: Cover Reveal Day!

We’re exactly three weeks out from the launch of The Locust Job — can you believe 2019 is over already? — and I figured that makes a great time for a cover and synopsis reveal! Pre-orders aren’t up yet, but they will be soon; the book should be available in e-book and paperback bright and early on New Year’s Day, and Adam Verner will be recording the audio version right after the holidays so that’ll be arriving soon.

What’s it about? Here’s the quickie synopsis:

The first story ever told left a scar on the skin of the universe, with its characters doomed to an endless cycle of reincarnation and death. Trapped by his enemies, Daniel Faust — magician, mobster, and newly-minted knight of hell — has been cast in the role of the eternal Thief. Now the story is dead-set on writing his final chapter, the one that ends with a knife in his back.

The curse can’t be broken without tracking down the original Thief. The truth is buried beneath the legacy of a long-dead stage magician and a cache of occult relics from the 1940s, but Daniel and his crew aren’t the only hunters on this trail: so is a deadly new contender who blends sorcery with science, armed with a link to Daniel’s past — and a cult he thought he had destroyed long ago.

The doomsday clock is ticking, and more than Daniel’s own life is at stake. To save the day he’ll have to pull off the most daring heist of his criminal career, stealing a priceless treasure from a reality-bending madman, or die trying.

Right to the Kill is out on Audio!

Somebody over at Audible has a sense of humor. It’s not just Black Friday, it’s…Harmony Black Friday. Right to the Kill, narrated by the incomparable Susannah Jones, is now available as an audiobook! I know I was asking a lot when I invited her to take over narration duties on the series, but she stepped right into the role and in my opinion, nailed it.

(I’ve mentioned this before, but since we’re on the subject — yeah, I know a lot of audiobook readers hate it when a narrator changes midstream, and I apologize for that. To make a long story short, Christina Traister’s deal was with my former publisher, not with me, so when the series changed hands it necessitated a shift. There’s some inside-baseball stuff I can’t get into, not because it’s any kind of drama, just because it’s not cool to talk about contract stuff in public.

I will say that it’s a good and fitting change. Over the last couple of years Susannah has become the feminine voice of my books — just like Adam Verner is the irreplaceable voice of Daniel Faust and company — and she “gets” my characters perfectly.)

Yesterday was Thanksgiving in the states. I couldn’t fly back to see my family for the day, too much work on my plate, so I did my best to replicate those old holiday feelings of home. Cooking buttery rolls to fill the apartment with that fresh-baked bread smell, the Macy’s parade playing on an internet stream. And doing a lot of thinking about gratitude.

I’m thankful, as always, for the opportunities that brought me to this point in my career. And beyond thankful for you. There are so many stories left to be told, and without your support, none of them would ever be written.

Now I’m headed back to work, doing final edits and layout on The Locust Job. We’re just about one month away from the triumphant (?) return of Daniel Faust, and his most explosive heist yet. And you know I mean that literally. Have a great day, and stay safe out there!

The Cutting-Room Floor, Part Two

Two years ago (it’s been two years? Wow) I wrote up a piece about my personal cutting-room floor: some of the concepts that didn’t quite make it to the printed page, cut somewhere between outlining and the final draft. With Right to the Kill out in the wild (and it sounds like a lot of you are enjoying it!), I thought it might be fun to take another look at more ideas that never saw the light of day.

1. Charlie McCabe might have been Daniel Faust’s Ex-Girlfriend.

When I started working on The Loot, I considered a fun little tie-in to my other books. The key: Roxy, the ex-girlfriend who Daniel is getting over (with the help of his friend Jack Daniels) way back in his first adventure. Roxy has never made an appearance in the Faust books — not counting the time Naavarasi briefly impersonated her and got a taste of Caitlin’s backhand — and it’s implied that she never knew about Faust’s sorcerous side, so it was a natural fit.

What didn’t fit, however, was the timeline. The Loot’s heroine had to have been in the service for years, learning her lethal trade in Afghanistan, and the breakup was relatively recent, so it just didn’t work. In retrospect, I’m glad it panned out the way it did, because a major plot point in the upcoming novel The Locust Job is all about Daniel’s ex-lovers…

2. The Wisdom’s Grave trilogy was going to involve a team-up between Bobby Diehl and the Enemy.

My original concept for the Wisdom’s Grave trilogy was to have everyone — and I mean everyone — from every book I’ve written to date make at least a cameo appearance. That idea was pitched out as early as the initial plotting: it was more stunt than story, and readers want good stories above all. So I pared down the cast to the people who really needed to be in it. Of course, Daniel Faust and Harmony Black were on the dance card, and I wanted to mark the occasion with their long-overdue reunion.

To that end, bringing each of their main nemeses on the page — Bobby, for Harmony, and the Enemy, for Faust — felt like a natural choice. The problem, as I quickly discovered, was twofold: for one, Wisdom’s Grave is Nessa and Marie’s story at the core, and having two big bads on the page (neither of whom have any particular reason to be interested in the Witch and her Knight) drew focus away from the themes I was going for.

Secondly, it offered a premise with no resolution. I try very hard to keep my various series as self-contained as I can despite being in a shared world, because I know some readers prefer one or another and don’t read everything I write. If I actually killed off the Enemy or Bobby outside a main-series novel, I can imagine the feedback would be…not kind. And I’d deserve it. In the end, after workshopping it a bunch of different ways, I decided the trilogy would be best with both players on the sidelines.

3. Ghosts of Gotham had a subplot about Nikola Tesla.

Without going too far into spoiler territory for those who haven’t read it yet, a key plot element in Ghosts of Gotham are the tiny techno-magical devices called “dead-catchers.” In the published book, they’re the invention (with help from his special investor) of a murderous, renegade witch; in the first draft, though, he had a little help from a lost schematic penned by none other than Nikola Tesla.

Tesla died in New York, in his suite at the New Yorker Hotel, and an extensive subplot found Lionel probing some ghostly goings-on there. Over 10,000 words were written, four chapters’ worth all focused on this one particular plot thread. And then I woke up one morning, read back over my draft while brewing my morning coffee, and said, “…this just isn’t working.”

So many times, in writing, something that seems like a good idea in the outline simply doesn’t work on the page. Even good ideas and fun scenes need to meet the editor’s ax if they throw off the flow of the overall story, and that was exactly the problem. There wasn’t anything wrong with the chapters, but they pulled the tale off-track and in the wrong direction, and wouldn’t have added anything to Lionel and Maddie’s personal journeys. So, with a heavy heart, I slashed the draft.

Of course, there’s always the sequel.

4. The fourth Faust novel was completely tossed out a few days after I started writing it. Completely.

“Multiple discovery” is the phenomenon when scientific innovations are made by researchers working completely alone. It’s as if they stumble upon the same idea at the exact same time, and the arts are no different. Most of us have seen movies or read books that seem oddly similar, echoing plot beats or characters, despite being released almost side by side.

This is nowhere near as mystical as it might seem, at least in the arts department. Ideas are everywhere, floating and free, and everything’s been done. You can come up with the most original-sounding concept and I guarantee that someone, somewhere, has already put their spin on it. If nobody else, the Simpsons have done it at least once.

And then there’s times when multiple discovery just gets weird. Like a few years back, when I was drafting what would become the fourth Daniel Faust novel, A Plain-Dealing Villain. The first Faust trilogy was over, I was preparing a brand-new story arc, and I thought I’d come up with a winner of a concept. It involved Faust investigating an elaborate con carried out via magical manipulation and mind control. The trail would have led him to a trio of mythical sirens, castaways from a parallel world who were posing as a music group; Faust had to stop them before they used their powers to carry out a mass brainwashing at an upcoming concert.

Fast forward to the first week of writing. The first chapter was done, everything was flowing, felt great. Then I got a phone call from a friend who I’d been bouncing my ideas off of. It went something like this:

“Uh, you have Netflix, right?” she said.

“Sure.”

“Have you watched Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks?”

“Nooo,” I said, feeling suspicious now. “Why?”

“You should watch it.”

Cute cartoon. Catchy songs. It’s about these three mythical sirens, castaways from a parallel world who pose as a music group, planning to use their powers to carry out a mass brainwashing at a—

Dear reader, you could hear my cry of “Are you freaking kidding me right now?!” from three states away. Needless to say, the entire outline went in the circular file. There was absolutely no way I could do the story now, not without people assuming I stole it from My Little freakin’ Pony.

(Then there was the time I was hip-deep in outlining a story involving Delphine LaLaurie, the same year that American Horror Story: Coven debuted. At least that one didn’t follow the same actual plot, and I still plan on writing that monster someday.)

And that’s about it for another installment of the Cutting-Room Floor! I should get back to work, and see how much of today’s outline ends up on the final page.

Harmony Black: Right to the Kill is available now!

It's been a (too long) wait, but Harmony Black is back in action. Right to the Kill, the latest book in the series, is available now! You can find the e-book and paperback versions on Amazon, and the audiobook version won't be far behind: Susannah Jones is in the recording studio this week, and it'll be out as soon as Audible does their final approval checks.

Next up, we're still on track for the next release in the Daniel Faust series, The Locust Job, sometime in early January. I'm aiming for New Year's Day, but we'll see how long these edits take. And speaking of edits, the second Charlie McCabe novel, The Insider, just finished its first round of developmental edits and rewrites. After that comes a second round of rewrites, then copy edits, then line edits...it's a marathon, but I think the final results will be worth it.

What can I say about Right to the Kill? When the rights to the Harmony series passed back to me from its former publisher, it marked an opportunity to look at what worked in the early books, what didn't, and tighten and hone the feel of Harmony's world. There's a bit of a time jump: nearly a year has passed since the upheaval at the end of Cold Spectrum (and the upheaval of the Wisdom's Grave trilogy), and in many ways Harmony and Jessie are back to square one. They're heading out to fight the good fight all over again, but this time with their eyes wide open, and a clandestine operations group and a network of assets to provide support. They're going to need it. The stakes are higher than they've ever been, and a swarm of new enemies is coming out of the woodwork.

(Oh, and don't worry if it's been a while, or if you decide to jump into the series with this book. Just like I've recently started doing with the Faust novels, it opens with a "The Story So Far" section to bring you up to speed.)

I hope you enjoy the book, and that this unexpected early release brightened your Monday a little. We all need a little good news on Mondays, right?

Harmony: Sooner than Expected

When Harmony Black has to attend a social event, she doesn’t do “fashionably late.” If anything, she arrives early, and there’s no reason to expect her books to behave any differently. To make a long story short, there was a little dashboard screw-up behind the scenes, and as a result the paperback version of Right to the Kill has gone on sale a week and a half ahead of schedule.

Of course, there’s absolutely no reason to keep the e-book version penned up while the paperback is out in the wild, so I’ve just finished arrangements to bump up the release and get it out this Monday, the 14th. If you’ve pre-ordered it, you don’t need to do anything: it’ll automatically download to your e-reader on the 14th instead of the 22nd. For everyone else, it’ll be out bright and early Monday morning, for you to pick up at your leisure.

I wasn’t expecting to spend my weekend grappling with stage fright, but here we are. Fortunately, I have wine. Happy Friday, everybody! I hope you have a great weekend, and I can’t wait to hear what you think of the new book.