Something is Happening

Okay, it's finally time to say something because it's all getting close.

I'm in for a writing career reboot here, and it'll likely all start happening by the end of the month. The retooling of this web site some months ago was the first step, but now there are others. I've slowly been putting things into motion, but it looks like they're all going to converge at once.

So I have not one, but two major announcements — and a minor one.

First, my new novel, …and that's the end of the news, is almost done. I mean it for sure this time. After 10 years, a long hiatus to take care of my mother (during which time I tried to re-imagine myself as a songwriter and learned that I hated performing live) and four drafts, I've gotten the book where I want it, where it should be. So it's soon to be going out in search of an agent and/or publisher.

This book has been with me for so long that it's hard for me to look at it as "the new book", but it'll be new to the 99.99% of you who haven't had some kind of preview or were pressed into service as an early reader. Anyway, once and/news goes out into the marketplace, it will be time to start what really will feel like a new novel. This will likely be the project that I have discreetly code-named "The UFO Novel."

Which brings me to the minor announcement. Just for grins, I thought I would post very short excerpts from The UFO Novel as status updates on my Facebook Fan Page. There'll be one excerpt from each chapter as I finish writing it, and there will be lots of chapters. It should be fun. Or not. Tantalizing, perhaps? That's the idea. So become a fan now and get miniscule glimpses of a book in progress (or be tormented by them – your choice).

So now it's time for Major Announcement number two. If you're one of the lot who has been to my Facebook Fan Page, you may have seen the fanciful logo for an outfit called Thief Media (you can see it now in the upper right hand section of this page). That's the imprint that I have started to release my old, out-of-print novels for the Amazon Kindle and in epub format for all the others. This will begin with my first published novel, A Death of Honor – which I hope to have out by early March – to include all 7 novels over the course of the next year or so.

(Actually, they will appear as only 6 novels – Ferman's Devils and Boddekker's Demons will be issued as one novel, which was my original intent.)

A Death of Honor's new look for the e-book market.

All of the novels will have new cover art, and all except for the Angel's Luck trilogy will have some kind of bonus material included. A Death of Honor will feature the original epilog that I cut from the book before publication. The Company Man and Ferman's Devils will feature short stories that overlap into the respective book's universe.

In addition to my out-of-print titles, Thief Media will also be releasing two previously unpublished JCF novels. The Mushroom Shift is a profane and darkly funny novel about police work that was written between Honor and Company and will be released between them. Trust is a political thriller written in hopes of being published in time for the 1996 election. It will be released before Ferman's Devils.

To celebrate this in a small way, I have changed the graphic in the banner above to a section of corrected page from the third draft of …and that's the end of the news. There may or may not be other surprises and releases, but I'm going to leave things at this for the time being. After all, I have a lot of work to do right now.