An aging cop must journey inside the fractured mind of a killer in order to find a missing girl and put an end to a growing body count. No one is safe and things may not be as they appear in this dark tale of murder, mystery, and betrayal.
First of all: merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.
Second: we’ve passed 300 readers, which means I can start talking about how I’m defending my position on The List with 300, like King Leonidas at Thermopylae. Have you looked at The List’s leaderboard today, though? The contenders from the Launchpad competition have just been transferred in, at 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th. While the top three Launchpad entries are, according to the rules, probably going to be taken out again, there’s still that one contender, the fourth Launchpad entry, currently in 6th on The List, who’s just 10 readers below me and still taking orders....
In short, my position is Extremely Precarious, and I’m probably going to need a bunch of new readers within the next week to ensure my place.
In book news, the manuscript is complete and ready for submission. So is a brand new plan of the Veterans’ Club ground floor--and yes, the manuscript has been edited to take into account the new layout.
In short, we’re ready to roll. It’s just a question of what happens over the course of the next week. Now, more than ever: tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell your complete strangers. King Leonidas may have made an impressive defence of Thermopylae with his 300 Spartans, but that ultimately ended in defeat. Let’s hope the same doesn’t happen with my 300 readers.
Dear friends and followers:
Christmas is coming. So is my birthday. If you’re following the Julian calendar, those are on the same day. I think it’s pretty clear what I’d like for Christmas....
Well, the List contest continues apace. Thanks to you, I’m still in second. There’s no place for complacency, though, as I am not convinced that the numbers are entirely accurate: I believe that some of the books behind me have uncounted readers, which puts them a lot closer to knocking me out of position than I’m comfortable with. And things could easily change over the next month.
I’m grateful to all of you for having gotten me this far.
Meanwhile, I have not been neglecting the book itself in favour of selling it. I’ve updated the first two chapters on the site; I’ve worked out the actual calendar-date timeline for the events of the novel, and I am happy to say that the story officially begins on 31 October 1924. I’d very much like to be able to hand this in first thing in the new year, but that’s all dependent on what happens with the List.
Speaking of timelines and the upcoming New Year, it’s been a while since I made any recommendations. So here are a couple that I believe you’d enjoy, and whose authors would also appreciate the Christmas gift of your vote of confidence.
1) "Manifesto", by Daniel Poort. This one’s a psychological thriller about a small-town cop on the trail of a serial killer. Poort promises an escalating body count; and of course nothing says edge-of-your-seat like murder and betrayal.
2) "Shady Place", by David Byrne. A more light-hearted take, I think. A police detective and a mobster retire to the same seniors’ community, and find they have to work together to prevent a murder. If they play "good cop/bad cop", I wonder which would be which....
Until next time: have fun, and keep reading. And tell all your friends!
