My State of the Blog Address

Hi and welcome to my website and blog. If you’ve ever been here before, you might notice that it looks a little different around here. Allow me to fill you in on what’s going on.

In the winter of 2014 my Agent, the lovely Janet Reid, found a home for my first book with Midnight Ink. That book, released in February of 2015, was Death and the Redheaded Woman. The contract was a three-book deal with an option on the fourth book.

During the summer of 2015 I was hit with an idea for an unrelated mystery. I worked on it on and off for three years, but was unable to really focus on it as long as I was under contract for the books in my series.

When the fourth book, and the last one addressed in my contract, released last February, I began a fifth book in the series. But the other book (I call it “the ghost book” when I’m talking at my friends about it) was demanding to be written, so I finally set everything else aside until I’d completed that project.

I still intend to write a fifth book in the Auction Block Mysteries. When, where, and how it will appear is up in the air right now, though. Sadly (and if you follow the mystery publishing industry you probably already know this) last fall Llewellyn Worldwide, Midnight Ink’s parent company, announced that they were closing the imprint. I will finish the next book and leave it to Janet to look for a new home for Death and Wren. If I have to, I will publish at least one more myself, to bring their stories to a more complete place.

I finished the ghost book in October and sent it to Janet but before reading it she visited my website and went

And I was like

So she suggested that I update my website and come up with a plan to do better publicity before we tackle the new book. But at the time I was dealing with some health issues and my day job is in retail and the holidays were closing in. Redesigning this website was just more than I could handle at the time. So we agreed to table everything until after the New Year.

Now, in other words.

I also came up with an idea for a publicity campaign that made Janet go

But she said I can anyway. I’m still working on that because of COURSE I’m running behind. I’m ALWAYS running behind. I’m so far behind that I was born 53 years ago but I’m still only about 34.

So, anyway, that’s the state of the blog. I will tell you more about my project when I’m closer to ready to launch it. In the meantime, I’m going to try really hard to post here regularly. I hope you enjoy the new look of the website. Thank you for reading and have a great day!