The coolest thing is happening in a couple of weeks.
On March 5, Down and Out Books releases THE NIGHT OF THE FLOOD, a novel in stories, conceived by J.J. Hensley and edited by E.A. Aymar and Sarah M. Chen. (You can read a great interview with them here.)
A number of us who write for The Thrill Begins, International Thriller Writers’ online magazine for aspiring and debut authors, and a few other writers collaborated on this collection that – from my viewpoint at least – came together astonishingly seamlessly. But don’t take my word for it. Lee Child – yes, of the Jack Reacher series – calls it “a brave concept, brilliantly executed.”
That’s probably because Ed and Sarah did all of the hard work. It was a fun project and I can’t wait to see it in print.
Then, just three days later, my fifth Lola Wicks novel, UNDER THE SHADOWS (Midnight Ink) comes out. This one takes Lola to Utah, Salt Lake City specifically. She’s spent so much time in the wilds of West that I thought it would be fun to put her back in a city for awhile. Lola being Lola, she’s grouchy about it.
I’m celebrating by reading Laura Lippman’s SUNBURN and listening to Tom Sweterlitsch’s THE GONE WORLD, both highly anticipated and each delivering in spades. Life is sweet when you’re drunk on good books.
To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it. You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at and at you, black and slick and tarry- shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires, and if you don’t quit staring at that line and don’t take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you’ll hypnotize yourself and you’ll come to just at the moment when the right font wheel hookers over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you’ll try to jerk her back on but you can’t because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you’ll try to reach to turn off course.