Year’s End Review

Living on the academic calendar, I mark time a little differently. The beginning of my year is in the autumn, and the end is sometime in the middle of summer, when we head off on vacation–because really, how much work does anyone do on vacation?

The past few years have run on a cycle of book proposal in the late spring or summer, followed by 9-12 months of work, culminating in turning in the book the following Spring. This past year I tried something new.

This past year has been The Year of Short Projects. To wit: a novella, two short stories, and an anthology–plus the release of the novel written the previous year.

This year started out with the release of a short story I did for Obverse Books, called Eliminating the Impossible. The anthology is a collection of alternate-universe Sherlock Holmes stories, and it’s quite unique. All of the stories are really well done, though I’m partial to Kelly Hale, after reading her wonderfully irreverent (and prizewinning!) novel Erasing Sherlock.

   Fool’s Gold was a behemoth of a novel, but it came out quite well, I think. It completed the three-book plot cycle started in The Affair of the Porcelain Dog and continued in Turnbull House. Ira Adler has been such a part of my life for so long, it was difficult to turn this one in. I’ll definitely be doing some shorter work with him, though.

After that, I wanted to do something light, hence, The Strange Case of the Big Sur Benefactor, which is so light it’s almost slapstick. It was huge fun to write, and I hope is fun to read as well.

  On July 30, my short story About A Dog will be coming out in volume 2 of the MCB Quarterly. It’s another Amy Archer story, and is not only about a dog, but also about the tunnels under Los Angeles and the legends of the things that live down there.

Finally, what I like to think of as The Haunted Anthology, Death and a Cup of Tea is slated for release on August 1. It’s a terrific anthology–one of our best, IMO, but the production was beset by so many problems–staff disagreements, technical troubles, and more–that part of me thinks it must have been cursed from the outset. Please buy a copy and help to lift the curse! And for your help, you will receive a $3.00 discount for pre-ordering. 

Right now, I’m working on what started out as another short project set in London in 1889. It was meant to be a bit of fun, but it’s taken a dark, gothic turn, as well as deciding that it needs to be a bit longer. Ah, characters. Why can’t they do what we tell them? It may be time to send them to what my writing group calls Pesky Character Camp while I head off to Lovecraft Country for a few weeks.