Solitaire, Part 5

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Eddie has captured the burglar Red Ace.  The local police captain, Edison O’Mally, wants some answers from our hero.  Come back tomorrow for part 6! 

* * *

Captain Edison O’Mally of the Arcadia Police Department stood near the door while a uniform took my statement outside the Funeral Parlor.  Two more uniformed officers were rolling Red Ace into a custody wagon, the bubble from the popgun having not dissolved yet.

“So you just happened to be having a quiet drink when a known criminal entered the bar in a completely unrelated coincidence?” the office repeated back to me, incredulously.  I’d had to embellish my story a little bit to protect the not-so-innocent (me).

“That’s correct, Officer Higgins,” I replied, my face attempting to beam honesty and settling for not completely giving everything away.

“So, how come five other patrons report that the suspect was seen at your table, having a rather heated conversation with you?” Higgins was good.  He could actually ask a question and could compare facts to each other and see when they contradicted each other.  Most of the uniformed officers I’d seen over the years were the type to accidentally ended up asking the wrong person the wrong question, like, “Was it you what done the deed, then? Oh God, why are you pulling my spleen out through my mouth?”  Higgins was one of the good ones, which was making him a pain in my ass at that moment.

“I’d asked him to pass me a coaster.  He didn’t want to.  Wasn’t a very neighborly burglar, I can tell you,” I said innocently.

“Hazzard,” O’Mally called as he came over to us.  The captain, the walrus tusks of his gen-mod gleaming, nodded at the officer taking my statement.  Higgins nodded back and stepped away.  “Care to tell me just what the hell is going on?”  His jowls quivered slightly, as a walrus’s jowls are wont to do.  O’Mally thought his gen-mod made him look intimidating, but mostly it just game him fish breath.

“Captain, as I was explaining to your man Higgins here, this whole thing is completely innocent, just a big misunderstanding.”  I attempted to put an arm around O’Mally’s shoulders, but the look he gave me made me think better of it.

“Drop the act, Eddie,” O’Mally said.  “Be straight with me.”

I sighed.  “Fine.  I’m working a case, all right?  Red Ace is my one lead on it, and I managed to trick the guy into meeting with me, but he wouldn’t give up anything.”

O’Mally nodded, sending his jowls quivering again.  “We can give you some time in the interrogation chamber with Red Ace, Eddie, but I don’t know what else we can do.  Most of the evidence linking this character to those burglaries is circumstantial at best.”

“Right,” I said, turning up my coat collar.  “I’ll be down at the precinct in an hour.”

Solitaire, Part 4

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Miss Typewell and Eddie set a trap for the mysterious burglar.  Will they be successful?  Will Eddie ever win a game of solitaire?  Check back tomorrow for part 5! 

* * *

In fact, it took seven more lost games of solitaire before Red Ace replied to Miss Typewell’s message.

“I’ve got a meeting with Red Ace set up for this evening at 7:00 at the Funeral Parlor,” Miss Typewell said, indicating the name of my favorite bar over on Purgation Avenue.

“Great,” I replied, pinching shut loss #2,145 and standing up from my desk.  “Guess I’ve got some time to get there myself and make sure all my ducks are all in a row.”  I walked over to my filing cabinet and dug out my weapon, the popgun, checking its cartridge and the safety.

“Yup, all in a row,” I said, holstering the weapon.

* * *

I arrived at the Funeral Parlor at half-past six and took up residence in a corner booth.  In deference to the fact that I was about to have a meeting with an individual who had already sucker punched me once, I just ordered a seltzer.

Red Ace arrived when I somehow wasn’t looking.  One second, I was alone in my booth, no one around me.  The next, a slender figure sat across from me, their whole form bathed in shadows that hadn’t really even been there moments before.  It’s like Red Ace traveled with their own shadow.

“Red Ace, I presume,” I said after my startled yelp at the burglar’s sudden appearance had removed any dignity I had left.

“Yes, Detective Hazzard,” the burglar replied, their voice blurred by a modulator.

“Really, vocal distortion?” I snarked, arching an eyebrow at my shadowy companion.  “Are you really a woman trying to pretend to be a man, or a man trying to make people think you’re a woman trying to pretend to be a man?  What’s the damn point?”

“My sex is of no consequence,” Red Ace replied, “only my skills.”

“Oh, well, that’s just a giant pile of—” I began, but Red Ace cut me off.

“Detective, you reached out to me, and here I am.  What is it you want?”

I looked Red Ace right in the eye, or where I thought their eyes might be.  “I want those damn documents you stole from Vellum’s office last night,” I said, anger and frustration tinting my voice.

“I’m afraid you will not be able to meet the asking price for those documents, Detective,” Red Ace replied coolly and electronically from behind the vocal modulator.

“Try me,” I replied, leaning back and trying to act casual.

“Fifty million,” the burglar responded calmly.

I sat there silently for a minute, regretting my decision to not get a real drink.

“That is a bit rich for my blood,” I replied quietly.

“Indeed,” said Red Ace, standing.  “Now, if there is nothing else…”

My hand shot out and grabbed Red Ace by the wrist.  “Actually, there is,” I said, a smirk on my face.  “You’re under arrest for theft, boy-o.”

Red Ace stood there silently for a beat, then laughed, a strange sound filtered through the vocal modulator.

“Detective Hazzard,” the burglar said, “this has been somewhat amusing, so I guess I’ll let you keep your hand this time.”  Red Ace suddenly twisted their wrist, wrenching it from my supposedly-tight grasp as the burglar danced away from the booth, the shadow that had protected their identity following.  I reached for the popgun, flicking the safety off as I drew.  Red Ace was nearly to the door, but the popgun fires much faster than a person can run.  Or dance.

The gun went off with its distinctive pop! and an expanding bubble of semi-permeable matter flew across the room at Red Ace.  The burglar turned to see what had caused the noise and caught the bubble face-first.  It enveloped them, and the bubble’s forward momentum rolled Red Ace up against the far wall of the Funeral Parlor, knocking the lithe individual off their feet.

I stood slowly and gingerly picked my way across the bar, holstering the popgun as I went.  I stopped in front of the bubble holding Red Ace, resting a foot against the gently-rocking and now very solid membrane surrounding the burglar.  “Well then,” I said, fishing a cigarette out of my coat pocket and lighting it, “looks like there was something else.”

Solitaire, Part 3

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Eddie ran into some trouble on the case, getting his butt handed to him by a burglar who also made off with all the documents Eddie needed.  What’s a bruised-but-not-beaten private eye to do?  Check back tomorrow for part 4!

* * *

I slunk into my office the next morning in a pensive frame of mind and a hung over state of being.  I had no idea where to start the search for the missing papers, nor who else might want them.  Was that burglar from Vellum’s office hired by Pennington himself?  Or maybe even Vellum?  Did the ex-Mrs. Pennington hire the burglar as a backup plan in case I couldn’t cut it?  Who knew.

I mean, not me, obviously, but hopefully someone out there knew.

“How’s the case going, Eddie?” I heard Miss Typewell, my secretary/personal assistant/head researcher/person-who-knows-where-everything-is asked.  Her blue hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, a pair of archaic reading glasses hung around her neck on a thin chain, and she wore a wooly cardigan of bright orange.

“A bust so far,” I replied, shrugging out of my jacket and doffing my hat.  “Someone beat me to the punch at the lawyer’s office.”  And then just plain beat me, I added silently.  I gave Miss Typewell a brief rundown of what had transpired at Vellum’s office the night before, skipping over most of the details of the beating I’d suffered.

“Going to try Pennington’s personal files next?” she asked when I’d finished.

“Gonna have to,” I replied.  “Think they’re hackable?”  I knew a fair amount about technology, but not nearly as much as Miss Typewell did.  She was my go-to with technical questions like this, though her answer was often not quite what I was hoping for.

Miss Typewell looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “I can probably get in no problem, but I doubt it’ll be to Mrs. Pennington’s satisfaction.  Digital documents are too-easily forged and faked these days.”  True to form, then: an answer, but not one that was all that much help.

“True,” I said, my thoughts drifting off.  “Maybe we should try a different approach.”

“What do you have in mind, Eddie?”

“Well…I know that the reason I didn’t get the stuff last night was because someone got there ahead of me,” I said, pacing across the reception area of the office.  “Can you do a search to see if there’s been any other robberies of this type in the city lately?”

“Sure, gimme two minutes,” Miss Typewell said, flicking vid windows across the space in front of her with the deft movements of a trained professional.  She tapped away at buttons on various panels for a minute or two, lost in concentration, then I got bored and wandered into my office and sat down.  I pulled up a new game of solitaire and was halfway through losing game 2,138 when Miss Typewell’s face popped up in a vid window next to my game.

“Found a pattern, Eddie,” she said.

Oh yeah?” I replied, not taking my eyes off my game.

“Yes.  Six similar burglaries in the past three weeks, all in the same district.  Looks like they’re all done by the same person, a burglar who goes by the name Red Ace.”

I glanced toward Miss Typewell’s screen.  “You’d think they’d at least have some red in their outfit, then,” I said, frowning.  “Any idea how we can use this?”

“Well,” she replied, looking away at a different vid window, “it looks like all of the jobs were commissioned through a bulletin board for underworld types.  The Boss set it up a few years ago to make contract jobs with freelancers outside of the Organization easier to arrange and control.  Arcadia PD hasn’t been able to do anything about it because the boards just set up electronic communication between the two parties, they don’t actually plan the jobs there on the boards.”  I nodded thoughtfully.  The Boss – the head of Arcadia’s massive crime syndicate, the Organization – was a shadowy but powerful figure who loomed over the city of Arcadia.  Anything he put together would be tough for Arcadia PD to even chip away at, let alone dismantle completely.  Be that as it may, the bulletin board did provide us with an opportunity to track down our burglar.

“Hmm…a plan comes to mind, Ellen,” I said, stroking the stubble on my chin.

“Already way ahead of you, Eddie,” she replied.  “I’ve set up a post on the bulletin board. With any luck, we’ll hear from your mystery burglar soon.”

Solitaire, Part 2

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Eddie has taken a case to track down some important documents.  Is he sober enough to get the job done?  Check back tomorrow for part 3!

* * *

I waited until early evening to go out to investigate.  Not because I was hungover – though the mild headache I’d been fighting all day had proven effective at killing any desire I had to go out while the sun was still up – but because the sort of skulking and law bending I’d have to do to investigate was much easier to accomplish if everyone else had gone home for the day.  I filled the afternoon with a bit of research on Mr. Pennington, half a bottle of whiskey – hair of the dog and all that – and three more lost games of solitaire.  I decided to try Pennington’s lawyer’s office first, figuring any important business or financial documents – the sort his ex-wife hinted were taken – would likely be kept in a safe there.  Pennington’s lawyer was Caius Vellum, well-known in the fancier circles of Arcadian Society as the guy who could help you get away with just about anything.  In my research that afternoon, I’d turned up some news articles from several months ago about Pennington’s, as his ex-wife called them, “nocturnal habits,” and it sounded pretty weird, even by Arcadia standards.   I’d thought I’d seen it all, but this guy had gotten up to some strange business, rolling around naked on the street in Eakin Plaza, climbing up on the fountain in the center of the square to…well, it was gross, let’s just leave it at that.  But Vellum had managed to avoid getting any charges pressed against his client, and the whole episode had eventually been passed off as just an eccentricity on Pennington’s part.

Vellum left the office at half-past six, and I sat across the street in a coffee shop for another half hour after that before deciding the place was empty and I could try to get in.  I slipped out of my booth and trotted across the street, my jacket collar turned up against the encroaching October wind and my hat brim pulled low over my eyes.  I reached the office building and inspected the lock.  The security system was an electronic pad with several security measures, including retina scan, DNA scan, and fingerprint pad.  You had to pass all three for the door to unlock for you automatically.  The actual lock itself, though, was a traditional deadbolt, and one it was quite easy to jimmy open with a few seconds’ work with a lock pick.  I heard the lock’s tumblers click into place, but I waited to open the door until after I’d placed a flat, matte-black square over the security panel next to the door.  I pressed a button on the box, which hummed quietly for a few seconds, then beeped.  A small green LED lit up, indicating the alarm system linked to the door had been deactivated.  Pocketing my lock pick and the security bypass, I turned the doorknob and pushed open the door, which swung silently into the office.  I glanced around to see if anyone was watching me, then ducked into the building and shut the door behind me with a muffled click.

I let my eyes adjust to the darkness as I dug through my pocket for my safe cracking kit.  The kit was another small box, about two inches on a side, and about as thick as a pack of cigarettes.  It would use magnets and some other science-y mumbo-jumbo to rotate the tumblers in the safe’s lock and open the thing up quickly and quietly.  While I could pick the lock on a safe manually, as I’d done with the door, it would take a lot longer.  The safe cracking box was fast and reliable.  I found it and made my way to Vellum’s inner sanctum, sidling around expensive lobby furnishings and deeper into the dark recesses of the office.

I reached Vellum’s private office and crept over to his desk, feeling for a light panel.  I found the panel and tapped it lightly, creating a dim ambient light in the room and temporarily blinding me a bit.  When I regained my vision, I saw I was not alone.

Crouched in front of the safe was someone clad in burglar black from head to toe.  They already had the safe open and several piles of important-looking documents strewn about the floor.  They were frozen in place, staring right at me as I stared back at them.

“I’m just here for some documents from the safe,” I said casually, trying to remember if I’d packed my sidearm or not.  A certain absence of weight under my left arm told me I had not remembered, much to my frustration.  I generally preferred to talk my way out of situations like this anyway, but not having options was a tad frustrating.  “I don’t want to get involved in any violence here, pal.  Let me get what I came for, and you can rob this legal leech blind for all I care.”

The burglar stood up, revealing an individual of indeterminate sex and slender dancer’s build.  They reached into a pouch strapped to their belt and came out with what looked like a short baton.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” I said truthfully, backing away and raising my hands placatingly.  “I really don’t give a damn what you’re doing here or who you are, I just want to get what I came for and get out.”

As the burglar advanced on me, I reached out and slapped the light panel.  The panel was set to bring up the light based on intensity of touch; my heavier touch caused the light to flash to full brightness in an instant, temporarily blinding my opponent and giving me the chance to grope around for a weapon.  I found a large, heavy paperweight with my left hand, grabbed it, and quickly twisted away to the right to avoid the already-recovered burglar’s slashing swing with that baton.  The baton extended in flight, slapping down across the desk and cracking the smooth, glassy surface.  I turned my twist into a full 360, bringing the paperweight up to slam it into the burglar’s head.  They ducked my attack, throwing me off-balance a bit.  As I recovered my footing, the baton slammed into my midsection, and the burglar touched a button on the end of the baton that sent a few thousand volts coursing through my body.  I twitched uncontrollably, dropping my improvised weapon and collapsing on the floor.  With no input from me, my body decided to twitch a bit more once I landed.

Meanwhile, the burglar turned back to the safe, gathered up all of the documents and folders they had taken out of it, and started for the door.  I had just enough self-control to reach out and grab them by the ankle, but nowhere near enough energy to actually hold on.  The burglar shook off my enfeebled hand, striding out the door and the office.

“Nothing personal,” they said in a harsh, robotic tone, their real voice masked, “but you weren’t even playing the same game I was, here.”  With that, they vanished, leaving me alone and twitching on the office floor.

It took me a few minutes to regain control of my limbs, and even then it was a pretty shaky proposition.  I struggled into a sitting position, clutching my bruised gut and wondering just what the hell had happened.  I scooted over to the safe to see if there were any documents left inside, knowing there wouldn’t be.  I looked anyway.  There weren’t.  Being right all the time can be a bit of a burden in situations like these.

“Okay,” I muttered to myself, staggering to my feet, “I know there’s someone out there with the files I need.  It can’t be a coincidence someone burglarized this place the same night I came to do my investigation.  So, who else would want these papers?”

Solitaire, Part 1

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This is a short story I wrote several years ago as an introduction to Eddie Hazzard and the city of Arcadia.  A new chapter will run every day this week, leading up to the release of The Invisible Crown next Monday!  Come back tomorrow for Part 2! 

* * *

I was playing my 2,134th losing game of solitaire in a vid window, a hard light interface, when she walked into my office.  She was impressive-looking, with her close-cropped hair, dark skin, and tall stature.  I immediately flicked the floating screen away into the corner of the room and attempted to look as professional as possible.  The woman was clearly someone very busy and very confident; I could tell by looking at the smart, no-nonsense business suit she wore and the vid windows floating around her head at eye level like a low-slung halo.

“No, I want you to sell the shares of Vitruvian Dynamics,” she was saying to one of the screens, “and buy 100 shares of Relativistic, Inc.”  She pinched the vid window closed with an exasperated sigh, and waved away the rest to gather into a stack that floated just outside of her peripheral vision.  The long-suffering woman turned her well-manicured attention on me.  “Detective Edward Hazzard, I assume?”  It was less a question and more a resigned statement of unavoidable fact.  She was clearly unhappy that I was the man she’d discovered behind the desk.  And I couldn’t really blame her.  My appearance doesn’t inspire much confidence: I’m scruffy, slovenly, and only kind of sober.  Her attitude stung a bit, though.

“Yes ma’am, though I prefer ‘Eddie,’” I replied, trying to ignore her disdainful tone.

“I’m sure you do,” she sniffed.  “I have a…case for you, detective.  The subject matter is quite distasteful, and I would prefer if it were kept quite confidential.  I don’t want my business all over the tabloids.”

“Of course, ma’am,” I replied smoothly, easing my way out of my battered chair and around the corner of the scarred, ancient desk.  “We are very discreet, you have my word.”

The woman arched a tweezed eyebrow.  “Well then, I guess I should provide you with the lurid details,” she said, snapping open a smart leather briefcase that was older and better-cared for than anything in my shabby life.  She withdrew a small datachip and handed it to me.  “This is a file on my ex-husband, a man named Geoffrey Witherston Pennington III.  We divorced recently over his rather…unfortunate nocturnal habits.”

“Sleeping around on you, was he?” I asked with a wink.  The woman looked aghast.

“No!  He…had a habit of getting temporary genetic modifications and running around town naked.  It was…unseemly.  I could not handle the personal stress and the lost face in the community, so we quietly separated a few months back.”  A gen-mod tourist, a guy who used a chemical cocktail to give himself the traits of some other animal – snake scales, bird feathers, whatever – and ran around the city making a fool of himself.  It wasn’t all that unusual, but the obscenely wealthy did live in a weird bubble.

“So what do you want me to do, then?” I asked, slipping the datachip into a small port on my desk.  A vid window popped up with a picture of the man and physiological information.  He was around 55, in good shape, with a thick head of still-dark hair.  He was handsome, clearly, and didn’t look unkind or all that odd.  Guess it just goes to show, you never can tell.  “Sounds like anything that he does now is somebody else’s problem.”

“I wish it were that simple,” the former Mrs. Pennington replied, snapping her briefcase shut.  “When we separated, he took with him several documents and files that were quite important to me and my business.  I need you to retrieve them quietly and without causing a scene.”  I opened up a second file from the datachip, which turned out to be a list of the documents the woman needed.  Legal documents, going by their titles.

“Lady, not causing a scene is my bread and butter.”  I didn’t mention I couldn’t afford bread or butter, what with my wholesale whiskey bills.  “It’s $500 a day plus expenses, first two days’ pay upfront.”

Ex-Mrs. Pennington flipped a vid window back in front of her from the stack, tapped a couple of buttons on window, and pinched it shut.  “The money has been transferred to your account.  I expect results, Detective Hazzard.  Do not disappoint me.”  She pivoted and headed out the door, her heels clicking loudly across the scuffed linoleum in the quiet room.

Letting Go

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It’s less than two weeks away.  On December 19, you can hold my book in your hot little hands…well, the kindle version.  You can order a print copy that day, but you won’t get it until a few days later.  Maybe in time for Christmas?  I honestly do not know.

Working with a publisher is definitely different than working by myself, though.  One of the biggest differences is the lack of control I have over things.  I want to do things my way, put the book out when I’m ready to do so, things like that.  I’ve never been good at relinquishing control of things.  Trusting someone else with the story I’ve been working on for over a decade?  It’s tough.

But those are just my hang ups.  Working with Royal James Publishing should ultimately be pretty rewarding.  They’ve been a big help so far with helping set up the marketing and all that.  The cover turned out great, even if they didn’t go with my original idea (I figure they’ve got actual experience designing covers and things, whereas I do not, so I’m gonna trust they know what they’re doing.  Besides, I really do like the cover a lot).  I have to trust my partners in this.  They want this book to be successful as much as I do.  I mean, for me, it’s a passion project, but not my only source of income.  Not even my primary source of income.  Hell, maybe not even my secondary source of income (we’re talking tertiary, behind my day job and driving for Uber, largely because I’ve made a grand total of $0 off the book so far).  I mostly just want folks to read and enjoy my book.  The publisher wants it to be financially successful.

So, yeah, hard as it is for me to give up control of things, as hard as it is for me to let someone else take responsibility for aspects of my work, I don’t really have a choice at the moment.  And that’s okay.  Learning to let go can be a liberating experience.

Dream a Little Dream

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I don’t really remember my dreams that often.  I never really have.  A few have stuck out over the years, though.

Probably my earliest remembered dream was when I was around nine or ten.  I dreamed I was at my grandparents’ house in Okemah, OK, the house they lived in for years when I was growing up.  The house was swarming with gremlins (like from the movie Gremlins), and my grandmother and I were crouched together on the ceiling (yeah, upside down like a ninja.  Or Spider-Man.  Or a Ninja Spider-Man) to avoid them.

I don’t usually remember that many specifics from my dreams.  I did (and occasionally still do) have recurring dreams.  For most people, recurring dreams are like flying, or having to give a presentation in your underpants.  But mine was always running.  Bounding, really.  Taking giant, lopping strides, barely allowing gravity to have a say in things.  I’d run along highways and next to cars, keeping up easily and hardly even trying.  I guess it makes sense when you keep in mind I’m a big ol’ fat guy who does not move quickly (and didn’t even when I wasn’t quite so big or old).

In recent years, the dreams I can remember have taken on a more sinister tone.  The one I recall from a couple of nights ago is pretty typical: I was standing in the bathroom, staring into the mirror, and my two front teeth started to crumble fracture before my eyes.  Little pieces chipped and flaked away.  When I looked at my lower teeth, they were full of holes and missing chunks.  It was pretty distressing, I don’t mind telling you.

I wish my dreams were more pleasant.  It’s not a great way to wake up in the morning, feeling the need to poke around in your mouth to make sure your teeth haven’t rotted out of your head while you slept.

Of course, there are also the dreams like this:

2016-10-10 20.46.57.jpg

 

Blog Tour Participants Wanted for The Invisible Crown by Charlie Cottrell — royaljamespublishing.com

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We are still looking for five more bloggers to participate in, The Invisible Crown by Charlie Cottrell Blog Tour. We are looking for blogs that are willing to post reviews, spotlights, author interviews, guest posts, and giveaways. If you want to join, click here to see what days are still available via SignUpGenius or you can send us an email to royaljamespublishing@gmail.com. […]

via Blog Tour Participants Wanted for The Invisible Crown by Charlie Cottrell — royaljamespublishing.com

Book FAQs

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I’ve been getting some questions about The Invisible Crown, and I thought I’d address a bunch of them all at once just to save us all some time.

Q: When does the book come out?

A: December 19, 2016.  Less than a month from now!

Q: How much is the book?

A: The Kindle version is $4.99.  The print version will be more, I would imagine.  If previous titles released by my publisher are any indication, expect it to be around $15.

Q: Speaking of the print version, why can’t I pre-order that?

A: I asked my publisher.  It’s something to do with our vendors.  There won’t be a pre-order for the print version, but the print version will be available for purchase the same day the Kindle version is available to download.

Q: What about an audiobook?

A: Don’t know yet, but I’m working on trying to arrange that for those of you who want me in your ears.

Q: I read your old self-published stories, including the novella Missing Person that this book is based on.  Why should I buy this new book?

A: Aside from the shiny new cover and professional editing?  This is a completely revamped book, with 60% brand-new, never-before-read material!  Sure, the bones of the story are the same, and even some passages were lifted completely from the old story, but it’s a new book.  There’ll be a bunch of changes in book 2 as well, even though that was originally self-published, too.

Q: You just mentioned a second book.  Does that mean this is a series?  When will the rest of the series be available?

A: This is a series!  The second book will be out probably next December.  There will also be a short story set in the Hazzard Universe out sometime in the spring.  At present, there are seven books planned for the series.  The first four have been written, and the fifth book is in-progress.  Books six and seven have rough outlines.  Beyond that?  Well, there’s also almost a dozen short stories that will be released every so often (and eventually collected in print).  And maybe I’ll come up with some more novels, who knows?

Q: I don’t wanna wait!  Why do I have to wait so long for each new book?

A: Mostly because I’m not the only author at my publisher.  They want to give each book plenty of time to grow its audience and get attention before they jump right into the next one.  So, short answer is that I’m not their only author, so I can’t just crank out a book whenever I want.  But this is a good thing, too, because it means there’ll be books to look forward to for years to come.

Q: Will you be doing any signings?

A: I’m a little flabbergasted why anyone would want this but hey, it’s your book.  Trouble is, I don’t do this for a living (not yet, anyway!), so I can’t really just go out on a book signing tour or anything.  I’m trying to arrange something in my neck of the woods in Northern Virginia, probably just after the New Year, but aside from that?  It could be tricky.  I might do a signing in Oklahoma in the summer when I go out to visit my folks, but I’d need someone to set that up for me probably.

If you’ve got any other questions, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them.  Remember, the book can be pre-ordered right now!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I’m thankful for getting to do what I love, both in my day job and with Eddie Hazzard and Company.  Don’t forget to pre-order your copy of The Invisible Crown, which’ll be out just in time for Christmas (and you know you need a good read over the Christmas holiday; how else will you stand Uncle Albert’s rant about whatever it is he’s ranting about this year?)!