Gearing Up

After more than a year of not being able to do much of anything creative, Sarah and I are gearing up for an exciting year in 2013. We are hard at work on our first novel together. Murder on the Mullet Express is set in the Roaring 20's in Homosassa Springs, Florida, and will feature the intrepid trio of geezers Theodora Lawless, Cornelia Pettijohn, and Professor Percival Pettijohn. The three of them will make their debut in a short story, "The Odds are Always Uneven"  this October, in the Speed City Sisters in Crime anthology Hoosier Hijinks.

Sarah is going to be pitching our joint novel at the Historical Novel Society meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, this June on the same morning I am scheduled to pitch the new Nessa Donnelly novel, Concealed in Ash. It should be an exciting and busy weekend for both of us. We're looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones while we are at the event. We will also be distributing business cards for our new press, Mystery and Horror, LLC.

Along with our personal writing projects, our little cross-eyed bat logo is going to make several appearances on new books before the end of the year. We have decided on three anthologies this year and will be opening for mystery novels later this summer. Covers for Strangely Funny, All Hallows' Evil, and Undead of Winter are on the Mystery and Horror, LLC website. Strangely Funny, our paranormal humor anthology, and All Hallows' Evil, our Halloween Mystery anthology, are open for submissions. Undead of Winter isn't open yet. There are only so many hours in the day.

Our first non-anthology will be a series of collections of monster art and humor by Monstermatt Patterson - Ha Ha Horror! Volumes 1 and 2. Volume 1 is due out later this year. In the meantime, catch his podcast at 6 Foot Plus. He is truly a man of many talents.

Our plan for the press is to do a limited number of anthologies each year. We want to devote the rest of our time to working with our authors to develop and promote their books. In the world of small press publishing it isn't enough to create a great book, authors and publishers have to work together to get that book in front of an audience. Everything we do is geared toward the goal of getting our books noticed. It is an exciting, scary, and daunting course we've set for 2013. Together we've gone from planning to building, but every day I wake up asking myself what I can accomplish and what I can do better.

Speaking at FHNS Meeting April 6

The photograph above is one I took of the Coastal Region Library, in Crystal River, Florida.  Our Florida Chapter of the Historical Novel Society will be held there on Saturday, April 6. The group has invited me to speak about, "Bringing the Past into Your Fiction."

Friends who have ever got me started talking about the history of Kentucky are probably groaning about now. I can spend hours talking about the history behind my Nessa Donnelly stories. Just so you know, I will only use one example from my own work. This talk is about the wide range of historical fiction and how different authors approach bringing the history they love into the their work. I'm going to get to talk about books by some of my favorite historical authors: Beverle Graves Myers, Catriona McPherson, Suzanne Adair, and many others.

If you like historical fiction, which I am sure this audience does, this should be a great opportunity to discover new favorite authors and revisit with some old friends. Members of the group who write their own historical novels should also enjoy seeing how a number of other writers make the past come alive on the printed page.

I'm looking forward to Saturday. If you are in the area, drop in and say hi. Meetings are free and open to the public.