Christopher H. Jansmann's Blog

I’ve got a bit of a marketing blitz going for my most recent book, Silenced. As part of that, I was interviewed for an article on a website that features new releases; I really enjoyed the process and thought I would share that interview with you here.

What’s the story behind the story?  What inspired you to write this book?

The genesis for this story was a chance conversation with a colleague; I happened to mention I was thinking about crafting a mystery around an investigative journalist who stumbles upon something nefarious and discovered my colleague’s prior career had been in broadcast news.  We spent several wonderful hours over multiple lunches talking about the field and what it would take for a reporter to be successful within it; we even covered some of the darker moments my colleague had experienced while covering the worst parts of the COVID pandemic.  I have a special affinity for newspapers, so my character wound up being a print journalist, but much of how they go about uncovering the truth was informed by what I learned about the process from my friend. 

If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of your book, what would they be?

While Vasily is a huge fan of Contemporary Jazz, his musical tastes are actually quite varied; not surprisingly, that means his theme song shifts based on his mood.  

If he’s in a good place, he vibes out to Peter White’s  Venice Beach .If he’s deep in a case, trying to put together the pieces, it would shift to Gayane:  Gayane’s Adagio .When he’s frustrated or angry at being outflanked by a suspect, it’s Mary Chapin Carpenter’s  Bitter Ender .And when he’s with his main squeeze, hands down it’s  Honey-Dipped  by Dave Koz.  What’s your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?

Wow, that is a truly tough question to answer!  I do write what I love to read, for sure, but if I were being honest, it would be seriously hard to choose between mystery or science fiction.  Having said that, I love nothing better than getting lost in a solid mystery on a quiet weekend afternoon and a good cup of coffee.

What books are on your TBR (to be read) pile right now?

I’m two books behind on Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley series, which is truly tragic as she’s one of my favorite authors; if it counts, I am eagerly awaiting the final book in the Outlander series from Diana Galbadon.  I’m currently reading The Blackbird Oracle from Deborah Harkness and just finished re-reading Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Gene Roddenberry. 

What scene in your book was your favorite to write?

There are several, but the one that stands out the most for me is when Vasily returns from an out-of-town trip running down a lead and discovers his partner has turned their condo into something out of a Hallmark Christmas Movie.  I had no trouble visualizing his expression when he walked into that faux winter wonderland…

Do you have any quirky writing habits?

Several.  Whenever I start a new project, I always get out my CD (!) of the original soundtrack to Star Trek: The Motion Picture and start it from track one.  The compositions by Jerry Goldsmith are so optimistic, they put me into the right frame of mind for starting down the long road of crafting a novel that usually runs about 90,000 words.  I also need to have a fresh cup of coffee whenever I sit down for a writing session, and I absolutely must use the so-called “typewriter” mode in Scrivener (my writing software) so I can block out any pesky distractions from email, social media or instant messages.

Do you have a motto, quote or philosophy you live by?

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, or IDIC.  It’s a core philosophy infused into Star Trek by its creator, Gene Roddenberry; he called IDIC “an ideal based on learning to delight in our essential differences as well as learning to recognize our similarities.”

If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?

Aside from enjoying the journey to the resolution of my core mystery, I want the characters to stick with readers long after they close the cover to the book.  I often say that Vasily and the cast that surrounds him feel incredibly real to me; I hope the reader finds them as vibrant as I do, people who you feel as though you know on a personal level – or at least to the point where you wonder what they are doing on a given evening.  

Silenced (Book 9)

Silenced is available now on Kindle, Audible, Hardcover or Paperback.

I often say that writing is my escape from the demands of my day job; writing my first novel, Blindsided, came about primarily because my family doctor hinted strongly that I needed something besides swimming and running to try and knock the edge off the accumulating stress that comes with working in IT. There’s no question that it has helped, for though it seems counterintuitive that the amount of work involved in putting together a contemporary mystery novel is both relaxing and fun, I actually find that to be the case. Wrestling with the various dilemmas I throw at my main characters can be truly cathartic, a way of being able to right the wrongs in a way that can feel fulfilling (even if real life isn’t quite as accommodating).

Despite my best efforts, though, the craziness of the world caught up with me a few weeks ago, and I wound up spending a day and a half in the hospital. The extremely short version of that story is: I’m perfectly fine. The slightly longer version is that I’m not handling the stress quite as well as I thought I was… and maybe, just maybe, am worrying about things that are well beyond my locus of control.

Oops.

I took an additional day to recover from the battery of tests they performed on me while I was a guest at the hospital, and during that time, I thought a bit about how easily I’d allowed work to slowly begin to overwhelm me and how I might try to reduce some of the mental angst that goes along with it. Alongside that was a mandate to reduce my coffee intake; in a sign that art does often flow from reality, there’s a reason Sean always has a mug in his hand. While I know there’s no true comparison between coffee and cigarettes, I think I finally can appreciate how difficult it was for smokers to kick the habit. Thankfully, I need only reduce my intake, but still…

Another intentional shift was to give myself both the grace and the space to enjoy activities I often sideline when work creeps into my free time. That includes my N-scale layout, which had begun to languish despite having made some impressive progress on it over the Christmas holiday. Though I swear I wasn’t trying to make up for lost time, I managed to begin rolling newspaper for the mountains and re-wire two of the buildings my wife gave me years ago with adjustable warm white LEDs.

A newly revamped passenger and freight stations with warm-white LEDs

Writing is in a weird spot, though, for while it’s something I love to do, I often place an inordinate amount of pressure on myself to meet arbitrary deadlines for content. Those appear to have contributed to my level of stress more than I realized; that made me rejigger my long-range plans just a bit, as well as adjust the quantity of writing I do each day I’m working on a new project. Some of that is also practical, for I’m also keen to prevent another wrist issue that would sideline me for far weeks. It’s still early days, but these small changes seem to have kept me at a good equilibrium since I returned home.

The experience also made me eager to dive into other stuff with unabashed joy. That included being completely glued to the live feed from NASA nearly from the moment the Artemis II mission blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. I’m a huge space geek, obviously, and have followed NASA for as long as I can remember; I watched the Space Shuttle Columbia launch in my elementary school auditorium, and sadly, witnessed the Challenger explosion in realtime years later. My parents experienced the original race to the moon, so getting to see the new version of that unfold over the course of ten days was absolutely incredible.

Watching the rocket blast off was amazing all by itself; virtually being in the cabin of that trusty little ship with the crew was simply insane. If you had told me twenty years ago that we’d get live, 4K streaming from the far side of the moon, I would have laughed you right out of the room. Now I’m addicted and can’t wait for Artemis III. I mean, look at these incredible photos:

The Edge of Two Worlds (Image Credit: NASA)II In Eclipse (Image Credit: NASA)

Thanks to them, moon joy has become part of our modern lexicon. I know they didn’t go up there specifically for me, but their timing couldn’t have been better; just when I was looking for a way to put everything into the proper perspective, there it suddenly was, courtesy of NASA.

And I couldn’t be happier.

I absolutely adore release dates. While I’ve slowed down the cadence somewhat from my early cycles, I still manage to do two of three of them each year. Next up is Silenced, the latest in my Vasily Korsokovach Series. Inspired by a chance hallway conversation with a colleague some years ago now, I get to dig into a bit of backstory between Vas and the reporter who covered his assault; I have a special affinity for print journalism, so it was an extremely cool exercise to go behind the scenes a bit and delve into that world.

With the release on the literal horizon, here’s my patented set of tidbits for the story, presented as a Q & A. I promise to (mostly) avoid spoilers, but you’ve been warned.

When does this take place?

Time moves slowly in the Windeport universe. I might be releasing this story in April, but this story begins just a day after Vas makes his cameo appearance in Belie. That meant I had to put myself into the Christmas spirit so I could accurately portray how Vas and Alex would spend their first holiday together.

Wait, didn’t Baubles already cover that?

Ah, so you are paying attention! Why yes, Baubles does indeed give us a picture of what the actual day was like for those two. But it was also told from Alejandro’s point of view, so if you’ve already read Baubles, you’ll appreciate how Vasily reacts to the condo’s transformation in Silenced.

Did you hint that there is a section of Silenced where Alex is the star?

You mean this chapter?

[image error]Alex takes center stage for a brief bit in Silenced

Then you’d be right.

Please tell me the wedding finally happens.

It does. Just not in this book.

Seriously?

Seriously. Not that I didn’t want to get it into this story, but the way the plot developed, it didn’t feel right shoehorning it into this particular narrative. I can tell you it is finally written, though, and should appear in Bliss. Unless, of course, I change my mind.

Well, at least Sean finally turned a corner.

Did he? (Checks notes.) I hate to break it to you but maybe all is not well on that front, which will put Vasily in an awkward position. Actually, how quickly can you get over a heartbreak, really? It took Vas almost four books before he found Alex, after all. I think we can give Sean a little space to heal, don’t you?

So much for happy endings, then.

Oh, they are still coming. Just not as quickly as even I would have hoped, sadly.

Tell me more about the main mystery.

Vasily learns pretty quickly that the victim uncovered something while digging into a local real estate developer — one with an already sketchy reputation in Rancho Linda. The secret, though, proves difficult to uncover, though Vas tackles it like he always does: with vigor and a dogged persistence. Spanning both California and Florida, the case covers a lot of ground — both personal and professional.

That’s it for now – if you haven’t already, be sure to preorder your copy today so you can get it on the day of release.

As is customary for me in April, I’ve begun crafting the next novel in the Vasily Korsokovach series. Tentatively titled Bliss, it picks up literally a day after the final events in Aftermath, and as you might infer from the title, it just happens to be the story where — at long last — Vas and Alex finally get their wedding moment. I can’t honestly believe how many books I’ve teased this culmination of their relationship, one that I never actually foresaw when Alejandro appeared on the swim deck at UEM all the way back in Ditched. I’ve said it in other venues, but in case you missed it, Alex was intended to be the prime suspect/murderer in that book, and for the first third of his appearance, he really does feel like he could have swung completely in that direction. Fortunately for Vas, it went in a completely different direction, one that Alex saw immediately (but the author required a few hundred pages to recognize).

I love writing both Sean and Vasily, but have to admit that Alex (and his relationship with Vas) has a truly special place in my heart. Those two are the craziest, most unlikely pair to have crossed paths and ultimately found true love; that, in turn, has in my opinion made their gradual move from friends to lovers to partners feel incredibly real and true. It’s also made my heart ache for Sean, for in the grand scheme of things, his heart was the one to be repaired first; my best laid plans went right out the window when Suzanne (like most of my characters) kind of went in her own direction. It happens regularly to me (as longtime readers now know), far more regularly than it probably should, but that also lends a bit of organic authenticity to the affair, too.

Writing an actual wedding scene is a new one for me. Writing one that properly honors my characters is a challenge of an entirely different order, but one I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. Knowing that both Vas and Alex have essentially exited the religion they grew up under opened the door to having more creativity with the process, allowing me to mix and match aspects of various ceremonies I’ve been to over the years that have especially appealed to me. I also knew going in that I was going to lift parts of my own wedding to use as a template; for those of you wondering, that’s the primary reason the duo are going to be in Orlando (and, specifically, at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge). My wife and I went through the very same process they did in selecting all of the aspects of our (literal) Fairy Tale Wedding, though some three decades ago, the options were far more limited than they are today. We wound up at the Wilderness Lodge because it was not only an amazingly beautiful venue, it had the added attraction of being even cheaper than the then-newly constructed wedding pavilion just outside the main gate of Magic Kingdom. (Yes, renting the castle was well outside of our price range.)

I’m sure memory makes the space seem far cozier and romantic than it probably was, but then again, I was there with my soulmate, whose wit and grace and gentle humor never fails to warm the moment and make anyone feel at home. Capturing that in prose has been particularly fun; I’m just finishing the first chapters of the new book and though I still need to show it to my beta reader to be sure, I think I’ve found the general flavor of the moment, spiced up with the dynamic personalities that are Alex and Vas. The moments in there feel fun, genuine, and I hope, worth having made you wait several books to get there.

Silenced (Book 9)

Want to get to the edge of the wedding? Then be sure to order your copy of Silenced so you can see how the final days of planning the affair went.

As experiences go, there are few that I’ve done that measure up the uniqueness that is the Tucson Festival of Books. I’ve been an avid fan since it started, and have spent many happy hours over the years listening to authors talk about their craft. I can’t tell you how many amazing discoveries I’ve made that way, stories — and, in some cases, genres — that had never been on my shelves at home until I stumbled upon them at the festival.

More recently, it’s also been my honor to be an invited participant. This year — my fourth — found me in the Indie Author tent on Sunday morning on an extremely warm, extremely bright early Spring day. The weather was beautiful, and as always, the crowds were plentiful. To my great joy, I had the chance to speak with multiple readers, including a few that I’ve come to know over my years of being an author attendee. And like every other year, it was quite suddenly over; all too soon, I found myself packing my wares back up despite it feeling though I’d just arrived.

I sold a few books, which was cool; I met several new friends in the Indie tent, which was even cooler. I never tire of learning how others have come into the industry, nor what their inspirations are for what they write. One of these days, I’ll sign up for a writer’s retreat and swap notes with others in a more formal setting; these brief moments I have with fellow wordsmiths never feels like enough time to fully dig into the subject.

Bananas Foster at Delmonico’s — and, of course, more coffee

After my appearance at the festival, it was immediately off to the airport so I could attend a software development conference in Las Vegas. It’s an annual event that tends to, uh, bookend the Book Festival each year, which means I’m either just getting back from Vegas or just heading out depending on how the calendar works. This was a year of heading out, and I arrived in Sin City late Sunday after a long, long day. Since I’m not a gambler, I tend to avoid the various casino floors; instead, I usually work my way through the various eateries along the strip, experimenting with foods and flavors I tend not to get here in Tucson.

Tea at the Waldorf (not coffee)

This trip saw repeat visits to two faves: Delmonico’s Steakhouse at the Venetian (one of Emeril Lagasse’s last remaining restaurants in the city) and the Peacock Tea Room at the Waldorf. Both allowed me to poke around hotels I don’t tend to stay in, doing research for when Vasily decides to book his next trip out there; I took a ton of notes and more than a few photos, especially when I ran across something I felt was worthy of being inserted into something in the future.

Tower from the VenetianThe in-progess Hard Rock hotel on the site of the old Mirage. That’s going to be one big guitar…

Case in point: the Bellagio was in full spring mode and had decked out their botanical solarium with enough color to short out anyone’s senses. The layout was incredibly well done, including some beautifully crafted floral displays made to look like robins or hummingbirds. About the only other place I’ve ever seen better is on property at Epcot during their annual Flower and Garden festival.

A “robin” sipping water.

The conference was amazing, but much like the TFOB, it was suddenly over and I was back at home in Tucson. All in all, it was a fantastic ten days; honestly, I cannot wait to begin counting down to the 2027 TFOB. Hopefully I will see you there!

One last thing before you go

This message greeted me upon my return to Tucson, and I have to admit, it made me smile.

Wait, I think I know that name…

Yes, this is a shameless reminder that my latest book, Silenced, will be out in just a few weeks. Have you pre-ordered your copy yet? There’s still time…

I had other plans for my blog post this week — plans that were scrapped when the news crossed my desk that the Olympic runner Jeff Galloway had unexpectedly passed away. You probably have never heard of him, but for those of us who have participated in a runDisney event, he is legendary as their official coach and full time cheerleader. I didn’t have the privilege of meeting him personally, but I was lucky enough to see him at both the starting and finishing lines for the two half-marathons I ran last year; I cannot tell you how incredibly amazing it was hearing him hyping us up for the race, or seeing him clap and wave at seemingly each one of us as we — finally — crossed that blessed finish.

But I think I can partially give you a sense of why it was so amazing.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that my sport is swimming; I competed up until high school, and then later as an adult, was part of a Masters program and swam primarily for fitness. My wife was the runner in our family, and after a few years of being her loudest supporter at various runDisney events, I decided it looked like too much fun not to run with her at the next 5K she entered.

You don’t simply decide to run a 5K, of course; shifting from swimming to a land-based sport required some preparation, and she recommended that I download the Easy 5K app that Jeff Galloway had developed to help get me started. She had already been following what she told me was his “run-walk-run” method and figured I’d not have too much trouble using it either.

I remember looking at her funny and saying something to the effect: “Run? Walk? Run?”

“Yes,” she replied patiently.

“But you’re supposed to run a 5k,” I said, as though it were obvious.

“Yes,” she smiled. “Try the program. Trust me.”

So, naturally I did.

The app proved to literally be a miniature version of Jeff Galloway that kept me company on each of the many training runs I did as I worked my way up to my first ever 5K. Whenever I felt like I was’t making any progress, Jeff was there in my ear, encouraging me to keep going while reminding me I was capable of achieving any goal I set my mind to. It was a power combination, running and his relentless optimism; before I knew what I was doing, I’d not only run a 5K, but had set my sights on doing a 10K. This time, I needed no encouragement to download his app, nor did it take much convincing to purchase a copy of his seminal The Run-Walk-Run Method book so I could get a deeper understanding of just how the whole thing worked. And work it did: nearly a decade after I started, I’m still at it, still running just about every day. All of that is due to Jeff and his infectious enthusiasm — and evangelism — for running as a way to remain healthy.

I’m a believer. I can feel how my sense of optimism dips when I’m not able to get out for a run; I know I perform better as a coder and a writer after logging a few miles. It’s crazy, but even though I never met Jeff, I feel like he’s been that friend you could always depend on, the one you could lean on in those moments when you were feeling low. He may have been a voice on an app, or a distant figure on a platform encouraging me onward, but in either case, he was a force for good in my life — and, if the internet is to be believed, in the lives of thousands of others over the years.

His legacy will live on, of that I am quite sure. I’m far enough along in my running journey now that I rely more on my run-walk-run timer than the app, but after he passed, my very next run I dug out my AirPods and settled in for four miles with the maestro. Hearing him again in that way made me far more emotional than I expected, but it was also a wonderful way for me to honor someone who had such an effect on my own life and wellbeing.

Just a quick reminder that this is the weekend for the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books! I’ll be at the Indie Author Experience on Sunday, from 10 – 1. Swing by if you can!

It’s probably a bit too early to be excited, but I just can’t help it! I’m less than a month out now from my appearance at the Tucson Festival of Books, so naturally I am deep in to my preparations. This year, I’ll have hardcover and paperback editions of Reflection in the Shadows, something I’ve not done in the past.

Hardcover and paperback editions will be available this year – while supplies last, of course.

The hardcover versions are limited edition runs specifically printed for this year’s event, too; what better way to commemorate your visit to the Festival than with a one-of-a-kind book? Plus you get to meet me, too! It’s a win-win for everyone.

A special insert was added to the hardcover edition that will be available at the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books.

Last year, I experimented with bookmarks that I handed out to anyone who passed by; they were something of a hit, so I’m increasing the number and leaning on my good friends at Bett’s Printing to make them a bit more polished. I love a good bookmark, and never seem to have enough. These will feature the complete list of all of my novels, in order, for all three of the series I am currently working on — making them a handy guide for what might be left on your reading list.

I also have a few leftovers from prior visits; while I won’t be able to offer my full library of novels in print form, there will be an eclectic collection of earlier works to purchase with the added benefit of getting any of them autographed. Now, here is something I hardly ever do — but if you can keep a secret, I’ve got a special deal planned for the day of the Festival. Subscribers to my newsletter will get a super-secret password the weekend of March 7th; if you correctly provide this super-secret password to me, in person, at the Festival, I’ll give you a hardcover edition of one of my earlier books for free when you purchase Reflection in the Shadows. The deal will only last as long as I have those older books left, of course, so you might want to plan accordingly.

If you’re planning in visiting, please let me know! I love to meet readers, and always look forward to chatting with them about my current books or what is yet to come in any of the series — without giving away too many spoilers. Typically the weather is pretty nice, too, making it a wonderful day for a stroll looking for literary treasures. I hope I’ll see you there!

With the Tucson Festival of Books just around the corner, it seems appropriate to release the podcast I recently recorded for the novel that will be featured there this year: Reflection in the Shadows. Although my trade-in-stock is character-driven mysteries, I was inspired to see what I create if I dusted a little magic across a traditional police procedural.  And while it took far longer than I expected to complete the tale, I like how it turned out – so much so that I’ve already got a sequel planned.

My friend joins me to talk about the story and the new characters introduced with it: Katherine Oliver and Tenoch Vasquez – and what it took to craft an incredibly unique blending of mythic fantasy and urban reality.  As always, we’ll try to avoid overt spoilers, but we do assume you’ve already read the novel.

Download the podcast anywhere you listen to them, or use the player below to access it from my podcast system.

One of the most interesting creative challenges I face when writing is remaining true to the spirit of my characters. It’s not just ensuring they sound consistent to the reader from book to book; I mean, that’s important, obviously, especially since I bounce back and forth between Sean Colbeth and Vasily Korsokovach. Those two have many similarities, to be sure, but they are unique personalities who see the world quite differently. Hearing Sean say something Vas might utter would kind of spoil the magic — or at the very least, make the reader think the author was just phoning it in.

But beyond that, it’s also means striving to ensure I adhere to this rather long (and mostly unwritten) list of rules for how my characters interact with the world around them. I’ve touched on that before in a different context, namely the rules of magic that Ocelot has to follow; while that was partly for my benefit to ensure I had him cast the same spell the same way for nearly the same reason throughout Reflection in the Shadows, it also helped to ground the story in a believable way. As readers, by the time we reach the finale we kind of know what’s in his arsenal at that point so his resolution makes sense (and wasn’t plucked entirely out of thin air). I suppose that’s also a side effect the mystery writer side of the house, i.e. my desire to make sure I’ve sprinkled enough context throughout the story that the reader might make the same connections my detective is making (or, in Ocelot’s case, select the same spells).

For Sean and Vasily, that also extends to ensuring they are incredibly consistent in how they apply their morality and ethics. I’ve written both of them long enough now that I can easily tell when I’ve begun to go off the rails on something and will pull it back in line with where they need to be. While such a diversion could conceivably be interesting, plot-wise, I always weigh that against whether it moves the character forward in some concrete way, growing them into the next iteration of who I want them to be — or if it was just a fun passage to write that lends nothing more to the story than a few pages of shock. When it’s the latter, I know I tread dangerously close to damaging my character’s relationship with the reader, damage that cannot often be repaired easily.

This is top of mind for me at the moment as I’m finishing up that bonus section of Aftermath I mentioned last week. It’s a minor spoiler to reveal that writing that addition has required me to justify what exactly happened between Sean and Suzanne; it’s also forced me to look at the final chapters of the prior book — Belie — and reassess them from Suzanne’s point of view. What was she actually feeling in those last moments? How certain was she of the path she’d chosen — and how did that certainty change in the hours and days and weeks that passed afterwards? I had a sense of all of that when I closed out Belie, but now that I’m right back into the thick of it with Aftermath, I’m finding her view on events is not quite what Sean reported back to us as readers.

Does that mean I might be breaking my own rules, then?

I’m honestly not sure. Part of me says no, for we were seeing everything through Sean’s eyes — seeing it as his truth. I don’t go in for the unreliable narrator format, so I believe Sean told us what he thought he experienced. Was it tinged by his own emotions? Unquestionably, almost as much as what I’m now seeing from Suzanne’s end of things. Am I surprised that two things can be true at the same time? Not in the least, especially when humans are involved. My challenge now is to make sure it continues to ring true, and that whatever resolution I am working toward passes the plausibility test — for both myself, as the author, and for you, as the reader. We both have some level of investment in this, so I know I need to get it right.

No pressure…

I’m just back from an amazing long weekend in Southern California, visiting with friends while taking part in what will be the last Disneyland Half Marathon weekend for a bit; with all of the upcoming park construction, runDisney is pausing events in Anaheim, though they will still take place out in Orlando. As much as I love Walt Disney World, it’s hard not to be partial to the coziness of Disneyland — especially when the 5K stages the corrals along Main Street, U.S.A. Somewhat foolishly, when I registered for the race I thought I’d be over my desire to run a half marathon and only signed up for the 5K and 10K events. Once I arrived on site, though, I quickly realized I’d made a mistake, especially given how wonderful the weather turned out to be. Now I’m going to have to wait it out, or break down and drag my wife back to Florida again in order to experience the unique magic that is a Disney running event.

Visiting the park always makes me think of my characters, which was especially appropriate given how I managed to finish Aftermath just a few days before we departed. Overall, I’m happy with the story and how well it progressed Sean Colbeth as a character, though it wound up a bit shorter than I’d expected. Most of my novels (save for the first two) average around 90,000 words, which is a comfortable read for a mystery; that also generally gives me the freedom to explore several side plot lines in addition to the main mystery. This novel wound up being laser-focused on the mystery and only a single side story — that being Sean dealing with the (ahem) aftermath of the events depicted in Belie. I found that content compelling, and in re-reading the novel during my first editing run, didn’t feel like it needed any adjustment. As promised, we do land on the doorstep of Vasily’s wedding, but the actual event will take place in the next novel of that series (which seems incredibly appropriate).

And yet, this little voice in the back of my head kept mumbling I might not have tied up quite as many loose ends as I thought I had. That is one voice I always listen to, for as a mystery writer, the last thing you want to do is leave something hanging or solve the case without having actually provided enough evidence to do so; thus concerned, I tucked back into the narrative one more time, and realized I had the absolute best coda for the story hiding in the wings. While I’d not planned on cracking open the novel for a new addition, it has to be done, I think, in order to truly allow everything to move forward in my little universe. I expect I’ll have it completed in a few days, and then I can turn my attention toward expanding the world of Oliver and Vasquez with Midnight, which I still plan on getting released by the end of the year. Given how dark the real world seems to be at the moment, I think we could all use a little heroic fantasy; dusting off Ocelot and letting him take out a few bad apples seems like the least I can do to brighten our perspective, even if it’s just for a little while.

In case you missed it, the next Vasily Korsokovach novel, Silenced, became available for Kindle preorder on Amazon; I expect hardcover and paperback editions will also appear in the next few weeks. I’ve spent a bit of time re-reading it recently and have to admit it’s becoming one of my favorite stories. Reserve your copy now so you can have it when it drops!