Sleuthing Out the Mystery
Mystery readers live vicariously inside the pages of the fictional world an author spins for them. The reader is able to tag along as the sleuth tackles the bad guys, butts heads with clueless cops, ferrets out clues, and finally solves the case.
Whether it's a cozy like Elaine Viets' Mystery Shopper Series, or the hard-boiled Harry Bosch mysteries of Michael Connelly, the mystery has always fascinated readers. Even while I was writing my adventure/fantasy Windrusher series, I kept reading mysteries. In my second Windrusher adventure, Windrusher and the Cave of Tho-hoth , I introduced a private
detective named Quint Mitchell who helped the Trembles track down their stolen cat. As I was fleshing out Quint's character, I provided him with an interest in archaeology dating back to his college days. A "what if" idea popped up in which Quint unearthed a murder victim while volunteering on a dig in St. Augustine. As writers do, I made a few notes about the scenario before returning to complete Cave of Tho-hoth.
That little what if moment cascaded into a 4-year project in which I wrote and rewrote MATANZAS BAY multiple times, entered it into several competitions, and tried to find a publisher. The novel won the 2007 Josiah W. Bancroft Sr. Award and was named a Book of the Year in the 2009 Royal Palm Literary Competition. This win allowed me to hook up with an agent, but after a year of sleuthing, she wasn't any more successful than I was.
Now the time has come to take the step so many other authors are taking and self-publish MATANZAS BAY. If you've kept up with the rapidly changing publishing world, you know that ebooks have grown into a major force in the marketplace. Previously rejected and unpublished authors like Amanda Hocking are making huge waves, selling tens of thousands of books, and raking in big money on the strength of their ebook sales.
And it's been recently reported that bestselling thriller author Barry Eisler turned down a $500,000 advance to ePublish his next Rain novel. Eisler believes that traditional publishing will soon be a niche business dealing in paper books, while ePublishing is the wave of the future. Hocking, J. A. Konrath, Stephen Leather, L. J Sellers, John Locke, and Selena Kitt are only a few of the many independent authors who have struck gold in the digital mine fields.
As I wrote in my last post, MATANZAS BAY will be coming to Kindle and Nook platforms very soon under the pen name Parker Francis. I'll report on the progress of the book launch in future posts. Stay tuned and wish me luck.
Whether it's a cozy like Elaine Viets' Mystery Shopper Series, or the hard-boiled Harry Bosch mysteries of Michael Connelly, the mystery has always fascinated readers. Even while I was writing my adventure/fantasy Windrusher series, I kept reading mysteries. In my second Windrusher adventure, Windrusher and the Cave of Tho-hoth , I introduced a private
detective named Quint Mitchell who helped the Trembles track down their stolen cat. As I was fleshing out Quint's character, I provided him with an interest in archaeology dating back to his college days. A "what if" idea popped up in which Quint unearthed a murder victim while volunteering on a dig in St. Augustine. As writers do, I made a few notes about the scenario before returning to complete Cave of Tho-hoth.That little what if moment cascaded into a 4-year project in which I wrote and rewrote MATANZAS BAY multiple times, entered it into several competitions, and tried to find a publisher. The novel won the 2007 Josiah W. Bancroft Sr. Award and was named a Book of the Year in the 2009 Royal Palm Literary Competition. This win allowed me to hook up with an agent, but after a year of sleuthing, she wasn't any more successful than I was.
Now the time has come to take the step so many other authors are taking and self-publish MATANZAS BAY. If you've kept up with the rapidly changing publishing world, you know that ebooks have grown into a major force in the marketplace. Previously rejected and unpublished authors like Amanda Hocking are making huge waves, selling tens of thousands of books, and raking in big money on the strength of their ebook sales.
And it's been recently reported that bestselling thriller author Barry Eisler turned down a $500,000 advance to ePublish his next Rain novel. Eisler believes that traditional publishing will soon be a niche business dealing in paper books, while ePublishing is the wave of the future. Hocking, J. A. Konrath, Stephen Leather, L. J Sellers, John Locke, and Selena Kitt are only a few of the many independent authors who have struck gold in the digital mine fields.
As I wrote in my last post, MATANZAS BAY will be coming to Kindle and Nook platforms very soon under the pen name Parker Francis. I'll report on the progress of the book launch in future posts. Stay tuned and wish me luck.
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