“This is a public service announcement…with guitars!”

I’ve been dropping hints that there are big things ahead for this blog in the coming year, now I’d like to make it official:

In the next fifteen months (or so), I shall be posting 4 separate, full-length novels on this site. They will be available to read and download (under the terms of Creative Commons) for FREE. I might have one of those PayPal “tip jars” for those of you who want to offer a small stipend to keep me in printer cartridges but I emphasize payment is optional. The main thing is to get my novels out there in the public eye and give folks the opportunity to read them.

The first offering, So Dark the Night, will be posted the end of March. I’m in the process of doing a final edit and polish, wearing out my brain on the 475 page fucker. But it’s a gorgeous book–I’ve excerpted it in “Stories” if you want to pop over for a look–and when you read it in its entirety…well, I can hardly wait.

The next book is shorter, about 160 pages. It’s titled Of the Night and is set in the same universe as the first one, although not a direct sequel. I’ll have that one ready likely the first week of June.

Two others will follow and I’ll talk about them in greater detail at a later date.

These books have been languishing too long and it’s time to get them out there rather than have them locked away in ye proverbial trunk, gathering dust.

I’ve set a pretty aggressive schedule for myself, with hard deadlines, so the next year+ is going to be busy and my poor, arthritic fingers are going to take a terrible pounding. But if not now, when? I am encouraged by fellow scribblers Peter Watts, Scott Sigler, David Wellington and Cory Doctorow, authors who have garnered no small amount of attention and acclaim by posting their work on-line. Cory has made the astonishing claim that one of his novels has been downloaded 650,000 times…and that’s just from his site alone (not counting those “linked” to him). The mind boggles at such numbers. And Peter, disenchanted with how Blindsight, a terrific book, was promoted by his publisher, posted it on rifters.com and earned himself a spot on the Hugo shortlist (and I still say you shoulda won, bro).

So there it is, my friends. All part of my profound desire to bypass traditional publishing and get my work directly into the hands of readers. Whether or not I have the kind of success others who’ve gone this route attained, I can’t say. But if I don’t it won’t be because I’ve offered up substandard, amateurish work. So Dark the Night is a thriller in every sense of the word, filled to brimming with sharp, hard-boiled dialogue, supernatural “bogeys” and the most endearing private operatives since Holmes and Watson navigated the steamy streets of old London town.

Watch for it the end of March.

It will be worth the wait.