Chocolate City Justice

With the book launch of Jambalaya Justice barely over, I finally had some time over the break to work on Chocolate City Justice. My publisher recently contacted me about a possible July release day, to time it to coordinate with the PSWA writer's conference, a conference in Las Vegas I try to attend every year.

The deadline was a little short, so I suggested a release date later in the year, but the question did bring working on the novel back into my focus again. I mainly worked on retooling the outline, something I'm still in the process of doing.

When I write, I do an initial outline. I then start writing, and after several chapters I realize it's missing something, whether it's one of the secondary plot lines, a supporting character, a scene, whatever it is, I go back and modify the outline.

Right now, I have the initial outline and about 30,000 words written, but I've had to change the outline and in doing that realized a few issues that have to be resolved. So I've stopped the forward progress of actually writing the novel to tinker with the outline and make the story better.

This is a process I'll do several times before the book is ready to go to my publisher. So while it won't be ready in July, it should be ready before the end of 2012.

In between the writing and the retooling the outline, I'll continue to promote Jambalaya Justice and Gumbo Justice until I can announce the release of the third in the series.

Emerging Novelists

I'm excited today to be featured on Emerging Novelists, a site that features, well, emerging novelists. It sounds so much better than unknown author or something like that. The interview is at http://emergingnovelists.com/Interviews.html and the background info is at http://emergingnovelists.com/index.html

Interviews are a part of promotion, and it's difficult sometimes to know how much of your personal life to reveal to strangers. On one hand, you want to be interesting, so you want to make sure you mention those things that will make readers want to read your books, but you also don't want to put your entire life on display for the world to see.

Fortunately, the most interesting things about me are public record. No, I don't have any convictions, although that certainly would make me seem more interesting. But I was in a serious head-on collision with a drunk driver, something people find notable. I also own a bar in the metro N.O. area, which sounds a whole lot more interesting than it is, although it does provide ideas for some pretty interesting characters.

So while I didn't reveal any deep, dark secrets, hopefully I provided enough personal and background information to draw a reader's attention.