The Ghost, the Serpent, and the Wasteland out now!

What a way to kick off the new year, am I right? While I apologize for the delays (and the delays on top of the delays) it is pretty cool to be publishing a book on the first day of the year. I don’t know if it’s smart, but it’s certainly cool!

I’ve found that the books I write are kind of like my cats - I don’t have a favorite one, but I definitely have a favorite one. The Ghost, the Serpent, and the Wasteland, Also Titled: The Deaths of Twelve Snakes and One Dumb Bastard is definitely my favorite one. Maybe it’s that “new book smell,” but I think it’s more the fact that this book was never supposed to happen in the first place. The Long Road and The Minutemen were planned from the get-go with Pale Horse riding into my brain about halfway through the writing of The Minutemen. Two books had become three and like so many writers before me I was looking at a trilogy.

Then one day my dear friend Joda surprised me with an old-fashioned typewriter as arguably one of the coolest gifts I’ve received in my life. I was wrapping up the final edits of The Minutemen and getting ready to do some promoting on social media during the summer of 2021 and decided to write some complimentary short fiction about Locke and the World Hereafter, inspired by the Elmore Leonard short story collection I had acquired earlier in the year. Unsure where to start, I kicked it off with the first days of Locke’s hunt for Red Jake and over the next four months I penned a bloody tale of revenge, sharing each short story on Facebook as I went. With the last tale I realized that I had something pretty cool on my hands and decided to expand on it a bit, transforming a series of short stories into a prequel novel. I got to play around with some narrative tools and incorporated different points of view to tell Locke’s story - giving the story a different feel from the previous two novels.

Now, two years later, it’s finally ready to go into the world, wrapped in yet another kick-ass cover by Eric Tonzola. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! If you haven’t read any of my fiction yet, this is as good a place as any. Also, as part of the book’s release I’m offering up promocode NEWBOOK for $10 off your order until January 31st if you pick up The Long Road, The Minutemen, and The Ghost, the Serpent, and the Wasteland together.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you out there in the World Hereafter!