Agent News, March Projects, and Two Mystery/Fantasy Series Recs

My unpublished paranormal mystery, Billie Mae, has found an advocate! I'm happy to report that Paul Stevens of Donald Maass Literary Agency is now representing my book-length fiction. Speaking of, I'm working on wrapping up The Bear, my mainstream novel set on Beech Mountain, and pushing back the work left on Daytona mystery novel, Blind Mice Bite, to work on the sequel to Billie Mae. The schedule is ever changing, but having an agent on my team now has given me fresh energy and focus.

Up next for short fiction is my Alvarium Experiment Project Three story due to edit on May 1, with a projected publication launch date of July 15. Not ready to spill yet, except to say that my story is tied to Moby Dick and a demi-god of an assumed Southern character to whom land seemed scorching to his feet.

My latest Florida Writers Association blog post on writing is up. Losing Yourself Part II discusses practical ways in which deal with the various fears of losing yourself within your character as you write.

Of all the books I've read over the past year, the stories of two writers and their characters in particular keep returning to me when I'm driving or showering and my mind wanders from my own story musing. Jo Nesbo's Detective Harry Hole is an endlessly fascinating, deeply flawed, reluctant hero, whom Nesbo carefully unpeels for the reader's inspection novel after novel. And Michael Lawrence's unflinching habitation of Jorg in his Broken Empire post-apocalyptic fantasy series is the epitome of the writer's creed 'be your character'. Start here with Harry Hole, The Bat, or here with Jorg in Prince of Thorns. Let me know what you think!

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