Sunday Upate? Oh, right....

Crapazoid!  It's time for bed and I forgot to do my update.

I have a good excuse, though, I was up late playing with a cool new cover for The Adventure of Anna The Great.  The concept is actually a copy of something I came up for a book I'll publish around September 12, The Ride to Save King. 

This is way way way better than my previous covers for this book.  It still makes use of the illo I did back in college, but with a reverse and some better typography.  The only thing is that the design kinda begs for something in white across the top.  With Ride, it will say "Novelette."  I'm not sure what to put on this one or if I'll put anything at all. (Maybe some more cloud swishies?)

Anyway, I did say I would give my publishing schedule. (Tentative publishing schedule -- as it keeps changing as I speak. I think I've got pretty close to what I'm going to do though.)

Publishing Schedule:

NOTE: These books should be available on Amazon and Smashwords by the end of publication day.  Other vendors will trickle in as Smashwords distributes. (B&N, Apple, Kobo, Sony, Diesel.)

*August 25: A Fistful of Divas, a Mick and Casey Mystery Novelette. (Approx 40 pages) (ADDENDUM: heat wave issues have postponed this to August 26th.)

The rough draft of this story appeared here as a serial in the spring.  More about this on September 1.

*September 12: The Ride to Save King.  Middle reader's novelette.  (Approx 50 pages.)

A girl and her mother evacuate their horse ahead of a hurricane by riding him to a better shelter.

*September 27: Stone-Cold Dead at the Trading Post, a Mick and Casey Mystery Novella (length to be determined.  Might be a long novelette.)

When a mean man is found dead in the market, with his abused wife standing over him with a frying pan, Mick and Casey have to back a lynch mob down from hanging her.  Mick better find a good outcome for the lady, or Casey won't be happy.

*October 11: Feral Princess, a Vespero the Bandit Story.  (Probably a long novelette, possibly a short novella -- 70-ish pages?)

Princess Magda, the last descendant of the wild mountain kings of Prokyar, is penniless, powerless and, as her guardians groom her for marriage, now forbidden to run wild in her beloved mountains.  But as she learns to juggle suitors and ride side-saddle, she still manages to help out a local bandit.

*October 25: The Pottsville Miracles.  Fantasy Western novelette (Length to be determined).

When an impressive stranger is revealed to be a powerful wizard, the tiny town of Pottsville struggles between wonder and terror.  As they struggle to control him, he struggles with his own conflicting desires to take power, or to be accepted in this foreign egalitarian society.

*November 15: Six-Gun Santa, a Mick and Casey Mystery novelette (Or maybe just a short story -- I don't know yet. I don't even know if it will be finished by this time. Alt Date will be in December.)

A crazy old drunk takes a bunch of orphans hostage and demands that Santa Claus meet him for a shootout at midnight.  Mick is elected to put on the red suit and face him.

All of the above stories (some are finished, some are partly drafted) should be drafted by the end of September, and I should be able to focus on the next Starling and Marquette novel, The Man Who Stepped Up,  through October and November.

I decided to put off my romantic suspense novelettes until 2014.  More about some of them in some other post.  I have a few other things to pull together for next year as well.  I fantasy novel I have in my trunk might be suitable for serialization. (Not on the blog, but publishing it in parts.)  I have a bunch of partly finished stories from my fantasy/juvenile fiction days.  More fables and enchantments.  Some screenplay potboilers that might go with the romantic suspense stories, or might be a little more hard edged. (But not too hard edged -- something like Harsh Climate, only with grown ups.)

See you in the funny papers... (in September.)