Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Didn’t want the year to end without wishing a Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays / Happy New Year to anyone and everyone who (probably mistakenly) finds their way here.

A special thanks to the more than 5,000 of you who have taken a chance and downloaded my free suspense thriller "Hope Town" from Amazon, Smashwords, or other retail outlet. I’ll keep that free into the new year, in the hope that folks who like it might give a shot to some of my other works.

Slated for next year is another tale of Nate and Parker (the two lead protagonists of "Hope Town") as well as the next volume in the "Applewood" series, along with a few new short stories.

And if the "Hope Town" download brought you here, here’s a taste of what’s to come:

His friend stared at him for a long moment before he began to speak.

"Near as I can remember, Parker, we had a little problem with the rules last time around. You do remember the rules, don't you?"

Parker had trouble keeping the smile off his face. He had indeed broken all his friends carefully delivered rules the last time around.

His inner smile disappeared moments later when his friend spoke again and reminded him what had become of that.

"Damn fool near got his own leg shot off. That’s what."

Parker felt Nate's stare bore into him through the darkness, strangely grateful that it camouflaged his own red face. He turned to look his friend in the eye and nodded.

Nate held Parker’s stare another long moment before turning and beginning to walk, while muttering something else beneath his breath.

"Got me damn near pretend killed, too."

Merry Christmas!

My Amazon "Bestseller."

My computer went out on Thanksgiving night and I’ve been off the grid ever since. I won’t share with you the nightmare it was trying to find a new video card for the thing. Frankly, I suspect time offline was probably good for me. What I was most concerned about was having a few bills coming due, and I forget entirely how to pay bills offline.

In addition, a few days before Thanksgiving, I decided to offer my suspense novel "Hope Town" for free on Smashwords. I suppose in the back of my mind, I knew that Amazon reserved the right to offer it for free too, however I’ve never had any success offering work for free on Amazon. For example, my short story "The Intersection" has been free on Smashwords for months and months, however Amazon has deigned not to make it free there for whatever reason.

So I logged in a few minutes ago for the first time since Thanksgiving night to find that not only has Amazon made "Hope Town" free, but it is currently in the Top Ten (no. 8, as I type this) on the Amazon "free" bestseller list in the category of Suspense. I know such things are illusory, but it feels pretty good.

The only other news I have is it appears the final "Fenway Fiction" volume may indeed have found a home, and it will feature my Red Sox tale "A Truck Story." More on that later.

I'm off to find out what Nate and Parker have been up to these past few years. I suspect they have at least a few more stories to tell . . .