NEWS EVERY WRITER WANTS TO HEAR

It’s been a good week. On Tuesday I was told that my first novel had been accepted for publication. On Thursday I signed the contract.

My novel Dead Air isn’t science fiction—it’s a story about a morning radio show host who’s life is already falling apart when he begins to suffer harassment from an unknown source. As nasty pranks escalate into outright attempts on his life, he struggles to cope with the threat and find out who wants him dead. Before they succeed!

I wrote the novel while I was hosting a radio morning show myself, and the scenario is plausibly unnerving. It’s going to be published by Scrivener Press of Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, a small press that does good work and has high standards. Scrivener Press is also the publisher of my friend and mentor, Sean Costello. It’s a perfect fit for Dead Air because the novel is set in Sudbury. The only downside is that Dead Air won’t be released until the fall of 2012, so you (and I) have a long year to wait before we can hold a copy in our hands.

On Sunday I was gratified to learn that my short story “Once Upon A Midnight” has been accepted for the upcoming anthology In Poe’s Shadow from Dark Opus Press. It’s a dark-humour story inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, about a woman having relationship problems while she’s working at a storage and research centre for deadly bio-agents. I’m not sure when that anthology will see print. There’s a chance you’ve already read the story—I had it available for download here on the website, but I’ve taken it down as a courtesy to the folks at Dark Opus. Now you’ll have to buy the book.

I’ve been meaning to make audio versions of my free stories available on this site for some time, and I finally got around to recording my story “No Walls”. So now you can read it online, download a PDF version, or listen to the MP3 recording. The audio is in two parts, available from the “No Walls” page. I hope you enjoy it.

Yes, it’s been a good week. Now if I only had time to get some writing done!