Book Five Update

If you’re following along, I was slated to go on a business trip back in July for my actual job. That fell through for reasons, and since I was planning to use the train ride to work on my next book, I wasn’t able to.

Cut to August 20th. My wife, daughter, and I were on our annual vacation to the beach, and I brought my laptop with me, even though I usually never use it when on vacation. One of the mornings when my wife slept in and my daughter was watching Inside Out 2 for the fiftieth time, I cracked out my laptop and got started writing. I only wrote about 1,400 words that day, but it jump-started me getting back in the habit.

I’d been toying with three different ideas for my next book, and honestly, I couldn’t decide which to get started on. Ever since I released Dudley Road last year, I’ve been saying, “I’m never writing another scary story.” Well, I lied. The truth is, Dudley Road outsells my other books by about twenty to one. And while I’m not in this for the money, I do want people to read my books.

So, here we are. I’m about 40,000 words into the first draft of the next book, tentatively titled “Upstairs.” It is in the horror genre, and I will reveal more about the plot, story, and characters as we get closer to a release in 2025. I plan to write about 100,000 words, but the story usually tells itself. I hope to be done with the first draft by the end of September.

Also, like Dudley Road, I will be doing an audiobook for Upstairs because who doesn’t love a good scary story being told by the person who wrote it?

If you like to read early copies of books and don’t mind telling everyone you know about it, please sign up for my ARC (Advance Reader Copy) team here. You’ll get to read the book before anyone else and provide your feedback about what works, what doesn’t, and what you liked or didn’t like. It’s a crucial part of writing a book and I sincerely appreciate your help!

Last, if you’re on Threads (Meta’s new social networking platform that rivals Twitter), I post lots of updates there, so please follow me.

Next Book Starts Soon!

It’s been almost four months since My Best Friend, Marty came out. And, if I’m being honest, it didn’t sell as well as I’d hoped it would. I thought people would resonate with the idea of a simple tale of best friendship. Maybe the synopsis and blurb weren’t perfect. Maybe the artwork didn’t hit. I don’t know. But I thought it’d do better than it did.

Which is to say that I’m a little bummed out about it. I think that’s why I haven’t started writing the next book yet. I came up with three great ideas. Well, I think they’re great anyway. I suppose time will be the judge. Of those three ideas, I picked the one I thought would be the best to knock out.

And the good news (?) is that I plan to start writing it in two weeks. I have to travel down to New York for my new job, and I’ll have four hours on the train where I can, hopefully, write uninterrupted and knock out at least a handful of chapters. And since I won’t have parental duties while I’m there (shoutout to Megan, who’ll be single-handedly holding down the house while I’m gone), I’ll also have a couple of hours each of the four nights I’m there.

As is usual, for no reason whatsoever, I’m not telling you what the book will be about. Not yet, anyway. I don’t know why I like to keep it a secret. Possibly because before I started writing Dudley Road in 2022, I started writing something else entirely. After writing a handful of chapters, I didn’t feel the story was jumping off the page like I had wanted it to. So, for now, I scrapped that story. Don’t worry, I never delete anything. I just archived it for the time being, in hopes that I’ll revisit it someday. Had I told you all about that book right when I started, you might have been disappointed that I didn’t see it through. Or I would be disappointed in myself, or something. I don’t even know.

But the point is, when we get closer to having a finished first draft, I’ll spill the beans on what it’s about. If you’ve been following me for some time, you know that each of the first of my four published books are slightly unique in their genre. I know that’s not good for business, or whatever, but I like to read a plethora of genres, so I like to (try to) write in different genres, as well.

I’ll report back in a couple of a weeks and let you know how my writing sessions went while I am away from home.

Thanks, as always, for your support. Hearing from readers about something they loved in one of my books is the motivation I need to keep going. You have no idea how much it means to me to hear from you all!