The Lantham Trifecta

The end of May is upon us, summer is coming, and with it the opportunity for beach reading, vacation reading, and campfire-side reading. What better way to celebrate the summer than with your favorite hard-boiled Bay Area Private Eye, Clarke Lantham?

Lantham is the first of several treats I’ve got lined up for you this summer and he comes gift wrapped with three major events hitting between now and the fourth of July.

1. Silent Victor in Paperback

That’s right. At long last, the fourth and most current Clarke Lantham novel will be coming in paperback next week, with all the car crashes, alien abductions, conspiracy theorists, spies, science museums, gunfights, international incidents, murder, mayhem, nipple jewelry, and hardcore snark you’ve come to expect from a Lantham novel. Four hundred pages long, this breathless thrill ride will keep your ass glued to that beach towel long after the tide comes in to sweep you away.
 

2. And Then She Was Gone blog serialization

Many of you discovered this blog through the podcasts, which means you may not have had your first taste of Lantham. Well, your wait is just about over. In celebration of item 3 on this list, and to build anticipation, starting next week I will be serializing the very first Clarke Lantham Mystery, And Then She Was Gone on this very blog. Each episode will cover between 1500 and 3000 words, and will post in html and as an epub (which will also go on the podcast feed). The book will stay up until a month after the entire book has finished its serialization, so those of you following along will be able to read it all the way through (even if you come in late). New installments will post every Tuesday and Thursday, ideally positioned to help you get through the middle part of your work week. The entire process should take ten to twelve weeks, so I can keep you on tenterhooks all summer long. [insert evil laugh here]
I might even do some Dealing In episodes to augment the experience, so sharpen those death threat skills and get your comment-rants ready!
 

3. He Ain’t Heavy a.k.a. Lantham #5
   This is the biggie, the one I’m really excited about. The fifth Clarke Lantham Mystery, He Ain’t Heavy, is coming at the end of June. In this one, Lantham faces down tech billionaires in his most disturbing adventure yet, one that brings him face-to-face with his own mortality (and lack of cooking ability) and plunges him headlong into a world of venture capitalists, arms dealers, corrupt cops, Evangelical social activists, rambunctious puppies, surly sherrifs, and mexican drug lords. If you thought And Then She Was Gone was fast paced, if you thought Silent Victor was perverse and twisty, if you thought Smoke Rings was emotinoally harrowing, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

   Paperback and ebook releases are scheduled for the same day, and we’ll have the facility to do pre-orders for signed books (both singles of book five and complete sets, all signed), which I’ll update you on as the time draws nearer.

   More news soon. Enjoy your various conventions–and look for me in the bar at Baycon, where I’ll be sneaking in an appearance!

   Tags: Announcements, Lantham, mystery, publishing, serial. Announcements,Books,Clarke Lantham   Add a comment

The Places Lantham Loves

Clarke Lantham, the hero of my detective series, lives and works around the San Francisco Bay. One of the features of the books that draws frequent comment is how much the Bay itself is a character in these stories.

Truth be told, it’s an intentional feature. I’ve been a lot of beautiful places in my life, even lived in a few of them (and some ugly places too), but there is something about the San Francisco Bay that can keep a soul fascinated for eternity.

If you’ve wondered what it is, and you want a taste, check out this video. It may explain a few things. Set aside about five minutes to just watch and enjoy. Moments of great beauty deserve undivided attention.

Released: Frock Coat Dreams Paperback

I’m very happy to announce the release of the Frock Coat Dreams paperback, complete with a new essay, new poetry, and some beautiful book design by the AWP art department. We’ve also updated the ebook to include all the new content and some extra navigation features.

Released: Lantham Paperbacks

At long last, Volumes 2 and 3 of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries are available in paperback! The story which began with the cutting-edge biotech noir of And Then She Was Gone continues in Book 2 with hauntings, lawsuits, car crashes, and holiday relatives in the dark and friendly little cozy A Ghostly Christmas Present, featuring new cover art and line drawings by Kitty NicIaian.

When it comes to raw-deal Christmas presents, you can’t beat being thrown in an out-of-state jail on a trumped up charge—but detective Clarke Lantham can’t resist a morbid challenge. So when he calls up his brother for help with bail, he steels himself for the ordeal of spending a holiday weekend with relatives who put the “strange” back in “estranged.”
That was his first mistake. But with only two days to clear his name before he gets thrown back in the slammer—and an old client gumming up the works, a ten-year-old niece with a ghost problem, and the occasional murder competing for his attention—it probably won’t be his last.
Book 2 of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries

Now, you can read the book View from Valhalla calls “A creepy and clever dose of Christmas cheer from the maniac in cell three” from the comfort of your armchair without the bother of a screen.

Get a taste of A Ghostly Christmas Present here, or buy it in Paperback, or as an ebook for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iPad, or any other e-reader.

And then the adventure continues a week later on New Year’s Eve, with the romantic skin-of-your-teeth manhunt Smoke Rings.

Every detective deserves a second chance…
Holidays make Clarke Lantham squirm–not even New Year’s Eve escapes his scorn. With his space cramped, his personal life on the skids, and his business under assault from lawyers and bill collectors, he holes up in his office, counting his blessings that the year from hell ends tonight.
So when an old girlfriend shows up with a chance for a $50,000 reward and a New Year’s Eve reconciliation, he jumps at the chance. After all, things can only get better, right?
Yeah, right.
Book 3 of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries

Ginnie Dare author Scott Roche says “Sawyer hits it out of the park…a sexy, emotional, dangerous story I couldn’t put down.” Find out for yourself what he means: whet your appetite for Smoke Rings here, or buy it in Paperback, or as an ebook for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iPad, or any other e-reader.

There’s a lot more coming for Lantham in the next few weeks, so load up on books and keep your eyes on this blog.

Released: Ideas, Inc.

It is with great pride that I announce the release of my short novel Ideas, Inc., which Alasdair Stuart of…well, everywhere…called “Effortlessly funny, cheerfully dark, and tremendously strange” before he went on to say a whole lot more in this amazing review in SFX.

Like the shorter Lantham novels, this is a story designed to give you a rip-roaring, white-knuckle adventure with plenty of laughs and scares in a single, breathless evening. Of course, you’re free to take longer reading it, but I warn you: Once you pick it up you won’t want to put it down.

Available now in paperback
And in ebook through Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and a few other places as well.

The author of Suave Rob’s Double-X Derring-Do brings you a farce of the tradition of P.G. Wodehouse and Douglas Adams.

Best friends Caleb and Lenny hate each other. Stranded in the middle of upstate New York with two flat tires, one spare, no cell reception, and no idea what to do, they figure they’re pretty much screwed. Fortunately, they broke down right in front of a place that deals in ideas. For the special one-time fire-sale price of seventeen bucks, they can get a pack of seven completely original, brand-new, ultra-premium, never-before-used ideas. But will it get them out of trouble before they’re forced to talk to each other again?

Find out in this hilarious all-night adventure yarn that reveals the terrible truth behind the worldwide pigeon cabal!

Pick your poison, watch your back, and remember: the next bright idea just might get you killed.

Read the first chapter free here as a EPUB or PDF.

Released: Making Tracks

Some of you might have run across the sneaky early e-book release already, but this is the official announcement.

Over the last few years, on this blog and elsewhere, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from authors and podcasters and other people wanting to either get into the audio habit or to up their game. This book answers all of them, and a lot more that you didn’t know you had. It’s written in the same quirky, fun style as Throwing Lead: A Writer’s Guide to Firearms and the People Who Use Them

Available now in ebook and paperback, AWP Books proudly presents my newest nonfiction book Making Tracks: A Writer’s Guide to Audiobooks (And How To Produce Them). Now available at fashionable ebook retailers everywhere, available in the next day or two from most fashionable paperback retailers (find links to order now at the bottom of this post), like these:

Paperback
DRM-free ebook for your Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or other reading device.

Also check out my interview today on The Creative Penn where I talk about the book and delve into some of the story behind it.

If you have ever found yourself tempted to pick up a microphone and join the podosphere, make an audiobook, or learn to be a voice over artist, this is the must-have, easily-digestible book you’ve been waiting for.

Back cover copy follows:
Continue reading ‘Released: Making Tracks’

Control Room a iBookstore Breakout Book!

Today’s blog post was supposed to be a big release announcement, but I’m holding that for a few hours because I received a wonderful email from Mark Coker (CEO of Smashwords) informing me that my story Control Room is featured as a Breakout Book in the UK iBookstore today. This is my first time on the front page there, so do tell your iBookstoring friends!

Huge thanks and kudos to Apple and Smashwords for the big support boost!
Click Here for the announcement on the Smashwords blog.
Click Here to buy the story now at the iBookstore.

What is Control Room, you ask? Well, it goes something like this…

One room…
Infinite possibilities.

He sits alone, with no name. A faceless creature with a single purpose, he lives in a small room. He knows only his consoles, his buttons, his screens–the surfaces of a control room for a great machine that he calls “the universe.”

Or, if you’re not of the Apple tribe, grab it for your preferred device by looking in the column at far right.

The War Board

As I’m winding down to the end of the year, I’m clearing the decks like crazy. Part of that involves installing the new recording studio (all done!), part of it involves releasing a backlog of new stories and books. Turns out the backlog is bigger than I expected. A LOT bigger. Big enough that I finally gave in and did the responsible thing: I got a War Board.

This particular War Board is a grid that shows each story/book/etc, and where it is in the process. It’s currently got 22 projects on it–some are paperbacks of already-released books, but most are brand new projects that have either never seen the light of day, or that published in anthologies that most of you didn’t hear about.

So, for this holiday season, here’s what you can expect:

Ebooks between now and April:
A Goblet of Fifty-Three
Control Room
The Open Source Woman
The Garden Pool
The Faithful May Also Be Burned
The Empty House
Eyes of Wax
Ideas, Inc.
Pumpernickel
Proactive Continuity
Sleep, Walk
Making Tracks: A Writer’s Guide to Audiobooks (And How To Produce Them)
Plus a new, as-yet untitled collection of funny stories exclusively

Paperbacks in March:
A Ghostly Christmas Present (Clarke Lantham #2)
Smoke Rings (Clarke Lantham #3)
Silent Victor (Clarke Lantham #4)
Making Tracks: A Writer’s Guide to Producing Audiobooks
Frock Coat Dreams

Paperbacks in April through June:
Free Will (Antithesis #2)
Throwing Lead: A Writer’s Guide to Firearms and the People Who Use Them
Suave Rob’s Double-X Derring-Do

It’s good to be back

-Dan

P.S. I know the podcast feeds aren’t working right now. They’re on my December to-do list as well. Have to get them back up for Free Will!

Released: The Society of Miserable Bastards

The South. Home to a deep culture steeped in African mythology and religion, Native American spirituality, Catholicism and Charismatic Christianity, the blues, and the deep, pounding heat. It is the source of one of the richest literary traditions in the world: Southern Gothic.

If you’ve seen The Twilight Zone, or read Ray Bradbury and Flannery O’Connor, or heard the Delta Blues, you’ve tasted it–maybe without realizing it. It’s always been one of my favorite genres, but I’ve only dipped into it rarely. If you’ve read Buried Alive in the Blues or some of The Lombard Alchemist Tales you’ve read my take on some of the lighter, more humorous and romantic sides of the Southern Gothic. This time, though, we’re going deep into the darkest heart of the mythic world where the Devil teaches the Blues at the crossroads, where the mystic communes with the spirits of the land, and where the gods and demons roll dice for the souls of the dead.

Turn off the lights and light the candles. Get a good blanket and a comfy chair in a safe corner. Make sure you’re facing the door so you can see if anything comes for you, and step with me into my nightmare as I present you with the twisty tale The Society of Miserable Bastards.

Thee decades ago, ten children were abandoned in a pit of quicksand by mile-marker thirty-five to protect the reputation of the all-powerful Chiswick family. Saved by the local bag lady, they now meet annually as The Society of Miserable Bastards to bestow blessings upon the family that abandoned them, one by one. And tonight, they have a very special guest indeed…

Available now in the Kindle store, the Nook store, and in all formats at Smashwords.

Released: Suave Rob’s Double-X Derring-Do

Sometimes you can’t help smiling a mile wide just typing an announcement, and this is one of those times (for me–at least I assume I’m the one typing. Yup. Okay, then, on with the show). Today I get to unveil to you my latest literary abomination, one that fulfills a lifelong dream to write a fun pulp sci-fi adventure story. A good short pulp needs a good long title, so here you go:

Suave Rob’s Double-X Derring-Do, a Short Novel of Long Odds.

One Surfboard. Two X-Chromosomes. All Man.

Climbing Olympus Mons put him on the map, winning a gold medal in asteroid jumping got him great press, and children everywhere tune into watch every time he skydives from a space station, but Suave Rob Suarez is just getting started. Together with his childhood hero and his stunt partner, he’s gonna stage the biggest daredevil stunt the universe has ever seen:

Surf a supernova. Or die trying.

Read a sample here, or get it now on your Kindle, Nook, or any other reader.