Apologies for the absence

Well, I haven't been on this thing for two months or so, but I had a pretty good reason, I think. I went to the wall fighting what will be my second book, Avarice, and the production consumed me to the point where I didn't want to be distracted by anything else so I went dark. The book was finished three weeks ago and is going into the editing phase now. I don't think a lot of major work needs to be done, though there will be a few scenes added to help a few characters and a few things re-written, but overall it turned out pretty well, considering. Is it a better book than Coercion? I don't know. Artists are their own worst critics so you probably shouldn't take anything we say too seriously in the first place. The best thing I can say is I don't feel like I repeated myself with this book, which is often the challenge a lot of writers face with their second book. Granted, this isn't my second novel in the grand scheme of things, but in terms of this being my second "published" book it was a challenge because I wanted to make sure it was different enough to stand on its own merits. While it is certainly a crime novel and is set in the same Oak Villa universe, there are enough differences to where they don't feel like clones.

I do regret leaving this blog for the reason that I never got to finish my top 10 list for the Elmore Leonard books. It was probably a mistake to put myself under that kind of artificial deadline in the first place, particularly when I try to avoid reading books whilst in the middle of production. I might continue with the rest of the top 10 just so I don't feel like I cheated anyone who might have been reading this. The traffic from the fans on the Elmore Leonard facebook page are appreciated along with the webmaster, Gregg Sutter, who was kind enough to link my posts.

As for the third season of Justified, well, it was the best season yet and they have set the stage for a great fourth season. I hope Adam Arkin returns as Theo Tonin and I am very interested to see what kind of situation Boyd and Wynn find themselves in as well as Limehouse. They have to bring that triangle back and see what develops from there. As for the rest, well, we'll see.

Hopefully I return to a semi-regular posting state here. Beats the shit out of doing an interview. Not that I've received an offer as of yet.

Avarice, with any luck, will be released by June 1.