March

I have “finished” the final tweaks to Last Light, soon it will be off to my editors, then the format guy. I will be reaching out to the Brady’s staff soon and setting up the next release party. No date yet, but we are rapidly approaching.  

Even though I intend to keep writing, I mean, I have a ton of book ideas in my head, just no time to write them all. There is a sense of finality with finishing Last Light, it’s the end of the Red At Night series, and even though the characters I have built will turn up in my Lizzy William’s series, finishing the set feels much like waving goodbye to friends, like the closing scene of series finale of MASH. I am anxious to move on but will miss the people that I have worked with...on.  

The Red At Night series showed me what I could do, what anyone with heart, determination, and a drive to show the naysayers that they are wrong, can do. The sixteen-year-old me, the little bit of him left in this forty-seven-year-old chassis, is satisfied that the story that was swirling around in his head, is now on paper, with over 2000 copies sold so far. I remember, thirty-one years ago, writing away with my #2 lead pencil and a spiral bound notebook with “Red At Night” written on the front. I wish I hadn’t thrown that away; it would be a treasure to look at now. The twenty something year old me had tried to rekindle that creativity miles and miles away while on Med cruises in the Navy. A 3.5” floppy disk with Red At Night written on it, who knows where that ended up.  

October 2016, the man that would become Tommy MacIntyre walked into the Mechanics' shop at Strout’s Point Wharf Company, stomped his feet on the floor I had just swept and said something to me... I don’t remember what, it wasn’t nice. That is when the final piece fell into place. I had my bad guy. I started writing Red At Night on an Amazon Fire tablet, then moved it to an Apple iPad. Now I have my trusty hand-me-down laptop from my father-in-law. The sixteen- year-old me looks over my shoulder, wondering what in the hell a Facebook is, in awe of his name on a website, and proud of what he has accomplished.