Festival de Cannes--2011 Poster

More Sunday self-promotion than usual!

Like everyone else who has a stash of stories moldering on their hard drives, I have been intrigued by the opportunities of "indie publishing." (Who knew that "vanity publishing" would morph into something so respectable?)
Thanks to the encouragement of horror novelist G. Wells Taylor, I dipped into the waters last fall with my fiction collection Just Another Day in Paradise. (Available in kindle edition and in all epub formats.)

Now I've added two more books to the mix--L.A. Nocturne and Fairy Story. Both are urban fantasies--Nocturne is a collection of five stories; Fairy Story is a long tale taken from my upcoming novel Misbegotten. L.A. Nocturne is available in kindle and all formats here.

Fairy Story is awaiting approval on kindle but is available in all formats here.

I've also just learned that my zombie story "Z Cruise" made the cut at Hesham Horror Books. It will be included in the anthology Alt-Dead, to be published in print and in kindle this September. Edited by writer/publisher Peter Mark May, the themed anthology includes 16 stories.

And finally, there's a double shot of NoHo Noir this week. Check out Forgiveness and Wedding Party. If you tweet, consider following NoHo Noir at @nohonoir.

Apostle Rising by Richard Godwin

I am reading Apostle Rising by Richard Godwin. Why aren't you? His book appeared on the cover of Bookseller Magazine today (no April Fool's Day joke that). I'll be reviewing the book for Dark Valentine soon.

Shiny new author website!!

Here it is. Let me know what you think.

L.A. Nocture has been published!

Sample and buy it here.

I am unclear on the concept...

I love food blogs newsletters and subscribe to a zillion of them. I am particularly fond of Diana Rattray's about.com Southern food newsletter. Today she sent out a recipe for a strawberry cake that sounds yummy and suggested you make it for a "morning get-together."

Morning get-together? I'm one generation too young for the morning get-together, which sounds really nice. It reminds me of watching Rear Window. There's a scene where New Yorkers bed down on the fire escapes because it's so hot. Can you imagine doing that now? I am nostalgic for that even though it happened a decade before I was born. I want to sleep on a fire escape.

Anyway--enjoy the strawberry cake.

L.A. Nocturne--coming soon

I have been working on my urban fantasy novel Misbegotten for what seems my whole life. I have discovered that I work best in 1500-word bites. While theoretically it should be easy to string enough of those bites together to create the meal that is a novel, it isn't. At least not for me.

Having said that, though, I have created a whole world in which these stories take place, a Los Angeles that's just slightly different from the Los Angeles I live in. I've been writing stories in that world for awhile, and now I'm gathering five of them into a book that'll be out next month. The cover design is by Joy Sillesen of Stony Hill Productions and I am very pleased with it. Not only is she talented, but she is also really affordable, so if you need a cover for a book, or editorial design or just editing, she's available.