I couldn’t resist peeking at one of my wife’s new projects. Her work has taken a decided Picassoesque turn of late, and I rather like it.
Much has changed on my writer’s journey recently, and I’m very excited about it. Next Chapter is now publishing revised editions of my Driftwood Mysteries. The ebooks are available everywhere; paperbacks are out for the first three–Gallery of Gangsters was just released this week, so its paperback may take a couple of days. Hard covers will be available shortly. They asked me to change the title of Dungeness and Dragons, so it’s now Brothers of Blood. I think I shared with you earlier that the short stories “Eye of Newt” and “Paper” are now epilogues in the novel that precedes them, so the series stands at four novels. It was actually an enjoyable experience going back and re-editing these books, cleaning up some spelling, rewriting a scene or two. I have been having a hassle with Amazon: they keep attributing my books to the wrong William J. Cook. So far, after much haranguing from me, they’ve fixed Seal of Secrets and Woman in the Waves. Brothers of Blood and Gallery of Gangsters are still wrong as of this writing. But I have to hand it to Next Chapter–they really have a way with covers. Take a look at these:
On the home front, I’m really excited about my latest project. I’m about 13K words into another psychological thriller. I actually had to put another partial manuscript on hold after 30K words when it just never ignited for me.
A note to fellow writers: have you been as assaulted as I’ve been by email scams? AI has weaponized them exponentially. In one week, I received glowing letters from “Stephen King”, “Terry Gross” of NPR, and the “Senior Editor” of Penguin Random House. All baloney. All imposters. It breaks my heart.
Anyway, let’s keep being kind to one another. To the fathers among you, happy Father’s Day!
William J. Cook 