The New Book

Blackout in Precinct Puerto Rico. As I said yesterday, the title wasn't my idea and I kind of like it though there really isn't a blackout in the book...yet.

I still owe St. Martins a few thousand words on it. Here's the thing...The book is the first one I wrote and the third one I sold to SMP, but the fifth that they're publishing. And, unlike many first novels, I think it is actually quite good. In fact, I think it's the strongest of the Precinct Puerto Rico novels. I'll go a step further and say that this PPR novel beats the other PPR novels with a stick. I won't say it leaves them for dead since I'm partial to the first published (third written). Is it good? Yes. Not quite at the contractually required length, so I'll be adding a couple of scenes to make it less an inverted mystery and more straightforward.

But if it's not actually about a blackout, then what's it about? (I hearing you thinking that.) It's about Luis Gonzalo trying to figure what happened to this teenaged girl he found beaten and naked in the middle of the night - she won't say a word, so he has a bit of guesswork he has to conduct and it's about what happens when his guesswork leads him to the possibility (not the conclusion, just one possibility among several) that the girl's father was responsible. The father can't remember what he was doing at the time except to say it involved a lot of drinking (see? blackout).

Now I've said a fair bit about the story, but not the good bits. And of course what we all want to know (we meaning you, not me since I've read the thing already) is whether Gonzalo figures things out at all because I'll tell you since the victim won't say a word, this one's a puzzler. Well, you'll have to wait until April.

BLACKOUT IN PRECINCT PUERTO RICO. Buy it today!!!

More writerly news tomorrow.