I hope everyone had the New Year celebration they were hoping for—I was in bed with a good book by 9p and there were no nearby fireworks or gunshots, so my night was quiet. I’m an early riser. In fact I get my best writing done before 7am. Yes, that was a boring night, but I’ve never been that excited about New Years. I lived for 16 years in Pasadena, so my NYE ritual was to take a glass of wine and admire the Rose Parade floats that began lining up at ten the night before the parade. It was cool as people were gathered to sleep overnight for a prime viewing spot for the parade so very much a party atmosphere. The cool thing was you could get close to the floats and smell the flowers.
I hope to release four or more books this year. My first arrival in February will be EMERALD BAY MURDER, which is book 6 in the Damian Green Series and it’s available for pre-order. Hermione is a high school senior and has problems and Damian is tackling a cold case of an undetermined death of a skier at Lake Tahoe nearly a decade ago. The death becomes far more sinister the more Damian looks into it.
I think I’ve mentioned in prior newsletters how the Damian Green series came into being, but here is the story again. I was working on the Jill Quint book 7, which was CASTLE KILLING set in Wales and Scotland. I was struggling with the story and decided to put it aside as maybe the Jill Quint series had run its course at six books. I happened upon an article about the sale of Red Rock Island—an island in San Francisco Bay that was on the market for like $7M. While that might seem like a good price for a six-acre island with views of the Golden Gate Bridge, it was governed by three counties, and mostly composed of rock. Recently, the island was on the market for $25M and it was sold to a mystery buyer for a mystery amount last year. Still I built a house on the island and modeled Damian Green after the original MacGyver series where he could always figure out non-violent ways to contain criminals. I was going to end that series at three books, but readers wanted more so the series continues to grow.
After I finish that book, I’ll continue to work on Witch’s Quest, the second book in my cozy fantasy series and hopefully the third book in that series. Then I’ll return to the Jill Quint series and write a book set in my neighborhood. Green Bay is a city of 108,000 thousand people, but I live on the outskirts in an isolated neighborhood of some 80 homes. My neighbors are suggesting plots every time I’m out walking the dog, so I’ll satisfy their desire to have a story in our neighborhood. There’s an abandoned house that the owner died in about two years ago. The city considers it uninhabitable so it’s a perfect setting for a mystery story.
I wish you a healthy and peaceful 2025!
Cheers,
Alec
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