Some days, something happens to you that is especially satisfying. Today is definitely one of those days.

Almost 20 years ago, I had an idea for a story. A story about a detective on a case. A hard-boiled sort of story, full of wisecracks and femme-fatales and all the other good stuff a hard-boiled story should have. But it wasn’t going to be just any kind of hard-boiled detective story. It was also going to be a completely daggy hard-boiled detective story, unashamed to find its own way and poke a bit of fun at some of the hoary old hard-boiled cliches.

Almost 20 years ago seems like an awfully long time ago. It also seems like an awfully long time to spend writing a book, especially a very silly one. And I have to admit I haven’t actually spend all of those 20 years on writing this book. In fact, I wrote a first draft fairly quickly and then put it away for a very long time. Almost almost 20 years.

In the meantime, things changed. I wrote more books. I collected more rejection slips. I studied, started a family, changed my job multiple times. In all that time, my daggy detective story sat on my computer, biding its time (actually, it sat on quite a few different computers over those years).

But then, things in the publishing world began to change. With the advent of ebooks and indie publishing, I began to see options for publishing beyond the slush pile and rejection slips. After putting several books out, I began looking around for other story ideas. And that’s when I remembered my poor old detective story, sitting on the computer.

I chucked it onto the kindle and read it, and I surprised myself. It didn’t seem half bad. I even made myself laugh a few times. True, it needed a lot of work (what first draft doesn’t?). But several rewrites later, I began to think I had something worth sending out into the world.

So it is that today I’m proud to announce, thanks to the wonderful people at Booktrope publishing, the release at last of my daggy hard-boiled detective story. It’s not your typical detective story, and it’s not your typical dag-lit story either. It’s somewhere in between, and to me that’s the fun of writing. Like I always say, I never want to feel too constricted by genre. And if I can find ways to flip and combine genres in unexpected ways, then I feel like I’ve done something positive.

Anyway, you can find out more by grabbing a copy. It’s available in both ebook and print formats from the usual spots:

Kindle Store
Amazon Books
Barnes & Noble

Hope you enjoy.