A New Writing Project in the newsletter! Well, Kind of New

Ordinarily, rather than posting the details from my newsletter here, I post a link to the newsletter and beg you to subscribe. But this is the announcement of our newest project, so I figured I'd give everyone a heads up. Just the same, subscribe to the newsletter! The link is here:

https://mailchi.mp/42a747371840/every-old-book-is-new-again-sort-of

On a related note, you should see these three books disappearing from Amazon and other sites in the immediate future. I have the rights back, and they'll all be reissued later.

Our new project goes back to the Storm Chaser universe!

Well, kind of new. Back in 2011 my first published book, Storm Chaser, wasn't out yet when I mentioned to my editor that I was writing related short stories, which I planned to post to generate interest in the book. Much to my surprise, my publisher offered to put them together into a collection, which became my second published book: Storm Chaser Shorts.

The title is my fault. It was a working title and I never really liked it, but I couldn't come up with anything better.

The collection of stories came out exactly one year after Storm Chaser, on June 1, 2012. A lot of people don't know that. A whole lot of people. The problem is, I'd generated local and regional interest in Storm Chaser, and as a result I made a lot of direct paperback sales myself. I couldn't do that with Storm Chaser Shorts, which was so short my publisher felt they couldn't justify a print version. So it was e-book only, and I had trouble generating sales among print book lovers.

"So ... what happened next? Don't leave us in suspense!"

Fast forward several years. Sales for my first three books lessened, and although they'd been out for awhile my publisher had them at the same price--which in my opinion was too high, especially for Storm Chaser Shorts, which was, after all ... short. I decided to get the rights for all three back, so I could publish my own editions of them.

And by "I" I mean my wife, who has the talent to actually do that kind of stuff.

It was a huge struggle to make contact with anyone at my publishing house, which by then had been taken over by a larger publisher that put the e-book versions on the Simon and Schuster webpage. There they were generally forgotten. It took a couple of years, but now they're mine again (although for some reason they're still up on the S&S website).

We'd meant to publish new versions in their original order, but the story collection seemed so neglected we decided to go there first. The stories mostly took place before or just after the original Storm Chaser, so to a certain extent it's a prequel, anyway.

Not for long, though, because the new printing will include several related stories I wrote and posted for the fans over the years. In addition--and here's the big news:

Storm Squalls--formerly Storm Chaser Shorts, which always made me think of someone wearing swim trunks--will include a brand new, never before seen 6,000 word short story!

And a price drop! (Well, for the e-book version. You can't reduce what never had a price to begin with.)

And a new cover because, well, the cover art doesn't belong to me. I don't know what the new art will look like, but Emily will as soon as she's created it.

So let's review: As soon as Emily has recovered from her knee surgery enough to concentrate on it, we'll be putting together a short story collection with a reduced price, new cover, more material, and a brand new short story. It will be renamed Storm Squalls ... or Storm Showers ... I can't remember what we decided on at the moment, and Emily's asleep.

But stand by! We'll be announcing more as the release date gets closer.