Well, it’s done. Amazing Grace is complete at 29 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. The whole thing is off to my editor now, actually has been for a month or two, honestly. I’ve enjoyed having all of you along with me for this ride. It’s been a fun change of pace for me to serialize something, and to work in a longer format than the novellas I do every month. I also found myself loving Lila Grace and the Dead Old Ladies Detectives.
Don’t worry, there will be more.
Yeah, there will be more Lila Grace, more Dead Old Lady Detectives, and more of this fictionalized Lockhart, SC. Lockhart is a real place, and John D. Long Lake is where Susan Smith drowned her children. There was a guy who lived there named Johnny Thomas, but he wasn’t a sheriff, he was a barber, and my dad’s cousin. The Lockhart in Amazing Grace is a blend of the real Lockhart, plus York and Sharon, all tossed into a blender and mixed until chunky. The cemetery where Lila Grace walks is the cemetery where my mother is buried, and she is one of the Dead Old Lady Detectives, along with her best friends Faye Russell (nee Comer) and Helen (Tot) Good. Miss Faye is still alive, but Miss Tot left us earlier this year, right about the time I started this book. I couldn’t think of a better way to memorialize her than to put her in this book with Mama and Miss Faye, because the three of them did form the Western York County grapevine for a long time.
So there’s a lot of truth in this book, despite the fact that none of the ghosts I talk to have ever talked back. And I’m good with that. So I hope you’ve enjoyed Amazing Grace, and sometime in 2018 I’ll start giving you chapters of Will the Circle Be Unbroken, the next Lila Grace Carter Mystery. The book will be on sale in ebook and print next month, most likely, unless I decide to submit it for publication elsewhere, in which case it will take longer. But I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, next week we’ll start something COMPLETELY different. Like, more different than you can even imagine. Starting next week, we’ll have a near-future cyborg adventure called TECH Ops kicking off. I hope you enjoy it as much as you’ve enjoyed Amazing Grace.
Thanks!
