by john | Aug 20, 2011 | Appearances, Business of publishing, Travel, Vampires, Writing
Well folks, here we are a hair more than two weeks after the release of Knight Moves, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. The new book has already broken 500 copies sold, a figure that’s unheard of for me in the first month (or several) of a book’s release, and with a promo blitz going on this weekend thanks to The Bookish Snob, I think we’ll see that carry through the rest of the month. So here I’ve got a few announcements and a couple of updates for all of you.
Firstly, for the folks who still love paper books – yes, Knight Moves will be available in print. The proof copy has shipped, and if history is any indicator, it should get here Monday or Tuesday. I’ll look over the proof and try to get some copies in hand for Dragon*Con. I won’t have many with me, unless this THING happens that I’m trying to schedule. If the THING goes off, then I’ll probably get 40 copies or so to tote with me. Watch this space for more info on the THING.
But if you’d like a signed copy, and live in the US, you can order yours here. Just click the PayPal button and let me know who to inscribe the book to, and I’ll send it right along. NOTE – books will not ship until after the Labor Day holiday. But $15 will cover shipping and a signed copy of the book. If you live in the Charlotte area, and want to pick the book up, you can click the pick up option. You can do the same thing if you want to pre-order a copy for Dragon*Con (this would really help me know how many books to carry).
As always, the book will be available for $10 from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and wherever books are sold. I’ll also be doing a signing in October at The Last Word, a cool used bookstore here in Charlotte, so hopefully some of you folks will come out and say hello to me then.
And for my friends across the pond – I know you currently can’t get my books in print outside the US. I would love for that to change at some point, but I don’t really know how. So if you’d like to see my stuff over there, tell your friendly neighborhood bookstore to pressure the publishers to buy my international rights. Or stop by North Carolina on your next intercontinental vacation. We’ve got good sweet tea!
by john | Aug 7, 2011 | Vampires, Writing
With the release of Knight Moves this week, I thought I’d drop a little sample in here for you guys. As always, the book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Once I get print copies formatted, they will be available online, at cons and here.
Chapter 1
I woke up with a beautiful woman staring down at me, her brown curls cascading over my face. I smiled into the dark eyes of Detective Sabrina Law. “This is a nice way to start an evening. I love the way your hair smells.” She straddled my waist fully dressed, but I had faith in my ability to fix that. Then I noticed she wasn’t returning my smile. Her expression wavered between betrayed and furious, and her green eyes were red-rimmed. I smelled the salt on her cheek and raised my head a little, surprised when she pulled back, scowling.
“Don’t move,” she said in a low, tense voice.
Not being one to listen much, I tried to sit up, then realized I was handcuffed to my bed. While not my normal thing, I wasn’t going to ask questions until I realized that the handcuffs were silver-plated, and that my skin was starting to blister from the exposure. I pulled experimentally at the restraints, got nowhere, then tried to move my legs with a similar lack of results. I started to get a little worried. When I saw that Sabrina still hadn’t so much as cracked a smile, I really started to worry. When I noticed the silver stake she had pressed against my chest, I became downright concerned.
“I didn’t mean it. Those jeans definitely do not make your butt look big.” I smiled, giving my best disarming look, to no avail. No surprise there. I’d always been the guilty-looking one, even before I became an undead creature of the night.
Sabrina looked down, disgust and anger coming off of her in waves, and poked the stake a little harder into my chest. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shove this overgrown toothpick into your heart right now.”
“Ummm… my sparkling personality?” I tried one more time for humor, but my jokes were falling flatter than usual.
“Not even close, you parasite.” She pulled her arm back as if to jam the stake home, but just before she perforated me, she very quietly asked, “How could you?”
“How could I what?” I asked, just as quietly. I figured if a little quiet time was what the situation demanded, I shouldn’t argue. Besides, I had no idea why she was angry. I was no stranger to inspiring violence in other people, especially women, but this time I couldn’t come up with anything I had done to her specifically. And since it was close to impossible for me to get blackout drunk anymore, my memory was pretty solid.
“You know what, you monster!” She poked the stake into my chest a little. I couldn’t see what was going on, but I heard a sizzling sound as the silver came into contact with my blood.
I hadn’t known my blood would boil when touched by silver. “No, really, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about! And you know my “stupid face” by now!” I tried again to twist away from the pointy bit.
“You murdered a girl tonight, Jimmy. You drained her dry and left her in a construction site. I saw the body, and I know a vampire kill when I see one. She was just a kid, and you threw her aside like a piece of garbage. I thought I knew you. How could you do that?” The look of betrayal in her eyes hurt almost as much as the silver stake. Almost, but not quite. Really, not even close to as much, but it still hurt.
“Sabrina, what the hell are you talking about? You know me better than that! I could never do that to someone.” I pulled against my restraints, desperate to do something, anything to make her stop looking at me as though I were a monster.
“I don’t know anything about you.” She just kept looking at me, eyes full of betrayal. That part hurt the worst, the look.
I twisted around again, then looked her in the eyes. “Sabrina, I swear to you, I didn’t kill anyone tonight. I didn’t even eat takeout! I was here all night with Greg watching Being Human reruns on Netflix. Go ask the svelte avenger if you don’t believe me!”
“No need to go anywhere, Detective. He’s telling the truth. And please get off of my partner. You’re distraught, and I’d hate for you to make a mistake and let him live.” Greg Knightwood, my partner and roommate, stood in the doorway to my bedroom wearing, of all things, baby-blue footie pajamas. A forty-year-old vampire in footie pajamas. I wasn’t sure which was worse, that I had to be rescued by the fat half of our Laurel and Hardy duo, or that he did it wearing footie pajamas. I finally decided that the pj-wearing was the worst part.
“Besides, I think he’s starting to enjoy it a little too much,” Greg added.
Sabrina blushed and got off of me, but she didn’t remove the cuffs. “Why should I believe you, Greg?” She got right up in my partner’s face. To be precise about it, she got way over my partner’s head because she had a couple inches on him, especially in her ass-kicking, dark red leather boots. I guessed when you were going to kill your friend, you dressed for the occasion.
“Because I didn’t shoot you in the back of the head.” Greg raised his 9mm, then holstered the weapon. I wasn’t sure where he kept a holster in his jammies, but right then I wasn’t interested in asking a whole lot of questions. “Now, shall we have a drink and talk about this like civilized people?” He turned and walked toward the living room. Sabrina watched his retreating back for a moment, looked back at me, then followed him.
“Hey kids, not for nothing, but you wanna uncuff me first? I gotta pee.”
Like it? Click Here to buy on Amazon. Barnes & Noble info coming soon.
by john | Jun 27, 2011 | Fiction, Return to Eden, Vampires, Writing
So Knight Moves will likely not be available for purchase in July of this year.
It’s not ready. That’s just the deal. I’ve completed a couple of drafts on the book, sent it off to some beta readers, and am awaiting feedback. I’ll then incorporate that feedback into another revision and send it off to my new editor, Lynn. Then (if the sample pages she did for me this weekend that led me to say “you’re hired” in about eight seconds are any indication) she will rip the thing to absolute shreds and I’ll spend a few weeks putting it back together. By this time July will be gone, and there won’t be a book yet. But when the book comes out it will be a few things. First, it will be the most expensive book I’ve published so far. Second, it will be the most polished, and hopefully typo-free. And I think it’s going to be pretty good.
I’m happy with the overall flow of the story. There’s a little more character development in this one than in the last two, and a few new characters added to the world. Some I kill, some leave town and some stick around, at least for a little while. There’s more Father Mike, because people missed him in Back in Black (so did I), and more Sabrina. There’s also a lot more bloodshed, and I think that I’ve successfully raised the stakes for the characters. They have more on the line than in the other books, and I think that makes for a stronger book.It’s about the same length as the others, maybe a hair shorter.
So it needs more polish, and that’s going to mean it won’t be out until the end of July at the latest, and August is more likely. Sorry if there was anyone really desperate for more of the Black Knight boys, but you can go to Amazon and pick up Movie Knight, the short story I published last weekend. That should hold you over. I’ll probably make another short story or two happen between now and the release of Knight Moves, so keep an eye out.
In the meantime, while I’m polishing Knight Moves, I’ve made some pretty good progress on Return to Eden. I’m pretty sure that will end up being the title for the series, so I’m not sure what this book will be called yet. For now, we’ll keep it as is and call it R2E. I hammered out a couple thousand words this weekend, then got stuck. I mean bad stuck, like a Hummer in a mudhole kinda stuck. So Suzy and I sat around for the better part of an hour brainstorming, and between the two of us we got the thing back on track. She helped a ton with the overall plot arc of the book, and that let me get back to outlining and writing. I’m about 25,000 words into the thing, and now I actually know where I’m going with it.
It’s going to need some serious love and attention when I finish the first draft, because I know the first 15K or so needs a total rewrite. The language just doesn’t work, it’s way too formal for the book, but I’m consciously not going back to work on that until I get to the end of the first draft. I can’t let myself go back and edit until I’m done with the first run – otherwise I’ll never write the damned book! But now that I know where I’m going it should come together pretty quickly, and I might have it ready to go as early as September. It’s a big departure from The Black Knight Chronicles, but I think most folks will like it. I’m really starting to dig these characters, for totally different reasons than the BK boys.
Then since I didn’t have anything better to do, and because I can’t resist a bright shiny, I started a completely different book. And by completely different, I mean a cop thriller. No magic, no supernatural creatures, just a serial killer and a cop that’s chasing him. I’ve got the first couple of chapters done, and I’ve got the outline done for that as well. That one’s been an interesting journey as well, because the character that I started Chapter 1 with, who I thought was going to be the main character for the whole book, turned out to be the sidekick. Because it can’t be his book, it has to be the cop’s book. I think it’s an interesting concept, and once it’s a little further along I’ll give you a couple of hints about it to see what you guys think. It should be finished up early fall as well, maybe October or so.
So in summary –
Knight Moves will not be available in July, but should be out in August.
Return to Eden (tentative title) will be out early fall, maybe as early as September.
Untitled Thriller will be out later in the fall, maybe as early as October.
I’ve got a bunch of Black Knight short stories in mind, and want to get at least one per month out for the rest of the year.
Black Knight Book 4 will be coming late this year or early 2012, depending on how quickly I finish up the other stuff. I already know a little about that book, as in what will be the Big Bad and what a couple of subplots are going to be. I also know the Big Bad for Books 5 & 6 in that series, so that’s a good outlook for next year.
by john | Jun 20, 2011 | Vampires, Writing
Saturday I sat down at the computer and decided to do something I’d never done before – write, edit and publish a short story all in one day. I had the kernel of an idea for a short story with the Black Knight boys (& Sabrina), and thought I could probably get it into decent short story length, but there wasn’t nearly enough there for a novel.
For those interested in definitions, most people count flash fiction as under 1,000 words, a short story as 1,000-10,000 words. Some folks put the cap at 7,500 words on the high side, but I usually stick with 10K just because it’s easier. Then you get into novellette (10,000-25,000 words) or novella (up to 50K words) and novels (over 50,000 words, but that’s been drifting higher lately). My figures may be low for a lot of people who write 150,000 doorstops, but I write shorter books, so I’m going to skew in that direction. And it’s my blog, get over it.
So I sat down and wrote a short story about a movie night interrupted by catastrophe, because everything in the lives of these characters is interrupted by catastrophe. It took me about 4-5 hours to write, then a couple more hours to create the cover. Yes, I realize the cover looks very simple. Once I got Illustrator running, found a photo I liked on istockphoto.com, set up an account and bought the photo, it only took me about 20 minutes to do the cover. Then I decided I didn’t like it, so I had to go back to searching and find a new photo, buy it and twiddle with it for a little while to get the very elementary cover that you see below.
I never claimed to be a graphics guy, and I know that it’s not a great cover. That wasn’t my intent. My intent was to get a short story from Point A to Point Z (available for purchase) in 24 hours. And I managed the parts that were in my control in about 10 hours. Then I uploaded it to Amazon and Barnes & Noble (except for the cover on BN, which is still goofy – I said I wasn’t a graphics guy) and watched a little TV before bed. When I woke up in the morning the story was available for purchase on Amazon, so mission accomplished!
Click here to buy it.
It’s just a quick little read, about 20-25 print pages or about 6,000 words. It doesn’t reveal any backstory that isn’t in the books, and falls between Back in Black and Knight Moves in the chronology of the world. My hope is that I can knock out about one of these each month (and I have a list of short story ideas, so I’m lined up to do several over the next few months) and keep people happy in between novels. And if it makes a little money, that’s great. Once I have five of them, I’ll collect them at $2.99. Then when I have ten, I’ll collect those for $6.99 or $7.99. All just another way of attracting readers and getting embedded in the social consciousness. 🙂
So if you’ve enjoyed the other Black Knight books, here’s a heads up that more stories are coming. I’ll likely get to editing on Knight Moves this week, and then we’ll see how that goes. I have a long writing weekend planned for 4th of July weekend, so hopefully it’ll finish up by then.
by john | Jan 21, 2011 | Vampires, Writing
This is not an original idea. Some of you that have read here and read my books for a while might say that I’ve never had an original idea, but to that I say “bite me.” I swiped this idea from the blogs of a couple of writers I follow, because I think it’s a good one. This is a sneak peek at the beginning of Black Knight Chronicles Vol. 2, Back in Black (and Blue). Lemme know what you think – and don’t forget, the win a Kindle contest is still running!
If you like this piece, buy Volume 1 here!
Chapter 1
The foot came at my face almost faster than I could see, and way faster than I could do anything about. I took the shot straight to my jaw, and if I hadn’t seen it coming at the last minute and let my neck go slack, I probably would have been chewing out of the other side of my face for a while. Except for the fact that I’m on a liquid diet. Forever. But I took the kick to the mouth and was able to spin out of the way of the uppercut that followed. I delivered a punch of my own to my opponent’s ribs and had the satisfaction of hearing a “whoof” of exhalation that let me know my shot hit home even through the body armor.
I grabbed an exposed arm and spun my attacker into a hammerlock, but didn’t lock my feet far enough apart. I ended up tossed head over heels as the slippery black-clad figure put some kind of judo hex move on me that left me splayed flat on my back like a retarded box turtle. I lay there helpless as the tip of a wooden stake flashed down at my chest, stopping a hair before it pierced the skin.
“Uncle.” I gasped, and sat up slowly, avoiding the oversized toothpick that was a lot closer than I ever figured a mortal would be able to get without my permission.
“You see, Jimmy. It doesn’t matter the physical advantages an opponent has, if you’re more mentally together and focused, you’re unbeatable. All the super-speed and strength in the world is useless against a determined, well-prepared opponent. If this had been a real fight, you’d have been a little pile of dust and fangs in the middle of the living room floor.” My opponent, the always fetching Sabrina Law, helped me up, wincing a little from the punch I’d landed on her ribs.
“As long as the opponent was wearing body armor. If you were in street clothes, I’d have broken a couple of ribs with that punch.” I limped over to the couch and collapsed a little, propping my feet up on the coffee table. Sabrina took the armchair across from me and starting getting out of her SWAT gear. I thought she looked pretty good in battle gear, but I’ve been known to have a Call of Duty fetish.
“True enough,” she replied, kicking off her combat boots and heading towards the fridge. “But any well-prepared opponent is more than likely going to have some type of body armor. You got anything for me to drink in here?”
“Yeah, good point. If not body armor, then it’ll be some kind of magical shielding or some super-duper force field or something else I can’t punch through. Oh, yeah, there’s beer in the door. And grab me a bag from the crisper?” She brought a bottle of Miller Lite back into the den and tossed me a bag of blood from the fridge. We both took a long drink, and let out a sigh of contentment as our respective drinks made the bruises feel a little less sharp. I looked over at Sabrina, who looked back at me and we both cracked up at the synchronicity of it all.
We had almost gotten over our bout of the giggles when my partner, Greg Knightwood, clumped down the stairs into our apartment. “What’s so damn funny?” He grumbled as he came over to sit next to me on the couch.
“You had to be there.” I said as I snorted a little blood out of one nostril. Gross, I know, but what can I say, it’s an occupational hazard of being a vampire. “Who peed in your Cheerios?”
“It’s this stupid case. I hate divorces.” Oh yeah. I’d forgotten he lost the coin toss and had to do surveillance tonight. Divorces are the worst thing in the world for private investigators, which is how Greg and I pay the bills. It’s a lot of waiting in cars in sleazy parking lots while somebody does something inappropriate with someone they’re not supposed to be doing anything with while the person they’re supposed to be doing things with waits anxiously at home for us to come back to them with proof of what they wished they didn’t already know. I don’t know how Greg managed. Divorce surveillance always made me want to bite somebody. I took a little pity on him and got him a beer.
“Tonight it was the tour of all the Mecklenburg County biker strip clubs with his floozy girlfriend while his wife and mother of five children stayed home and baked four dozen cookies for the PTA bake sale tomorrow.” He killed his beer in one long pull and headed to the fridge for another. Sabrina and I both raised our hands for a refill, and he brought three back to the couch.
“I hope she takes him for everything he’s worth, the pig.” Sabrina muttered.
I nodded, but Greg said “That’s the worst part! She can’t even take him for anything, because he’s been on unemployment for more than a year! She’s the one working overtime to keep their McMansion and helping the kids with their homework and dealing with the bill collectors while he runs around chasing skirts! If I were a weaker man I’d just bite him. If I thought she wouldn’t be a suspect I’d make him disappear. He’s probably worth more dead than alive with life insurance, anyway.”
“Always an option, bro. I’m up for a snack if you are.” I finished my beer and made to put my shoes back on.
“No. I don’t do that anymore. No matter how bad he is, he doesn’t deserve that.” Greg was purely a bag-drinker. He didn’t touch blood from the tap anymore. I admired his resolve but didn’t necessarily share his strength of convictions. Sabrina was well aware of this and shot me a dirty look.
“Okey-dokey. You just say the word, partner, and he’s a spot on my tie.” I leaned back on the couch.
“You don’t own a tie.”
“Oh yeah. Good thing I don’t have a respectable job, then.” That’s when Sabrina’s cell phone rang and our night took a turn for the spectacularly crappy.
by john | Oct 1, 2010 | Fiction, Vampires, Writing
I know, I’ve let this blog languish while I was off writing other things, like silly vampire novels. And now my blog feels like the sponge mop in the Swiffer commercials. So sorry, I suck, but the first draft of the vampire novel is finished. It’s going to be called Hard Day’s Knight, and will be the first of a series called the Black Knight Chronicles. It’s a snarky, somewhat comic vampire series based around a pair of geeky vampire detective. I’ll paste in an excerpt below.
If you’re here because you found the link through Amanda Hocking’s Zombiepalooza blog, then my nefarious plan has worked! BWAHAHAHAHA!!! Sorry. Anyway, thanks for stopping by, and I hope you’ll poke around a little. My first novel, The Chosen, is available from Amazon, on the iBookstore, and from Lulu. There’s a sample on The Chosen tab, check it out. Let me know what you think. I’ve got some live events coming up as well, so if you’re anywhere near Charlotte, let me know and come out and say hello.
So here’s a sample of my next book, Hard Day’s Knight, available in November wherever independent books are sold.
Chapter 1
I hate waking up in an unfamiliar place. I’ve slept in pretty much the same bed for the past twenty years, so when I wake up someplace new, it really throws me off. When that someplace is tied to a metal folding chair in the center of an abandoned warehouse that reeks of stale cigarette smoke, gasoline and harbor water – well, that really started my night off on a sparkling note.
My mood deteriorated even further when I heard a voice behind me say “It’s about time you woke up, bloodsucker.” I mean, seriously, why do people have to be so rude? It’s a condition, like freckles. I’m a vampire. Deal with it. But we can do without the slurs, thank you very much.
“Go easy on the bloodsucker, pal. I haven’t had breakfast.” Was what I tried to say. But since my mouth was duct-taped shut, it came out more like “Mm mmmm mm mmm-mmmmmmm, mmm. Mm mmmmmm mmm mmmmm.” My repartee was gonna need an assist if I was going to talk my way out of this. Of course, if my mysterious captor had wanted me dead, he’d had all day to make that happen, but instead I woke up tied to a chair. I tested my bonds, but I was tied tight, and whatever he had bound me with burned, so it was either blessed, and he was devout, or it was silver. My money was on silver. The true believers are more the stake ‘em in the coffins type than the kidnap them and tie them to chairs type.
“I think, bloodsucker, that since I’m the one with the stake, I get to call you whatever I want. And you, as the one tied to the chair with silver chains, get to sit there and do whatever I say.” My captor moved around in front where I could get a good look at him. I knew him, of course. It’s never the new guy in town who ties you to a chair, it’s always that kinda creepy guy who you’ve seen lurking around the cemetery for a couple weeks. The one that you’re not sure if he was there to mourn or for some other reason. And of course, it was always some other reason.
I’d seen this guy hanging around one of the big oak trees in my cemetery, near the freshest grave in the joint, for a couple of weeks. I never thought much of his wardrobe until now, but in retrospect he was wearing almost stereotypical vampire hunter garb. Black jeans, black boots, long black coat, wide-brimmed black hat. Christ, I bet he owned the Van Helsing Blu-Ray. I swore then that if I ever got the chance, I was eating Hugh Jackman’s liver. No, we don’t usually eat people, but liver’s liver, and I was pissed. I had been caught and trussed up like a Thankgsiving turkey by a skinny twenty-something who watched too many bad vampire movies.
This kid was white, about twenty-three, with mousy brown hair and looked like he played too much Call of Duty instead of getting a job. His skin was paler than mine, for crying out loud, and I’m dead! He was a hair over six foot, weighed maybe one-forty soaking wet, and either had an asthma inhaler in his front pocket or was happy to see me. God, I hoped it was an inhaler.
“Mmmm mmmmm mm mmm mmmm mm mm mm?” I asked, which was supposed to be more of a what do you want me to do type of query, but my mouth was still taped shut. The kid reached forward and ripped the tape off, taking a layer or two of skin with it. “OWWW!” I yelled, straining against my bonds. “You little rat bastard, I swear to God I am going to drink you dry and leave your body on the lawn like an empty bag of flesh!”
I admit, my similes need work.
“I don’t think so, bloodsucker. I think you’re going to do anything I tell you to, or I’ll just leave you tied up there to starve.” He had a point there. It’s not like there were very many people who would miss a vampire, and I hadn’t yet figured out how to get loose from whatever silver-lined bonds he’d created.
“Alright, what do you want?” I asked. Might as well find out right now if he wanted something simple or…
“I want you to turn me,” he replied. The look of hope on his face was a little pathetic, really, but there was a determination there that was disturbing. This was not going to be easy.
“No.” I wanted to get the short and simple part out of the way first, then we could move on to the lengthy explanations.
“Why not?” Wow, from zero to whiny little bitch in .4 seconds. If I’d ever had any thoughts of actually turning this scrawny little zit-farm into a vamp, they would have just evaporated.
“Because I don’t turn people. Because this life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Because I don’t know how to turn people. Because you’d miss all those romantical sunsets you probably write mediocre poetry about. Because it’s not fair to the ecosystem to add another predator. All of the above. None of the above. Pick a reason, kid, any reason you like. I’m not turning you.” I started to look around for another way to get out of this mess, but it didn’t look good for our hero. Or at least my hero, and it’s my story.
For a skinny little gamer-geek, he’d done a good job tying me up. I guess that’s another thing we can thank the internet for – unlimited access to fetish porn has improved the knot-tying ability of men who can’t get dates. I couldn’t exactly see my hands, but by straining around, I could see that my ankles were tied to separate legs of the chair with those plastic zip-ties you get in the electrical aisle. I could see a silver necklace wound around each tie, and by the way my wrists felt, he’d done the same thing there. The chair was the standard metal folding type, the kind that gets sacrificed in countless professional wrestling matches. So I was pretty well neutralized. The silver sapped the strength from my arms just by the contact, and I couldn’t get enough leverage with my legs to do anything useful. I looked up to try and Jedi mind trick my kidnapper, when I noticed two things – one – he was wearing polarized sunglasses, which was a neat idea, although ultimately useless against my mental abilities, and two – he was crying.
“You have to turn me!” He wailed, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I don’t have anything left, and this is the only way I can think to get by.”
I couldn’t believe it; I was actually starting to feel sorry for the guy. “Okay, kid. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong and I’ll see if I can help.”
“No one can help, but if I were one of the Undead I could help myself.” I swear I could actually hear him capitalize undead.
“You know that’s kinda my job, right? Helping people that can’t help themselves. Kinda like the A-Team, without the Mohawk and the van. Reach into my shirt pocket and grab a business card. I promise not to bite you, and as you know we Undead cannot tell a lie.” Total bull, but I’ve often found with people dumb enough to romanticize the whole vampire thing that a little mendacity goes a long way. He reached into my pocket and took out a business card. It had my name, James Black, and cell phone number under a logo that said “Black Knight Detectives, shedding light on your darkest problems.” Neither the company name nor the stupid slogan was my idea. And I prefer Jimmy.
“You’re a detective?” I nodded. “And you think you can help me?”
“Well, I can’t really know that until you tell me what your problem is. So why don’t you untie me, and we can talk about this like a pair of reasonable people?” I put a little mojo into my eyes, and he started towards me with a pair of wire cutters in his hand. And that’s when things went to hell.
Want to know what happens next? The book comes out next month!
