I have been a fan of detective novels for years. I love them. I love hard-boiled detective novels. I love film noir like The Maltese Falcon. I have read all of the works of Dashiell Hammett and I am a huge fan of Michael Harvey whose Private Eye Michael Kelly haunts the streets of Chicago. I love it, but I have always been intimidated about writing about it.
My first attempt at a novel was a murder mystery. You have never seen it or heard of it (it’s called Among Friends) because it still exists only as a handwritten piece in a binder on a bookshelf in my apartment. The story and the writing are terrible. However, it was a major step forward in my development as a writer because it proved I could write a novel-length piece.
Still, it proved I had a long way to go before I wrote a mystery. I made another attempt with The Vanished Child, but again, felt that there were serious faults with the work. I dabbled in crime stories with Dust and felt I was getting better. I wrote a short story (the first appearance of a detective named Deklan Falls), but felt it was really bad. I combined horror and the hard-boiled genre with the novella MYTHOS: A Thriller and felt like, maybe, the time had come.
The novel that will come out this august Deklan Falls: One Against Many, is a novel that has been percolating in my head for years. I finally felt it was my time to write it and I am quite happy with out it turned out. I already have more ideas on where Deklan Falls might go and end up. I hope that Deklan and I have a very long working relationship.
I hope you like it, too. If you are a fan of detective novels, I think you’ll like this one. I think I finally got the balance of mystery, serious drama, and action right in this one. I also think I keep you guessing until the end.
The publishing date will likely be around August 21. I am just publishing this one for Kindle, Nook and other ereaders via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. If there is an overwhelming demand from readers for a print version, we’ll see, but that will be up to you.
I hope you’ll come with me on this journey and I hope you like the story I tell, and that Deklan told me.
Sincerely,
BWA
P.S. And thanks again for the brilliant Erin Engelmann for designing the cover. She also designed RIG: A Novel of Terror’s cover. She’s fantastic!