Thaddeus Murfee Book 9 is Underway!

Thaddeus Murfee update: The new Thaddeus Murfee thriller us being plotted and character development begun. Working title is "A Small Death in Orbit" and takes Thaddeus back to Orbit, where it all began five years ago. He is called upon to defend an old friend and much more, including his agreement to run for public office. Will he actually run? Get elected? We'll find out in the next couple of months.

This Thaddeus Murfee book will get back to basics: crime > court > outcome. Thaddeus has personally asked me for that kind of approach and I have wholeheartedly agreed.

Welcome back, Thaddeus.

Now to watch.

New Path Maybe Taken

I have written nine novels in 14 or 15 months that now keep the bills paid. So far, so good. But for many years I have wanted to write a series of about four novels, financial/family in nature, that each would take about two years to research and write. At the end of that time I would probably give up writing and take up kite surfing (I would be 81). I would be very proud of these four novels, much prouder than I am of the ones written so far. Maybe "pleased with" is a better way of putting it. They would please me more than the ones to date have pleased me. I love my novels written thus far, but I know I can do much better, tell much wider stories with more power than what I've done. Now if I can just figure out how to stop publishing for two years while I write the first one. Will my little publishing shop go under while I don't feed the Amazon algos for two years? Or is there enough to keep things going? I really don't know. But I'm leaning toward trying.

Mexico: Gracias Por Su Bienvenida!

Yes, thank you for the welcome you've given one more gringo who has come down south to enjoy your sand, sea, and sunshine. Thank you for the incredible food and willing help when my host's car broke down and you appeared along the roadside to stop and lend us assistance, giving us a ride into town when the Norteamericanos sped past us without a second look.

The lobster here is indescribably delicious. I was able to take five of us out for lobster dinners in a quaint little fishing village south of Tijuana for a mere $85.00 dlls. Freshly caught, freshly cooked, with chips and salsa and side dishes and dessert. I can't eat like this every day, but it's a good start to a long stay.

I found a home on the ocean. It looks like something out of the movies, furnished, with surf and breakers just outside the front door. It's huge, so my dogs have plenty of room to roam and so I can find a quiet place or two where I can sit down and type out my stories for an hour or two each day. Downstairs is a separate apartment where my sister will live and do her thing with her own kitchen, patio, and room for her life and animals. Coming upstairs is a huge living room to your left, furnished with three couches and fireplace, and straight back is the kitchen that is one of four walls surrounding an interior atrium where all manner of plants and flowers and succulents are growing--enough to keep Deb happy with her green thumb notions. Then there's a room where Deb can set up her sewing machine and create her art quilts. So she's got her space. Off to the right is an upstairs patio with a huge table beneath a thatched roof and that looks straight down at the ocean. Here's hoping the dogs don't try out the three foot high balustrade and go sailing off into the waters of the Pacific.

Two car garage, room for beach stuff for the kids, enough bedrooms that family and friends can come and stay for a few days or even weeks if they want.

All of it made possible by you, the readers I love and to whom I owe everything.

Thank you one and all.

Ten Things I've Been Doing...

1. Writing iLawyer, starring Christine Susmann. Probably 10% done.
2. Taking dogs (Max and Skittles) for haircuts. Big mess, barking and trying to get loose in the parking lot.
3. Juicing. Doing the Joe Cross 5-Day reboot. Could sure use a Big Mac about now.
4. Watching the NCAA Final Four. Great games, we'll see lots of these guys in the NBA.
5. Getting Deb ready to go to Africa to work with monkeys. Will she come back to me or throw me over for a tree dweller? Only time will tell.
6. Recovering from second back surgery. This one isn't fun. Don't have any jokes for it. But hey, it could always be worse, right?
7. Thinking how grateful I am for my readers. You have given me my dreams, my new life.
8. Wondering if my new agent is going to be able to sell the new Christine series to some publisher who will put in airports and drug stores. This one is something I look forward to try.
9. Looking for hang glider lessons. While Deb's in Europe, I'm imagining all the things I could be doing--including taking a week long hangliding course. I had my own airplane at one time and so this looks like a natural for me.
10. Playing my guitar in my studio. I'm determined to learn the solos for Hotel California and Sultans of Swing. Now if my fingers would just cooperate.

New Series Starring Christine Susmann

My agent, Jane Dystel, is going to sell my new series for me. The series will star our old friend, Christine Susmann. As you remember, she is Thaddeus' paralegal who is an Iraq War veteran, a weightlifter and firearms expert, beautiful and brilliant. When Thaddeus was defending Ermeline in The Defendants the case wouldn't have been won without Christine's tough help.

Now the book is being written. The title is iLawyer. There will be many of these books. She is a lawyer now, concentrating in public policy law, and her first case involves the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which presently is threatened by commercial logging (thanks to the U.S. Forest Service) and ordinary people are being injured in person and property due to the clearcutting. Christine flies her plane to Alaska and signs up her first client.

The book is titled iLawyer because her cases come over the Internet, Hence "i".

iLawyer will publish hopefully this year. It will be slower to come to you than the Thaddeus books because it will be published by one of the Big Five publishing houses or by one of Amazon's imprints and that takes a while longer. But not to worry: the Thaddeus Murfee series will continue and bring you more great reading all during this next year.

Thanks for reading my stuff.

Thaddeus Book 8 Will Publish This Week

The New York Times Bestseller novel with will publish this week. It is with its three editors right now and then proofing will be left to do, add front and back matter, and voila, we're published. The editors are raving about this book, and these people are hard-hitting wordsmiths who ordinarily don't rave about anything. They've seen it all, but they tell me this is an excellent book.

Why you might really like the NYT Bestseller: There's lots of Thaddeus in the book and lots of Christine. Plus Katy returns and is dealing with trying to get pregnant. Thaddeus' childhood is gone into, plus his earlier, college years and what happened then. Christine is taken prisoner in Moscow and abused beyond belief as the Russians try to extract a confession from her.

Great ending, all comes out well. You're going to enjoy this one, good escape reading, fast-paced, no-nonsense with long descriptions and all the stuff too many writers use as filler. My readers want it fast and want to keep turning pages. This book definitely has that.

Buy it now, please, pre-order available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SZDHI72.

The book so far has 1,000 pre-orders, so it's going to be huge.

Music Studio

All right, I better come clean. Deep down inside me is a frustrated musician. I have played guitar since high school and have been in bands on and off since then. In the past couple of years my hero has been Naudo Rodrigues and I have hoped to learn some of his style and play out, hopefully as noon music at a sandwich shop or a hotel lobby, something like that. Also, I write music and want to get my music online, here at my website, so people (you) can come here and listen to what I'm up to.

EQUIPMENT LIST

Macbook Pro
Garageband
Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2 In/2 Out USB Audio Interface
Alhambra Guitar
Godin Multiac Guitar with MIDI & XLR outs
12 String Guitar
Yamaha Synth
Tascam Studio Monitors
2488 NEO Tascam Board (Used recording bands live)

Pretty basic stuff, all in all.

I have about four songs that I've written over the years and want to start with those.

Keep checking back. Music will magically appear here and we'll have something else in common!