Novel Ventures

For several decades now, I have been known as, and have actively worked at being, a short-story writer.

But I wasn’t always.

Early in my career, I wrote a few novels, and most of them are still available and still generating royalties. Today I’m looking back at those early-career novels.

DEADLY CAMPAIGN

I finished writing my first novel, a mystery titled Deadly Campaign, in November 1983. It was rejected by several agents and publishers until it found a home with Books in Motion and was released in May 1994.

Books in Motion published audiobooks on cassette tape and sold most of their titles at truck stops around the U.S.

In February 2003, Wildside Press released Deadly Campaign as a trade paperback, and it is still available at online bookstores.

Covering City Hall during an election year was all the excitement reporter Dan Fox needed—until he discovered Alderman Bill Franklin’s bullet-ridden body.

Who killed the alderman? Why did they do it? Fox wants the story. Everyone else wants him.

Hit men, mob bosses, politicians, and mistresses: They all have stories to tell, and Fox pieces them together while dodging bullets and fighting deadlines.

While Fox digs for the story, long-hidden secrets rise to the surface—secrets that threaten the political fabric of the city—and Fox soon discovers he’s caught in the middle of a Deadly Campaign.

JUST IN TIME FOR LOVE

I wrote Just in Time for Love, a YA romance, in 1983/1984, and for years the manuscript made the rounds of agents and publishers, finally finding a home with Hardshell Word Factory in 1998, first as an eBook and then in 2001 paired with Melissa Ford’s His Friday Girls as half of the paperback Twin Spins #1.

It is now out of print.

His father writes confessions and jokes, and the biggest joke of all is his name—Justin Tyme. But Jay, as he prefers to be called, hasn’t had much to laugh about in the years since his mother died. His father retreats into an alcohol-hazed world of denial and self-pity, reversing their care-giver roles, and forcing Jay to grow up virtually on his own.

Then, they move to O’Shea, where his father manages a mobile home park, and Jay begins yet another year as the “new kid” in school. He has a lot to learn—about life, his father, and himself, but most of all, about love. And it all begins the day Jay meets Cindy Hamilton.

PSI COPS

I wrote Psi Cops, a science fiction police procedural, in 1987/1988, and sent my first query to an editor in March 1988. I received several rejections and a request for revisions from an editor at Berkley (which I did, but they passed on the revised version), and I ultimately placed it with Books in Motion in 1994.

In February 2003, Wildside Press released Psi Cops as a trade paperback, and it is still available at online bookstores.

Geeks and freaks.

That’s what Detective Sergeant Tony Carvelli thinks of Psi Cops until he’s faced with a sadistic serial killer who leaves no evidence behind.

In a near-future St. Louis, after sexually-transmitted diseases have been eliminated and sex without commitment is a lifestyle for much of the population, Carvelli investigates the deaths of women dismembered in their own bedrooms.

Carvelli still believes in the old values: love before sex and investigation before technology. When Psi Cop Colleen Allison is assigned to the case against his wishes—thanks to his new partner, recently-promoted Detective Phil Palmer—Carvelli resents her and everything she represents.

Fighting against time and against each other, Carvelli, Palmer, and Allison struggle to find the killer before he strikes again.

ALL WHITE GIRLS

I don’t know how it happened, but I’ve lost the paper trail for my first private eye novel, All White Girls. So, I don’t know when I completed the novel, nor how many agents and publishers may have passed on it. I do know Wildside Press released it as a trade paperback in May 2001 and later released a hardcover version. It is still available at online bookstores.

One young woman is missing. Another is dead.

They were drawn to Windy City like moths to a flame, but the city’s bright lights can’t illuminate every dark corner. Hidden in the alleys and back streets and in a three-block-long stretch of strip clubs and adult bookstores are the men who prey on young women like these: the pedophiles, pimps, and pornographers.

When former partners, unlicensed investigator Big Dick Rickenbacher and Homicide Lieutenant Salvador Castellano, find their cases overlapping in this violent world of sexual depravity, old flames rekindle, old secrets finally surface, and old crimes demand retribution.

STUD

Sometime in the mid-2000s, I discovered the first chapter of an erotic romance I had drafted in the early 1990s. I picked it up again and finished writing Stud just before I sent my first query letter to an agent in September 2008.

I collected a string of rejections from agents and publishers for the next few years and finally released Stud in July 2011 as a Kindle-only title on Amazon, using my Rolinda Hay pseudonym.

Christiana Kern is already overworked as the top customer service representative at Wett, Inc., the country’s largest printer of special interest magazines, when her boss assigns her a new title. She isn’t eager to accept the additional responsibility…until she meets Bobby Ray Cartwright, the sexy rancher publishing the start-up magazine. It isn’t long before business and pleasure mix and Christiana learns that Stud isn’t just the title of Bobby Ray’s new publication. Soon Christiana is having the best sex ever and is facing life-altering decisions in and out of the bedroom.

SHORT STORY FOCUS

I’ve had many other books published—mostly short story collections—but I have no completed and unpublished novels buried in my files.

Given the length of time it took to write and find homes for each of my novels (11+ years for Deadly Campaign, 14+ years for Just in Time for Love, 6+ years for Psi Cops), is it any wonder I shifted my focus to short stories?

---

“The Tattooist” was published in Black Cat Weekly #253.