Celebrating a Project That Could Only Be Published Today

I am pleased to announce I have had another novel accepted for publication. The project, Tristouse Ballerinette and the Perpetual Motion Machine, is one I haven’t discussed with many people … for the simple reason I never expected it to go anywhere. But the project is my attempt to cash in on the Young Adult Paranormal Romance craze.

Of course, I added a few twists intended to offer a note of gravitas to more discriminating readers … while still, hopefully, being a huge hit with the young people. The main action takes place in the milieu of 1930s Welsh coal mining, but transposed to 2017 California so as to be more accessible to the young folks.

Narratively, the work is divided into three parts:

The first is a flashback that takes place over the last 15 seconds of the protagonist’s life as she falls from a trestle into an ore smelting crucible.

The second part is a series of non-sequential vignettes exploring how she develops her supernatural powers, meets her love interest, Chai (pronounced “Gee”), as well as their mutual wizardly nemesis, Professor Dastard Rhesus.

Resolution of that conflict comes in the third art, in the form of a therapeutic dialogue between Tristouse Ballerinette, Chai, and Ernest W. Camp (who, of course, was first Commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service) which takes place in something like a bus station.

Needless to say, I am tremendously excited about this project. I invite you to look for Tristouse Ballerinette and the Perpetual Motion Machine in print on this (or any other) April 1^st!