I pledge to post a little more, which means I have to have news to share or pertinent info. You can find two recent stories, one in Goliad Review, a long story I'm particularly proud of at 9000 words, and another in Mystery Tribune. Otherwise, I've added a page for my newest novel The Last Danger, sequel to Ridgerunner, in which Matt Rider gets into even more trouble with the renegade Pittman clan and clings to his instincts to the detriment of nearly everyone around him. Jay Gertzman wrote up a nice précis of the novel on Amazon if you care to look it up. I'll reproduce some relevant bits here.
_Ridgerunner_, the first novel in this proposed trilogy, showed Matt Rider as a man capable of protecting his family from the belligerent, bullying Pittmans, who control the regional drug distribution in upsate NY and PA. Matt confronts them with the steely (as in guns) resolution of a Western homesteader protecting his domain from cattlemen who want to run him off it. Perhaps the name Matt Rider is meant to suggest this kind of classic rural American independence, which came through violence. The Pittmans kill Matt’s brother and Matt has killed two of them. As _The Last Danger_ opens, Matt knows he is a hunted man. He also knows, as another fighter against criminal says, PI Phillip Marlow says, “I was part of the nastiness now.”
His brother, wife, and daughter all wonder what Matt has become. Traps are many-layered in this novel. The Pittmans have forced him to do drug runs. That at least protects wife and daughter. But Matt exposes them, and his loyal best friend, to increasing dangers as the novel proceeds. So his desperate need to protect just increases a quicksand-like immersion. His own violence increases, and he relishes it. The more he tells himself he is protecting the family (which is his chief aim), the more his behavior makes that sincere conviction a Kafkaesque entrapment.
I hope to publish even more in 2019, including a collection of Kraj stories as well as some poems and short stories. I'll attend at least two, possible three conferences in 2019, so getting to hang out and have a beer with some of you is a very real possibility. Thanks for hanging in there with me, and here's hoping for the best in 2019
