August 3, 2012. Welcome to my newly redesigned website. Please check back often for updates as I continue to convert my five print novels to ebook format and add previously unpublished content.

August 4, 2012. Launching the new website has spurred me into working harder to finish converting all of my out of print books to ebook format. I got off to a flying start at the end of last year and converted ACTS & OMISSIONS and WITH INTENT TO KILL in a little over two months. (Conversion involves me retyping the entire manuscript because I have to upload a digital file of the book and I do not have digital files for any of my old books. I tried scanning book pages but the scans brought in so many rogue characters that I would have had to edit word for word anyway so I decided retyping would be the easiest thing to do.) I had started retyping ABSENT WITNESS late last year but then had put the project aside and not gotten back to it. I started in again a couple of weeks ago and only need to retype another 12 chapters before I can try to upload it to Amazon and Smashwords.

August 5, 2012. Success! I finished ABSENT WITNESS this afternoon and have uploaded it to amazon so it should be available for Kindle within a day or so. I opted to give amazon 90 day exclusive rights to ABSENT WITNESS before making it available on Smashwords - which in turn makes it available to Barnes & Noble. It is a great feeling to have this finished. I will give myself a little break and then forge ahead with FINAL JUSTICE. Stay tuned.

September 11, 2012. FINAL JUSTICE is also now available for Kindle. I am more than halfway through the conversion process for BLIND TRUST and should have that finished and uploaded for Kindle by sometime next week. It has been an intresting experience reading these books again after many years. It is as though I were reading someone else's work. There are things I would do differently if I were writing them new today but overall I am satisfied with them. And occasionally i will come across a line or a story arc that I am especially proud of.

September 16, 2012. Just finished uploading BLIND TRUST to amazon so it shoulsd be available for Kindle within the next day. There is a great sense of satisfaction in having all five out of print books converted. I am now going to do some editing on an unpublished manuscript I wrote some years ago. My plan is to make that available both as an ebook and as a print on demand title. My working title for it is SOME LIKE 'EM DEAD. Check back for updates.

February 1, 2013. SOME LIKE 'EM DEAD is now available at amazon in both print format and for Kindle. Hooray! Getting the manuscript to this point has been a very interesting learning experience for me. By this time I am an  old hand at uploading files for Kindle. The print format is another animal altogether. I used amazon's CreateSpace imprint. I tried hard to follow their technical requirements but had a few problems along the way. Last weekend I called them and spoke to a very helpful representative who guided me through the process for uploading the book cover. Once that was done I thought the book was ready to go so I ordered some copies for my own use. When they arrived I saw that the book was very big and heavy (it looked like I had written War and Peace.) I soon figured out that the problem was the spacing I had used made the printed version look like a large print book. I changed the spacing, which cut down the size of the finished product by almost 200 pages. I then discovered that the CreateSpace program does not automatically insert page numbers so I had to add those and upload the interior file once again. That should be the last tweaking it needs for now, although it's always possible that some other less obvious errors might surface. The good news is I am getting quite proficient at fixing and resubmitting and CreateSpace is very fast in its review process.

Having successfully (I think) published my first new material in years, I can now turn my attention to my next project, which is a mystery that I started a number of years back but never finished. It is called REALTY BITES.  It is set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  It is different from my other novels in a couple of respects. Most importantly, the main character is NOT a lawyer. The protagonist is a single mother named Eleanor Johnson. Eleanor is trying to make a living selling real estate, and as she and a prospective buyer are touring a recently renovated mansion on Lake Drive, they find the owner/developer dead in the wine cellar. In addition, this is the first book I've written that's told in first person narrative. My goal is to have this book finished by summer. Stay tuned.