ITEM! It’s official! Work has begun on the sequel to Fester. Granted, it’s not a lot of work, and there is no title as of yet. As I am a pantser when it comes to writing, I don’t even have a clear idea of exactly what’s going to happen. There are a number of things I can share of which I am fairly certain:
- The timeline of the new story is set 20 years after Fester, which puts it around 2014.
- Martin Prieboy is still Chief Constable of Fester, but is struggling with the recent loss of his spouse.
- Billy Snyder is out of prison and living in a secluded house in the hills, where he spends his time plotting revenge.
- Michael “Bolly” Bollinger has taken over his dad’s automotive repair shop and is a respected local businessman -but his business is in trouble.
- The Schmidt family now teeters on the brink of destruction, their huge mansion looming over the town of Fester like something really, really symbolic.
- Cynthia Hoegenbloeven is still running around somewhere with the remnants of the money she ran off with. Presumably she has now gotten some clothes.
There are other characters who we probably won’t see: the Plummer family moved out of town shortly after the events of Fester, and haven’t been heard from, ditto Janie Simpson. Roscoe Dirkschneider has died in prison, and Randall “Cowboy Bob” Warnke never recovered from his injuries sustained at the hands of the parishioners of Calvary Lutheran. Of course, the Top Hat families are still around, although most of the characters from Fester have gone to that Great Country Club in the Sky.
That’s what I’ve got for now. I’ll keep you posted as the story develops, although it usually takes me several years to actually write, edit and publish these books. You patience will be rewarded.
ITEM! In the course of marketing Laughingstock, I had the fortune to encounter a new book promo site called Shepherd. It’s a fascinating premise: authors are asked to list their five favorite books related to a theme of their choosing – which is presumably related to one of their own books. Then they write a short review of those books.
The theme I chose was “hilarious high weirdness,” which is a fairly regular theme in my writing. This allowed my literary eclecticism to really stretch – it was a great deal of fun! Here are the books I chose:
- Wilt by Tom Sharpe
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
- The Book of the SubGenius by the SubGenius Foundation
- Noir by Christopher Moore
- The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
My reviews can be found at THIS LINK. Give the page – and the whole site – a good going-over – it’s a lot of fun!
ITEM! There will be an eBook promo for Fester, starting this Wednesday, June 5, running through Sunday, June 9. For this time, the eBook version of Fester will be available for a measly $0.99. Of course, it’s still too early to promote the sequel (coming Summer 2027 if I really work at it), but I wanted to take another run at the Amazon Bestseller ranking as I did with Laughingstock. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that these promos are the best way to get people to read what I’ve written, and that investing heavily in advertising profits nobody but the advertising platform. We’ll see how it goes!
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