Looking Ahead

I will be offline for much of June as Marcia and I head off to celebrate our 25th anniversary.  When we return, I'll be digging in on my sixth suspense novel.

I'll also be giving you a look ahead at the fifth Jonathan Stride novel THE BURYING PLACE, which may be the most shocking and intense novel I've written to date.  THE BURYING PLACE arrives in the UK and much of the world this fall and will be released in the U.S. in the spring of 2010.  I'll have more details to share soon.

In the meantime, thanks to all of you who have given me such wonderful feedback on IN THE DARK (a.k.a. THE WATCHER).  I know that the more books I write, the more readers will have their personal favorites, because certain characters and plots will resonate with their own experiences.  Even so, my goal is to raise the bar with each book -- and so I'm delighted by the number of readers who have told me that the latest book is the best one yet.

That is, until you read THE BURYING PLACE...

Finality

In IN THE DARK, Tish Verdure asks Stride if there's anything of which he's afraid.  With some hesitation, Stride admits that he's afraid of loss.  "I hate endings, goodbye, funerals, everything like that," he says.  "The end of books.  The end of movies.  The end of vacations.  I like it when things keep going, but they never do."

This comes to mind because Marcia and I are at the end of an agonizing week in which we had to say goodbye to our friend and companion of more than 19 years, our cat Disney.  His health has been going downhill for several months, and he had a particularly bad day on Monday.  We're leaving town for nearly three weeks soon for our 25th anniversary trip, and we knew he was in no condition to survive without us, and we hated the idea of him dying of a broken heart, feeling alone and abandoned.  We struggled with the decision all week, but when we saw him at peace yesterday, we knew we had done the right thing.

As I said to Marcia, it's hard to imagine a better way to spend your last hours than to rest in a sunbeam on your mom's lap, with a belly full of tuna fish, and then to go to sleep with your friends whispering how much they love you.

So we know we did the right thing by him.  The suffering now is ours.  For almost two decades, it's been just the three of us, and the house feels empty and lonely.  We know there are many other cats out there that need a good home, and soon several of them will move in and take over, as cats do.  But for now, we simply miss our little guy.

Dear Reader

The online book club at www.dearreader.com is featuring STALKED this week in its Audio Book Club.  Readers have a chance to preview the audio edition of the book and post comments.  I'll be checking in and joining the Forum to chat with readers, too.  If you haven't heard Joe Barrett reading any of the audio editions of my books, this is a good chance to get a flavor for his narration.  I hear wonderful things about him from "listeners."

Dear Reader has over 367,000 members and works with libraries all over the country that support its online book club program.  For avid readers, it's a great program.