Finally a New Story

HARBOUR OF LIES is out today! I hope you'll give the new mystery series a try. It took me a long time to write, but early reviews are good.

I like to think of this one as my illness book. Over the end of 2025 and into early 2026, I wasted a lot of energy searching for "something new" in development that would let me avoid knee replacement surgery. Eventually I threw in the towel and had both knees replaced, in May and June. Each surgery brought on a sinus infection. Later came a bout of diverticulitis, and then, just as I neared the finish line of the book, the worst ear and tooth pain of my life.

Maybe it was the ghost of my father. When I was little and fell off a bike and cried, he'd tell me it wasn't a big deal and that he could cut off my finger if I wanted something to really cry about. Maybe the sinusitis, TMJ, and stomach pain were just a diversion from the knee recovery. Either way, except for the scars and my lack of range in child's pose (IYKYK), you'd never know I have metal knees. I can jog, do jumping jacks, and do lots of other things I haven't been able to do in years.

New covers for the Jill Quint series. I redid all the covers so they look like they belong together. Each one now has the silhouettes of Jill, Jo, Marie, and Angela against a faint vineyard background. Changing the covers meant a lot of administrative work updating them everywhere, but I'm happy with the result. Here's two of them.

Stonemason update. I also built a pillar and am now waiting on the solar light that will go on top. It's not perfectly level, but for my first time as a stonemason, I'm pretty happy with it. And it's definitely not the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

What's next. I'm turning now to book 2 of the Lori Dalton spy and pickleball mystery series. There are some longer-term issues to follow up on with Bradley Paine, a character from book 1. Lori also stumbles across a dead body mostly covered by fallen leaves in the Northern Wisconsin autumn. Once you read HARBOUR OF LIES, you'll meet the larger cast of characters, seven in all. I hope you like them.

Audiobooks are coming. I'll be putting all my books on audio, with a human narrator, not AI. I expect the first ones to start rolling out in January.

Cheers,

Alec