That's the last line of the first chapter of my new claustrophobic thriller Winter Break: "And the floorboards are covered in blood." I've dropped the complete first chapter below for you: a sample of the ill tidings to come in my heroine's snowbound week from Hell. Enjoy. /// THURSDAY AFTERNOON My phone dings with a new text just as I hit my first patch of black ice. The sound is like a warning: a scream announcing danger. The little car’s wheels spin for half a second — not even long enough...
5 days ago • 17 min read
Hello! I'm going to keep today's message short. If you're a household that celebrates a holiday this time of year, you've got a lot more on your mind than my silly little emails. I'll try to respect that. (Note, however, that that's not stopping me from sending one. Because tradition or something.) This afternoon, I'm going to be selling books at an artisan Christmas market on the big central lawn at the Hill Country Galleria in Austin. Should be cool. I've only sold books in person once...
12 days ago • 3 min read
Writing has always helped me to clarify my own thinking. Even back in school, I used to write essays with that in mind: Rather than writing what I believed about a topic, I wrote in order to discover how I believed. Last week, I talked about vital it is for me to set the mood for a book before I begin writing it. I knew that was true last week ... but writing it down for you rammed the concept home. And so this week, when I began writing a brand-new book, I put higher priority on mood-setting...
19 days ago • 2 min read
Yeah, yeah ... I know what you're thinking. You just read the subject line and thought, "Hey Johnny -- three weeks is basically Christmas! Are you seriously releasing a book on Christmas?" Well, no. But I am releasing a new thriller on the day AFTER Christmas. I'm doing it because the book in question is called Winter Break. What better time to release a book about tension, betrayal, and bloodshed in the snow than DURING WINTER BREAK? Because c'mon: Mood matters, people. Setting the mood for...
26 days ago • 2 min read
After an email like the monster I sent last week, I feel like I should pull back this week and send you something shorter. It's like I think you're still hung over from overindulging in words, and giving you more words now might make your head hurt. We'll see if that happens. I don't have a long email in mind, but I'm clearly not in charge of how long they become. I have a muse even for emails, and it turns out she's really verbose. After the conference and book festival in Vegas (see the...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hey everyone! First things first: I wanted to remind you that my brand new book Suicide Flats is still at half-price ($2.99), but I’m raising the price at the end of Wednesday. Be sure to grab your copy of Suicide Flats here before the price doubles. With that bit of flagrant self-promotion out of the way, I hope you had as amazing a week as I had. I doubt it, but we can hope. I’m writing this to you from 35,000 feet, aboard Southwest flight WN358 from Las Vegas to Austin. I’ll queue it to...
about 2 months ago • 13 min read
I'm currently putting the finishing touches on Suicide Flats -- the first book I've written after almost two difficult years of blocks, administrative overwhelm, and the monumental task of reinventing my entire author career. It's pretty exciting to almost have it ready for you to read! (If you're curious about Suicide Flats, read this. I'll publish it this coming week, and will send an email to let you know.) I've published a few books in the last two years, but I haven't actually written...
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
If you're Sean Platt, you just opened this email with curiosity or possibly irritation, wondering which upstart I've taken on to co-author books with in your place. If you're not Sean Platt, however (which I'm guessing is most of you), you might just be curious. After all, I DID just tell you about my forthcoming book Suicide Flats last week, which is tentatively coming out on November 12th. I didn't mention a co-author on that one, because there is none. I wrote the Gore Point trilogy with...
2 months ago • 6 min read
'Morning! Last week, I told you about a new book that I'm working on right now, called Suicide Flats. Suicide Flats will be published in November (so get your buy-fingers ready), but for now I'm just delighting in the simple act of writing it. Because man: IT'S SO BADASS TO BE WRITING AGAIN! It might surprise you that I'd say that. There's no surprise in the idea of "Johnny is writing a book," right? After all, I'm an author. Me writing books is no big deal, is it? Well, trust me: It's a big...
2 months ago • 7 min read
TL;DR: I'm writing a brand new book called Suicide Flats that should be available in about a month. This email talks about the reasons and conditions under which I'm writing it, but if you don't care about any of that and only want to know what the book is about and how to get it, you can read the indented blurb toward the end of this message or just wait until next week's email. -------------------------------------------- Stick with me for a second after reading the subject line. Because OF...
3 months ago • 4 min read