Teaser: Cover Art for My Next Project

What's coming next in the Rossi/Lopez series

I’m finally coming to the end of the first story in the Terry Perez series, “My Favorite Suspects,” which I hope you’re enjoying. It’s my first attempt at a more traditional mystery story, as opposed to the thriller-style stories in the Rossi/Lopez series. I think I’ll have one more chapter and that should wrap it up. I plan to have that chapter out this weekend. I’ll also publish a short retrospective on the origins of that story.

As I wrap up Terry’s first story, I’ve been getting more and more eager to tackle another Rossi/Lopez story, this one entitled … well, let’s get to that in a moment. Unlike “Coyotes in Winter,” which sort of exists in a parallel Rossi/Lopez universe, this next story picks up after the events in “The Good Killers,” maintains continuity with that novel, and brings Rossi and Lopez back together to work on an case that’s very different from the type of work they did in the first two stories in the series.

This story will be a major revision and expansion of a short story I first wrote in 1993 and never managed to get published. (I got some really good rejection letters, though.) Those of you that have stuck with me since the 90’s may actually remember this one. The cover image for this post is a big hint. Have you figured it out yet?

After a year of working on stories for MFS, getting reader feedback, and getting some books out, I feel confident enough to return to this story and re-approach it, in much the same way that I returned to the last draft of Terry’s story and turned it into something better than what I’d done back in 1991.

In this story, I plan to include some elements of psychological horror along with the usual mystery elements. I enjoy mixing in different genres, as I did with “My Favorite Suspects,” where I included elements from autobiography, for example. Based on the feedback I received from editorial rejections, the psychological horror aspects of the original version gave it an interesting angle.

I plan for this to be a novel-length effort. I’m aiming for something a bit shorter than “The Good Killers” in terms of page count. I’m not sure how that will work in a serialized format. I know that you’re having trouble following the Terry story at the pace I’m publishing chapters, and I’m sorry about that, but my career and family life demand a lot of my attention. I wish I could quit work and write full time but that ship sailed, got mothballed, and was cut up for scrap in 1995.

Anyway, like my other stories, this new one will be set in western New York, so be ready for more references to Rochester and local color. I also hope you’re enjoying the setting; it’s not as gritty as Chicago, as storied as New York City, or as glamorous as L.A., but I think it has its charms and surprises and dark corners just as the big cities do. If nothing else, it offers the novelty of untrodden ground.

Let me know what you think of the concept art in the comments. Does it intrigue you? Does it create any expectations for you as a reader?

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