Listen to Pilot Light

Thursday, March 27, 2014

A taste of Traveling Ed's crime fiction

Here is a great chance to get acquainted with my new fiction at no risk. The ebook of my crime short story A Mexican Divorce will be free on Amazon from March 30, 2014 to April 3, 2014.

Here is the blurb:

How is a girl supposed to have fun on vacation when blackmailers are going to try and make her pay them for pictures of it all? And what will Bart say if he finds out? Of course she can't little thing like a greedy blackmailer ruin a perfectly good setup.  

 

Sunday, March 9, 2014

An Asian story

Friends and fellow travelers have asked when I'd get around to writing a story from the years living in Asia. I did do a story of a sailor in Hong Kong, called Chancy. That one I wrote with John Pocock and it included wonderful photos by my good friend and former colleague in HK, Tom Tsui. It wasn't really about Asia, though, even though it took place there.

Now I've released a short story (99 cents for an introductory period that is as yet indeterminate) called Imitating Art. This one combines my observations of expats in SE Asia with an experience from my time in the Caribbean. (The cover photo is one I took in Thailand). If you look at the description, I billed it as a crime story, as it is, in a way. I am terrible when it comes to fitting into genre, just as I haven't ever fit well in social niches, and this is really a story about a writer, an expat, in Asia. The crimes (and it refers to more than one) are not really the issue. The title suggests the connection between the crimes and the story.

I am quite happy with this story, and would like to do more along this line, combining my interest in mysteries with explorations of Asia. It's only up on Amazon as an ebook now but it interests readers, then I'll be doing more of these.

Hemingway wrote that you need distance from a place you've been before you could write about it honestly, and I'm just beginning to understand what he meant. I am still writing stories of the Caribbean and, in some rather interesting ways, the place and people are clearer to me than it was when I lived there.  That is just starting to happen with Asia.

To help keep my other stories in front of people and hope they find more readers, I've lowered the price on the ebooks for my Venezuelan murder mystere (book one in the Martin Billings stories, as it is turning out) UNDER LOW SKIES to $3.99 and THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO (the story of the world's best Caribbean boat bum) and FLOAT STREET NOTES to $2.99. The new prices will be reflected at Amazon and Smashwords later today and ripple through to the other outlets over time (I don't control that).