The first draft of Nightmares is done. It’s slightly longer than A Silver Cross and a Winchester. It’s out to the Alpha Readers, and I’ll start in on editing in the next day or so. Giving the brain a bit of a break. Hopefully, I should be able to have it up for Kindle pre-order in the next couple of days.
Next up, Hard Target (working title; if something else comes up as better, it’ll change, just like Hunting in the Shadows did). Huge amount of research going into this one; it’s an AO I’m not personally familiar with, and touching on some big-time, heavy duty global concepts. Lotta work. Can’t wait to get started.
Meanwhile, a little snippet from Nightmares:
I don’t know how I hadn’t seen this bad boy before; he was almost a head taller than the rest, broad-shouldered and thick-limbed, with a massive pair of curling ram’s horns rising from his skull. He stamped the ground and roared a challenge. The bleating tone to the roar kind of took away from the effect a little.
He threw his arms wide and stamped again, dropping his head to charge. I shot him center chest.
Dan’s shot was a split second behind mine. About seven hundred grains of metal smacked into the thing about where its breastbone should be. I don’t care what kind of big, bad, Otherworldly beastie you might be; that’s gonna leave a mark.
It was getting too dark to see the size of the hole with any clarity, but the big sucker stopped in his tracks. He swayed, looking down at his chest, then looked up at us. His heart—if goatheads had such a thing—had to have been completely destroyed. It was just taking a little bit of time for the knowledge of his death to make its way through his thick skull.
He lifted a gnarled hand to his ravaged chest and looked down at it. The swaying was getting more pronounced, but I’d already levered another round into the chamber and was drawing a bead. He was taking too long to go down.
Then he crashed on his face in the dirt.
Just my .02, there’s a ton of books bearing the Hard Target title; I’d hate to see this one get lost in the weeds.
That’s why I made it a working title; right now, it’s something to call the book. Expect a new title once I’ve really started working on it.