Dead Ringers, book 9 in my Captain Arlon Stoddard series is available on pre order with an April 20th release – universal book link here
More will come closer to the time (though I will be away from the net on a research trip on the lead up to release day).
I will say now, though, that I’m excited about this one. Nine books now in the series. Who’d have thought, huh?
And, as I type this, I’m working on Tramp Steamers, the tenth book.
I also wanted to mention briefly the wonderful cover by Algol (licensed through Dreamstime) – I actually licensed this years back for a different story. A story I hadn’t written at the time. I loved the image and I grabbed it, and wrote a story based on it, thinking just to indie publish it. But then, I sold the story to a magazine, so that locked it up for a while (generally when you sell – license – a story, part of that is a period of time when it’s exclusive to the magazine, fair enough, they paid for that).
Anyway, in the interim, I’ve just never got around to publishing the story as a standalone (goofing off, I guess, since, you know, apparently I’m a slouch when it comes to putting stories and novels up indie and really should be getting more of them out), but I still hold the license on the image.
Then I wrote Dead Ringers and it was really different and high-concept and stuff like that and ultimately I was struggling to find cover art that fitted the story. Then I remembered I had this. It fits this story well, it’s dynamic and energetic and conveys the action. So here it is.
More soon – a blurb and other details on price and so on. But you know, we do have until April 20th until it’s out.
Liquid Machine, Book 6 in the Karnish River Navigation series (though actually the ninth book to come out) will be out on February 20th, but can be preordered now.
Liquid Machine – blurb
An easy minder job, watching a dignitary’s child, should be a simple payday for Flis Kupe and Grae Sinder. Sometimes their little investigations business needs the peace and quiet. Sometimes it needs the money.
But when the job turns sour, Flis and Grae might just find themselves in the firing line.
A Karnish River Navigations novel that changes everything.
Why, you ask, is this book 6 in the series, but the ninth to come out? Well, it’s one of those series that can be read in any order, and, it turns out, I’m writing it in any order. I started this when I was a younger writer, and the first book was titled Arlchip Burnout and, naively I thought that was neatly alphabetical, why not carry on? (see Toby Litt’s alphabetical series).
So then, Canal Days and Eastern Foray and so on.
But it turned out that titles came to me from different places in the alphabet. Tombs Under Vail came out long before Eastern Foray. In fact, Fantastic Fiction lists them by publication year (fair enough) rather than alphabetically:
Karnish River Navigations
Arlchip Burnout (2015)
Night Operations (2016)
Canal Days (2016)
Guest House Izarra (2016)
Persephone Quest (2017)
Tombs Under Vaile (2018)
Eastern Foray (2019)
Jackpot Kingdom (2022)
Reading order would be
Arlchip Burnout,
Canal Days,
Eastern Foray,
Guest House Izarra,
Jackpot Kingdom,
Liquid Machine
Night Operations
Persephone Quest
[Rorqual Saitu]
Tombs Under Vaile
[W… X…]
[Y… Z…]
You’ll see those three titles there in parentheses/brackets – [ ] – these three are still to be written. I will be embarking on Rorqual Saitu possibly as soon as next month, so it might even be out later this year.
Then, the challenge I seem to have set for myself of coming up with the WX and YZ titles. And good stories to roll around under those. Humph. I suppose that I do like a good challenge.
A trip north of the border takes Cole Wright into the heart of snowbound Canada. Friendly people, vast distances, tough vehicles, isolation.
When a breakdown looms, Wright finds himself caught in the white, compacted landscape. A road thirty feet wide, hemmed in by the piled up ridges left by snowploughs. And an endless forest that could hide just about anything.
Unfriendly territory. Dangerous places.
A Cole Wright novella that focuses down on a single moment where the slightest error could be his last.
Available now as an ebook, $3.99, and in print $7.99/$10.99 – Link here.
It’s been a big year for my Cole Wright character, from the first short story “Dark Fields“, and the first novel The Arrival, we’ve put out a bunch more novels and stories, and now, the first novella. This has been a labour over the last several years to get these up and running. The sixth novel Zero Kills will be out in December (available for preorder now), and I’m hard at work on the seventh right now, and hoping to have that out around May next year. More on that as the time approaches.
Next year we’ll be putting some of the novels together into box sets – that’ll be two box sets, of books 1 -3 and of books 4-6. We’ll also have a collection of all the short stories, and include Cold Highway in there too. And some bonus content that we’re still tinkering with.
I like to have new book releases out on the 20th of the month, and for October and November, these will be novellas from two of my series. The first novellas in both. My novellas sit around a quarter the length of a novel – say around a hundred pages. I think Amazon labels them in with “90 minute reads” or something.
First up in on October 2oth is “Ortanide Steppers” from my Captain Arlon Stoddard Adventures series. Think deep space adventures with mysteries and puzzles around the galaxy. Technically a “novelette” in SF terms, but boy, keeping track of the names for the different lengths…
Ortanide. A planet with a unique geography, a rich history and a strange political system.
A political system that defies Captain Arlon Stoddard and his crew.
Restrained in a dank cell by the very people he came to help, Arlon faces the choice of violating the charters he works to uphold.
Or certain death.
A Captain Arlon Stoddard novella that pits the crew against possibly their most heinous foe yet.
Priced especially at $2.99 for the ebook, and $6.99 for the paperback. A bargain, right?
Next out on November 20th is “Cold Highway” from my Cole Wright Thrillers series. Pretty standard kind of thriller, adventure, gunplay stuff here. I’ve always liked those frozen highways and figured that might be a fun place to set a story. I was right, at least in writing it. I hope it’s as much fun to read.
A trip north of the border takes Cole Wright into the heart of snowbound Canada. Friendly people, vast distances, tough vehicles, isolation.
When a breakdown looms, Wright finds himself caught in the white, compacted landscape. A road thirty feet wide, hemmed in by the piled up ridges left by snowploughs. And an endless forest that could hide just about anything.
Unfriendly territory. Dangerous places.
A Cole Wright novella that focuses down on a single moment where the slightest error could be his last.
Still reasonably priced at $3.99 for the ebook, and $7.99 for the paperback.
So far all my paperbacks have come through Amazon, but I’m testing this one through Draft 2 Digital as well, in a slightly larger format, and ending up priced at $10.99. We’ll see how that goes.
As with previous months, I’ll have short stories out in the lead up to the releases. “Sea Skimmers”, which is the first Captain Arlon Stoddard short story, and followed by “Cardinals” which is a Cole Wright story with a difference – Lieutenant Ione Anders as the lead character (you’ll remember her from the first Cole Wright novel The Arrival) and Cole himself tagging along as a background character.
Details to come.
Remember you can explore the series from the pages available in the menu at the top of the page on the website here.
Scorpion Bait, book 5 in the Cole Wright series is available now through the regular channels.
$5.99 ebook. $15.99 print, $19.99 hardback
Jerome Miller lies in scorching, gritty sand, staring up out of the rugged ditch. Bleeding and broken. The start of a very bad day, for him. Cole Wright hitches into the town of Gollick, Arizona. Somewhere between Tuscon and Yuma. Looking for a good meal and maybe a bed for the night. Not looking for trouble. Sometimes, though, trouble hides away in those out of the way places. Sometimes trouble just finds him. Sometimes Wright just meets it head on.
More Cole Wright news soon – “Cold Highway” a novella is coming in November, and all things going well, book 6 Zero Kills, coming in December. The book is complete and revised and just in the queue for final copyedit and proofread and then should be up for preorder before “Cold Highway” hits the shelves.
With Scorpion Bait, book 5 of the Cole Wright series on preorder and available from September 20th, it seemed like a good moment to post another Cole Wright short story. “One Little Broken Leg” is the fifth of these, and it was fun to write. While I love writing the novels, I love the stories just as much, but in a different way. It’s fun being concise and looking as just one event that can usually be resolved quickly.
Read the first two chapters below. Keep an eye out on the site here, I’m working on posting a story free to read for a week or two from time to time. The next one should be the first couple of weeks of December.
Check out the Cole Wright Thrillers page for other details and links to the novels and stories.
One Little Broken Leg
Blurb
Sally loves hiking. She knows her way around and knows all the pitfalls and problems. She uses the best equipment.
Caught by surprise, she injures her leg while out alone, forcing her to dig for new strength. To improvise.
When Cole Wright catches up, what he finds makes no sense.
A story of people thrown together in challenging circumstances.
Also available as an ebook and in print, from Amazon and elsewhere.
Chapter One
One little broken leg was never going to slow down Sally. Not out here in the wilds, five miles from the freeway. Two miles from the nearest road.
Sally sat on a black rock, poking up from the mossy, earthy soil all around. An outcrop of granite or gneiss. She’d learned rocks back at NAU. Just a couple of geology courses as a freshman.
None of that had stuck.
Not that that would help her situation right away.
The sky overhead was clear, a brilliant dome of blue. A few scudding, icy wisps to the north east, and a few billowing thunderheads a hundred miles to the south. It was late in the day and the air was cooling. Behind her the range rose slowly, and the sun would dip behind soon.
Then it would get real cold.
Around her, ponderosa and Oregon pines shivered in a light breeze. Their scent was heady and strong. Invigorating. Life-giving.
The rock was nobbly and rough. It poked against her butt, but the nobbles were small enough and even enough that it didn’t hurt. Tiny pieces of it looked like they were ready to break out. Little blocks of the stuff like the tips of miniature french fries.
The fall had happened just beyond the rock, on the uphill side. A trail there that might once have been clear and open, but now was tending to weeds and saplings. Dry in places, boggy in others. Some parts, farther down, back toward Jessie’s car
The Ryeling Park Forest was eighty-nine hundred acres of old growth. It sounded like a lot, but it wasn’t really. A jagged shape, six miles long, and four miles across at its widest.
Abandoned rugged country. Too hard to farm, really. Too beautiful to mill, though the way the lumber companies were getting now, they would happily come in and fell every last tree, plant some saplings and vanish.
Sally’s leg throbbed.
She’d fallen. Distracted by the flight of a raptor. A hawk probably, not an eagle. Too small. Brilliant speckled brown feathers, with a tail that tipped left and right adjusting its flight.
The bird had been gliding along above the clearing around the rock. The bird’s head had turned and its yellow eye had glinted at Sally.
Pulling its wings in, the bird plunged at the ground.
Vanished behind the rock.
Sally had hurried to watch.
Stumbled.
Fallen across part of the rock. Her foot jammed. The rest of her kept going.
The pain in that moment had been explosive.
As if her foot had been ripped off.
It had taken minutes for her breathing to come back to normal.
She’d shucked her backpack and lay there on the trail. Staring at the sky. Letting her leg throb.
Calculating how long before dark. Calculating whether she could hobble back before dark. Calculating if she could even drive the car.
Jessie’s car was a old Ford Fusion. A little beat up, with wheel bearings the squeaked sometimes.
It wouldn’t drive itself.
If only she had a Tesla, ha, ha.
But, it was kind of Jessie to let her use it like this. In exchange for a little childcare. Sally would do that for free.
Her phone had been in her back pocket. In the fall, the screen had smashed. The phone was still working, but the display was flickery and fragmented. And wouldn’t respond to her taps.
she couldn’t make a call. Couldn’t text.
So now here she was, sitting on top of a rock, miles from anywhere with her leg throbbing. No phone. No one around.
Still the view was nice.
She dragged her pack up after her and unzipped the top flap. It was a decent overnight pack. Sixty-five liter capacity. She had a quick coffin tent and a good sleeping bag. All middle of the range—best she could afford—but they did the job.
Maybe she would have to camp out for the night. She would have to drag herself back along the trail a ways. Just before the small clearing around the rock outcrop, she’d spotted a kind of flat area that would have enough space for the tent.
She could wait out the night and hobble on back to her car come morning.
When she’d bought the pack, at Wilbur and Son, the sales assistant had suggested an emergency locator. A little thing like a cross between a flashlight and a GPS. It had a secret button that sent a signal to the satellites. A kind of automated S.O.S.
She’d balked, though at the price. Not that it wouldn’t be three hundred dollars well spent, just that she didn’t really have three hundred dollars to spare.
She’d hiked plenty, with no problems. She was young and fit.
Now, though, maybe she should have had that locator.
From the zipped pouch, she pulled out a baggie with trail mix. Nuts and seeds and sultanas, with a smattering of chocolate chips and yoghurt balls. Quite delicious.
Buried below, she had a full dried meal—stroganoff—and a little camp cooker to boil it in. She would have to use her drinking water, since she wasn’t going to be collecting water from a stream anytime soon.
If she could even get the cooker set up.
Fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, girl.
She took a mouthful of the mix. It was yum. And cheering.
From farther up the trail came a sound. Someone running?
Sally sat up straighter. Looked around.
Not from up the trail. From down. Back toward the small carpark.
Her heart pounded.
Fifteen yards away, someone burst from the trees.
A man.
Sally waved. Shouted.
“Hey,” she said. “Little help.”
He came to a stop.
Stared at her.
He had thick, lank black hair and three days of stubble.
He stared at her with piercing eyes.
“I fell,” she said. “I need…”
She trailed off.
He was just staring.
He was wearing jeans. Dirty jeans. Tan work boots. Muddy.
A plaid shirt over a white tee shirt.
No backpack.
No water bottle.
He was carrying just one thing.
A little black pistol.
Chapter Two
Cole Wright stepped from the passenger side of Lieutenant Ione Anders’s Tahoe. Police issue SUV with the full package. Bars on the front, lights on the top, cage in the back. Painted black and white, with the Spokane Police Department decals.
Nothing subtle about it at all.
The vehicle was starting to get a bit worn and tired. Chips in the paint and wear on the seat vinyl. A corner of the dash where the peg had failed and the plastic was bending up against the windshield glass.
“Let me read this,” Lieutenant Ione Anders said from the driver’s seat. She was looking at the vehicle’s police-connected laptop display.
“Happy to wait here,” Wright said.
They’d parked in a small parking lot out of town. In the hills. Pines stood all around, making the roadway into a canyon and sending the sweet drifting smell of pine and earth. From across the other side of the road, beyond the tinkling stream it followed, came the chirruping of a pair of hidden birds. Fighting, perhaps, over some tidbit.
A sign at the far end of the lot identified the place as Ryeling Park Forest with some logos for the Department of Wildlife and Washington Parks.
A map in the top right corner, with marked trails, and a list below showing the walking times. Camping prohibited. Fires prohibited. Dogs banned.
“Go look at those other vehicles,” Ione said, stepping out of the vehicle. “Got another call about a domestic shooting south of here. Suspect left in a Dodge pickup. Got one right there.”
“And this guy?” Wright said.
“Let me go talk to him first,”
“Go ahead. I’m enjoying a moment with the peace of nature.”
She made a face at him and headed toward the other vehicles.
There were three. An old Ford sedan, and even older Dodge pickup, real beat-up, and a near new BMW. It was the BMW she was heading for. A white-haired gentleman well into his seventies stood at the right front fender.
Strictly speaking, Wright shouldn’t really even be here. Not in her vehicle. Retired cop, fraternizing with a younger, off-duty cop.
He was happy to help, always. He enjoyed their time together, but there would always be a tension.
He’d quit the force, in Seattle. Disillusioned and jaded. She, on the other hand, was on the ascendant here in Spokane. A career. An energy. Colleagues who supported her.
Still, he had to remind himself to enjoy the moment. Live in the moment.
Later, after this little diversion, they could grab dinner at Denny’s or maybe that little Mongolian barbeque he’d spotted just off downtown. They could head back to his little leased apartment and see what happened.
“Wright,” she said. “Come listen.”
From across the road, one of the squabbling birds shot out of the trees. I flew like a bullet. Dead straight. Directly above Wright’s head. Vanished into the trees on the park side.
The other bird appeared a fraction of a second later. Followed the same trajectory.
Wright smiled to himself. Wildlife was always on its own schedule. Didn’t care a whit about people.
Wright went around the Tahoe and across a few empty slots to the Beemer. Shiny and well-kept. Dark blue. Two-seater. Little shark gills on the fender just ahead of the door.
“Listen to this,” Anders said.
“It don’t change the more times I tell it,” the man said. He sounded like he was from down south somewhere. He was wearing black chinos and a button shirt. A bolo tie with a picture of steer horns on the clasp.
“No,” Wright said, “But I might hear something different.”
The man looked Wright up and down. Frowned.
Anders was in uniform—and she looked great in it—but Wright was just in faded jeans, work boots and a tee shirt, with a black jacket over.
“Detective?” the man said.
“Retired,” Wright said. He’d been a regular beat cop, but some days it had felt like he knew more than the detectives.
“Heck, look at you? You’re all of twenty years old, and retired. I’m seventy-five and I have no plans to retire.”
Wright was well into his thirties, but there was no need to correct the man.
“What did you see?” Wright said.
“Guy there comes screaming around the corner from down Abernathy way.” The man pointed to a curve in the road where Wright and Anders would have found themselves if they’d continued on.
“Must’ve been doing eighty,” the man said. “His tire blew. You can see it there. Strips of it.”
Wright looked. Sure enough, black strips from a ruined tire. And now that he looked more closely, he could see that the pickup was parked at a poor angle. And that it was down at the front left, with the back right corner of the tray higher. Lifted on the rear suspension.
“The whole tire stripped off?” Anders said.
“Yes ma’am. You look at these two tires on the near side, you can see they’re old and bald. Retreads, at best. Shouldn’t be on the road, let alone doing eighty up in here in the hills. You see how narrow these roads can get?”
“I saw.”
“He was lucky to make it into the lot here. Lucky he didn’t total my car.”
“Then what happened?” Wright said. He walked around the rear end of the Beemer. Out on the road there were black skid marks. Some gouges in the tarmac that looked fresh.
Easy to picture the tire blowing. Shredding. The driver fighting for control. Automatically slamming on the brakes. Shuddering along, barely making it into the lot.
The front bumper was actually right up against the low log fence that separated the parking lot from a grassy berm, and the start of the forest.
To the right of the pickup was a gap in the fence, with a sign.
Black Rock Loop. Allow 6 hours.
Wright read the pickup’s plate number and called it out to Anders.
“That’s the one,” she said.
Wright turned. Looked up into the trail. It was bright for a ways, but soon the thickness of forest got the better of the sun and it turned into a dark tunnel.
“Then he got out,” the man with the Beemer said.
“Where is he now,” Anders said.
“Took off into the woods.”
“This way?” Wright said, pointing up Black Rock Trail.
“Yep. Guess he didn’t want his head blown off.”
“Excuse me,” Anders said.
“Well, he tried to carjack me. That’s why I called.”
“Carjack you?” Wright said.
“Yes.”
A squirrel ran from the woods and through the grass. Climbed onto one of the uprights on the log fence. The squirrel’s tail twitched. Black eyes stared at Wright.
“He tried to carjack you,” Anders said. “But instead ran into the woods?”
“Yes.”
“Why did he run into the woods?” Wright said.
“Well, he got out of the junk heap there and brandished a gun.”
Wright saw Anders stiffen right away.
“What kind of gun?” Wright said.
“Glock 18.”
“That’s very specific.”
The man shrugged. “I know a little about guns.”
“So he had a gun,” Anders said.
“Yes. Told me to give him my keys. I declined.”
“And so he ran into the woods.”
Wright could see where this was going.
“He did,” the man said.
“What kind of gun do you have?” Wright said.
The man smiled. “Let me show you.”
The full story is available in ebook and as a paperback from the usual channels. ebook $2.99, print $5.99
Book 5, Scorpion Baitis available for preorder now. Full release on September 20th
Blurb:
Jerome Miller lies in scorching, gritty sand, staring up out of the rugged ditch.
Bleeding and broken.
The start of a very bad day, for him.
Cole Wright hitches into the town of Gollick, Arizona. Somewhere between Tuscon and Yuma. Looking for a good meal and maybe a bed for the night. Not looking for trouble. Sometimes, though, trouble hides away in those out of the way places. Sometimes trouble just finds him.
I have a new standalone novelette out now – “Sail Man“.
_
Alice Briggs has a plan. Send a deep space probe farther out than any before.
She knows how to do it, but faces blocks at every turn. When she meets Tink and Caroline—the sail builders—they make her big ideas seem small.
In a good way. A story of pioneering, relationships, and an AI who might just get her own way.
I have a few of these hard sci-fi novelettes out now – Problem Landing, Load-Bearing Member, Eyes to the Height, so planning to put together another collection later in the year, time allowing.
With the fourth Cole Wright novel, Slow Burn, coming out on July 20th, we once again put up a Cole Wright short story, free to read here on the website for a week or so. The first couple of chapters remain, and the story is now available from the usual locations as both an ebook and in print. $2.99/$5.99
Marc adjusted the time on his watch. It was an old Asterion, and amazingly still fairly reliable after all these years. He pulled the winder out two notches, enjoying the little clicks it made as the gears inside moved from the date setting to the hands setting.
So much more satisfying than those electronic things that barely made a sound and never lost a moment.
He wound it back, from 11.07 to 10.06. It was kind of satisfying. That sense of gaining a whole hour in the day. Plus the minute which the Asterion had gained over the last week or so.
Marc double-checked the time against the clock just inside the store, and clicked the winder back into place.
He was standing outdoors, at a window, looking into the store. They sold all kinds of sharp-looking clothing, men’s on the left and women’s on the right. Nothing tailored, probably all shipped from sweatshops in Asia, but it was crisp and tidy, with interesting trim.
Exercise leggings with panels down the legs, almost like marching band trousers. Tops with straps that looked as if they could barely hold the rest up. The mannikins seemed as if they had originally been made at regular human size, but then ground and shaved back until the waists were somewhere under ten inches. Perhaps that helped to sell clothing.
Sonia was in there somewhere. Looking for something comfortable. Good luck, frankly. While, at forty, she was still slim and fit, it didn’t look like anything in there would be comfortable.
She’d left him in charge of getting lunch while she shopped. Sending him to the hole-in-the wall burger joint three stores on from the store.
Behind him, traffic moved. Easing through the lights, engines humming and tires hissing against the damp pavement. They’d just missed a shower when they’d gotten parked and ready for the expedition.
So here he was, with the two most delicious smelling burgers ever, waiting for her. The burgers were fat and stuffed, held inside cardboard boxes that boasted “Best Burgers in Spokane”, and “Recycled Card. Please dispose of with care.” Clutched in a tough brown paper bag with a smaller bag with fries and sachets.
He peered into the store again. No sign of her.
Spokane wasn’t that big of a place. Not really. It was Washington’s state capital, but Seattle was much bigger. But when you were out of Slickton, Wyoming, everywhere seemed big. Caspar seemed big.
They’d flown from Caspar to Seattle, via San Francisco. Stayed at an airport hotel and bundled themselves on this morning to Spokane.
Exhausting.
Thankfully, their daughter Millie wasn’t going to get herself married too often. This was the first, and hopefully the last. But who knew in times like this.
One of Millie’s bridesmaids was on husband three already, and, from what Millie had mentioned, it wasn’t going well.
A bus chugged by and came to a stop thirty yards away. A couple got off and strolled away. An older gentleman climbed aboard.
Across the next intersection, a huge, old stone edifice stood. Bank of America. Beside it, a newer, glassy building with banners announcing “Sale Prices” and “Bargains” and “Permanently Reduced”.
Could he live here?
Millie could, that was clear. She’d studied well and landed herself a job as a designer with Cobbert Ross, which was apparently one of the bigger interior decorating firms in Washington.
The dollar amount they were paying her made Marc’s eyes water. Fresh out of college and they’re just handing her cash in wheelbarrows.
Pleased for her of course.
Pleased about Davin, her fiancé. A few years older, but then who was Marc to point that out?
The bus pulled away, puffing out a cloud of thick black smoke. Spokane’s plans for becoming a green city apparently were still underway.
Another vehicle pulled up. A low-slung black Cadillac. Paint buffed to a brilliant shine. Chrome just about everywhere. Windows tinted.
The engine sounded like a straight eight, as if in the customizing they’d dropped something else in there. Something a little souped-up to give the vehicle a little extra oomph.
Marc smiled to himself. Cities, huh.
The Cadillac’s back door opened and a slim man got out. He wore jeans, a leather vest over a black tee shirt and black cowboy boots. Kind of thing they sold down at Lee Taubert’s in Caspar.
Marc had a pair himself.
Marc stepped aside. There were few people on the sidewalk. A businesswoman striding along. A mom and dad with a kid swinging between them. A single man with thick hair and big shoulders.
But the guy from the Cadillac headed for Marc.
Marc took another step back.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“In the car,” the guy said.
“Excuse me?”
“Now!”
Marc frowned. Big city or not, people still had manners.
He glanced into the store. Sonia was at the register. Just taking a bag from the counter.
So she’d made some purchases.
The mom and dad with the kid sidled around Marc and the guy from the Cadillac. The businesswoman was well gone.
“In the car?” Marc said. Surely he’d heard wrong.
“That’s what I said. Quit stalling. Get in.”
“But why?” His voice must have gone up a few tones. Nervous.
“You know why. Get in now. Or I will put you in.”
Marc bent a little to see inside.
A woman sitting across the other side of the back seat. Burlier than the guy.
A driver. Staring back at him. Maybe someone else in the front passenger seat.
Marc looked at the store again. Sonia was heading for the door.
“I’m not getting in there with you,” Marc said. He might be a naive bumpkin, but he wasn’t an idiot.
“The hard way, then,” the guy said, and grabbed Marc’s elbow.
The burgers splattered on the pavement.
Chapter Two
Cole Wright watched along the sidewalk as he walked. People out and about. The air was crisp and the traffic was light.
It was good to be back in Spokane. Starting to feel like this might just be a good fit for him.
Like a pair of old shoes you found in the back of your closet. You put them on and they felt just right.
Little stores and coffee carts. Old sidewalks and plenty of trees. The river, the power plant, the bridges.
Right at home.
Or maybe it was just that he couldn’t really leave Washington behind. You can take the cop out of the state, but you can’t take the state out of the cop?
Nah. That was terrible.
But maybe there was a security in staying closer to Seattle. Easy to talk with Turzin and some of the other guys.
And then, there was Ione Anders.
Based right here in Spokane.
That was better than half the attraction of the place right there. Maybe even well into the nineties in terms of percentage.
Just ahead of him a mother and father had their daughter between them. Somewhere between two and three. Running along on little legs and swinging up.
Wright admired parents, that was for sure. Endlessly patient.
Wright sidestepped, balancing his takeout coffee, as a woman in a business suit strode near him. Hair tied up and manner completely oblivious to the world.
A bus had pulled away, and traffic was coming through from the cross street.
A guy holding a paper sack peered into the window of a women’s clothing store. Seer and Lane. Nice how the stores in the city, at the edges of downtown, could still compete, what with Target and Wal-Mart and online shopping seemingly corralling every dollar.
A black Caddy pulled up and a guy got out of the back door. Jeans, leather vest and a black shirt. Black boots on his feet. He went to the man who’d just been looking in the window.
Spoke to him.
The man seemed startled.
Wright kept walking. Ten yards off.
The startled man was wearing black chinos and black dress shoes. A tan jacket on top. He seemed even more startled.
The mom and dad and kid went by. The kid stared at the guy in the vest.
He was talking. The man in the tan jacket said something. The guy in the vest gestured at the Caddy.
It was shiny. Black, with plenty of trim. Modified. Riding low.
Wright was used to that kind of thing from back in Seattle, but here in Spokane, it seemed out of place. Too flashy.
He was just five yards off now.
The man looked back into the store.
The guy in the vest grabbed his elbow.
The paper sack fell to the sidewalk. Landed with a splat.
The guy hustled the man into the Caddy’s back seat.
Wright sped up.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the excerpt from “The Handler”.
Full story available for $2.99, ebook, and $5.99 in print – Universal Book Link.
Check out the other Cole Wright novels and stories on the webpage here, and come back at the start of September for another free to read Cole Wright story.
Cheers
Sean
Check out Slow Burn, the next Cole Wright thriller – out on July 20th
Cole Wright heads for Spokane. A simple trip. Back roads. Quiet towns.
But when one of those quiet towns proves to be anything but, Wright finds himself unable to stand aside.
Preorder available from the usual places. ebook $5.99, (and print soon, $16.99)
And Scorpion Bait, the fifth Cole Wright novel – available on preorder with release on September 20th.
Jerome Miller lies in scorching, gritty sand, staring up out of the rugged ditch. Bleeding and broken. The start of a very bad day, for him. Cole Wright hitches into the town of Gollick, Arizona. Somewhere between Tuscon and Yuma. Looking for a good meal and maybe a bed for the night. Not looking for trouble. Sometimes, though, trouble hides away in those out of the way places. Sometimes trouble just finds him. Sometimes Wright just meets it head on.
Full list of contents here – cool to see that I’m sharing that with another New Zealander – Melanie Harding-Shaw. Kind of humbled to be there alongside her – Mel is one of the shining lights of the NZ Speculative Fiction Scene..
My Aurealis Award Finalist novella from Analog last year, “Problem Landing” is now also available as a standalone in print and as an ebook. Universal Book Link here.
Toughing out life on Mars, Ciananti Burrows finds herself constantly repairing failing equipment and pushing research aside. But when new arrivals declare an issue with their landing vessel, all those learned repair skills might come in handy.
They might even save some lives.
For some reason I seem to give my protagonists names beginning with C – Ciananti, Cody, Cole Wright.
July will see the release of Cole Wright book 4, Slow Burn, available for pre-order now – UBL. By way of promotion, again, we’ll have a short story – “The Handler” available to read free here on the website from the start of July (the 4th), then available as a standalone book and in print.
The Handler –
The mugging happens so fast that Marc barely has time to react.
For Marc and Sonia, a trip to Spokane means visiting family, a little shopping and some eating out. Not having someone accost them in the street.
When Cole Wright happens by, things might just take a different turn.
In other Cole Wright news, happily the work is complete on book 5, Scorpion Bait and it’s heading into preorder for September 20th. And, yes, there will be another short story free to read in the lead up from around the start of that month.
I’m having fun writing the Cole Wright short stories too, so will likely put out a collection of the five, plus a couple of extras in October or November. If I can ever figure out how to set up a mail list, I’ll be giving away another story for sign ups.
Originally published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, March/April 2021 issue, my novella “Problem Landing” is out now as an ebook, and in print. The piece was a finalist. in the 2021 Aurealis Awards Best Science Fiction Novella category. The Award went to Samantha Murray for “Preserved in Amber” originally in Clarkesworld #178.
Toughing out life on Mars, Ciananti Burrows finds herself constantly repairing failing equipment and pushing research aside. But when new arrivals declare an issue with their landing vessel, all those learned repair skills might come in handy.
In other news, my story “Single Point Failure” will appear in Analog’sJuly/August issue. A tiny flaw in a station on Io’s surface might just lead to cascading failure. Marli has to think fast and act faster.
In other, other news, the copy-edits on the Cole Wright Thriller Scorpion Bait are almost done. But we’re still doing a switch, and putting it out September, with Slow Burn preceding it July. Planning to have the preorder for Slow Burn ready to go in the first week of June.
Dead Ringers, book 9 in my Captain Arlon Stoddard series is available on pre order with an April 20th release – universal book link here
Liquid Machine – blurb
A trip north of the border takes Cole Wright into the heart of snowbound Canada. Friendly people, vast distances, tough vehicles, isolation.
Ortanide. A planet with a unique geography, a rich history and a strange political system.
A trip north of the border takes Cole Wright into the heart of snowbound Canada. Friendly people, vast distances, tough vehicles, isolation.
Blurb
Cole Wright heads for Spokane. A simple trip. Back roads. Quiet towns.
Jerome Miller lies in scorching, gritty sand, staring up out of the rugged ditch. Bleeding and broken. The start of a very bad day, for him. Cole Wright hitches into the town of Gollick, Arizona. Somewhere between Tuscon and Yuma. Looking for a good meal and maybe a bed for the night. Not looking for trouble. Sometimes, though, trouble hides away in those out of the way places. Sometimes trouble just finds him. Sometimes Wright just meets it head on.
My Aurealis Award Finalist novella from Analog last year, “Problem Landing” is now also available as a standalone in print and as an ebook. 
Originally published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, March/April 2021 issue, my novella “Problem Landing” is out now as an ebook, and in print. The piece was a finalist. in the 
Ciananti Burrows finds herself constantly repairing failing equipment and pushing research aside. But when new arrivals declare an issue with their landing vessel, all those learned repair skills might come in handy.