DEMONIC Available Now!

Hey, Demonic is available a couple of days sooner than I’d anticipated! When I clicked “Publish” on the paperback edition around midnight last night, I figured it would be up around Tuesday, but you can get it NOW NOW NOW!!!

Available in Kindle and paperback editions!

January 21

My team of beta readers (Tod Clark, Donna Fitzpatrick, Jamie La Chance, Jim Morey, Bridgett Nelson, and Paul Synuria II) got their Demonic feedback to me, and so the final version of the book is done! I was hoping for some embarrassing blunders I could report back for your entertainment, but they were standard-issue mistakes.

It’s now off to Lynne Hansen for formatting. So the book should be ready to go next week!

Here’s the (tentative) back cover copy:

From the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Pressure and Autumn Bleeds Into Winter, comes a new novel of unrelenting terror.

Corey is falling in love with his co-worker Quinn. This is a problem. Not only because Quinn is married, but because her husband is a serial killer known as the Toledo Trasher, who has been forcing her to participate in his savage crimes. 

With nothing but Quinn’s best interests in mind, Corey shows up at their home with a gun in his pocket and a knife in his hand.

Unfortunately, there are some very dark forces at work, and Corey makes Quinn’s situation worse than he could have ever imagined. And now things are about to get really, really bloody…

With his trademark frenetic pacing and pitch-black humor, Demonic is Jeff Strand at his devilish best. 

January 17

Here’s Lynne Hansen’s cover for my new novel, Demonic. The book should be out…well, not any day now, but within a couple of weeks, I’d guess. And it’s cray!

January 15

Yesterday was my beginning-to-end proofread of the new novel, which then went on to my crack team of test readers. I didn’t find that many embarrassing errors. Oh, there were embarrassing errors, mostly of the “character injuries that I simply forgot about” but they’d been caught already and just needed to be fixed. But I didn’t find many NEW embarrassing errors.

I’ll probably share the title, cover and book description on Tuesday.

January 12 (Part II)

And….the new book is finished!

The next step is to do a beginning-to-end read, tightening things up and searching for continuity errors. (I edit as I go, so this isn’t one of those “just get it done and worry about fixing everything later” rough drafts.) Then it’s off to the crack team of proofreaders.

Because this will be self-published, you won’t have to wait very long to read it…

January 12 (Part I)

Yesterday’s goal was not to finish my new novel, but to reach a point where it was unthinkable that I wouldn’t finish it today. I stayed up until 3:00 AM, like a college student frantically finishing up a term paper, and got there. The book should be done well before lunchtime. And then I’m taking a long-ass nap.

January 8

With my last update, I said that the new book should be done “in about a week” and that’s still the case. I’m guessing four to five days until it reaches its dramatic conclusion.

Meanwhile, I now owe six short stories so far in 2023. Fortunately, most of the deadlines are spaced apart: January 20, March 31, April 1, June 30, August 1, September 30. Of course, not only are the March 31/April 1 deadlines one day apart, but Borderlands Boot Camp is March 29-31, and it’s going to require a lot of prep time on my part…so, yeah, I’ll be a bit busy at the end of March.

(Or I could start much sooner. We’ll see how that works out.)

Registration for Borderlands Boot Camp (an intensive writing workshop) is open until January 31. The other instructors are Brian Keene, Mary San Giovanni, Norman Prentiss, Maurice Broaddus, and John Urbancik. More details HERE.

January 5

Just a quick blog post before my appearance on The New Panic Room Radio Show (https://www.blogtalkradio.com/thenewpanicroom/2023/01/06/the-new-panic-room-episode-296).

The new novel is zipping along nicely. Should be done in about a week! It has a finished cover, which also means it has a title, but I’m going to save that until I type “The End.”

I don’t have much else to report, because I’ve been spending all day, every day, working on the novel!