Today I'm introducing a new blog, Truth And Fiction, this one to keep you up with my writing and publishing progress. I hope you'll follow me here and tell your friends and other readers about this blog - and me.

I'm also excited to announce this bit of news:

While novellas - the short versions of novels - are growing in popularity these days, the big publishing houses are largely leaving them to the indies. So I'm going that route with my next novella, Collateral Damage.

It'll be out very soon, first as an e-book.While e-books are on the ascendant, paper is still the most popular reading format, so I hope to put the proceeds from this into either a print version ofCollateral Damage, or a print version of my last novella, The Blue Bicycle. I hope you'll help me with this project, and enjoy some of my best writing in the bargain.

Collateral Damage is inspired by both Poe and de Maupassant, and I think you'll find it a compelling read. It's a first-person account of a mentally troubled writer who, in grappling with reality, puts to rest the traumas of his life. Below the cover logo, you'll find a taste from Chapter One.

Also to the right of this post on the new blog, notice the iTunes iMix I've put together as part of a publicity package for a previous novel, A Place of Belonging, which has been completely re-written. I hope to have that one out again early in 2011.

“John!”

I lean back and rub my eyes.

“John, are you up there?”

She knows I am, so I close out the word processing file I’ve been staring at and put my computer to sleep. Six steps and I’m to my grimy attic window. A stray Post-it has somehow attached itself to one of my house shoes. I peel it off and push the window up. Ozone-fresh air from the day’s cold front invades the attic’s musty smell.

She looks up, but she doesn’t give me her usual smile and wave. She’s so beautiful. The late afternoon wind crossing Lake Lanier overruns our thirty acres of pines and poplars and then moves on, as if it had hardly noticed her. Amazing. Coils of frizzy red hair bounce about her face. It’s as if the ringlets are alive, as if they’re about to fly away, to the lake’s far side, to soar with the hawks that keep calling from high above the cliffs there. If I weren’t so taken with her, I’d dash through the woods to the water’s edge and climb up, to my favorite ledge, and watch those dark birds carve majestic arcs in the sky.

She’s standing beneath a dogwood, pawing at the grass with one foot, hips cocked to a provocative pose. Her arms, her face – they’ve lost their usual milky, dogwood-bloom hue. They’re more the ruddy color the wind has brought to her, the flush she says she hates and works so hard to cover up. She hugs her frail shoulders and turns sideways, trying to reduce exposure. So exquisite, even with the T-shirt, jeans, and sandals she changed into after work. Janet Fromme. Hard to believe such a beauty could be the managing editor of Gainesville’s Times-Herald.

“John,” she cries out, “I can’t find him!”

Oh. The corners of her lips have turned down. The blue eyes that usually glisten with gaiety are now ominous slits. Maybe it’s the growing shadows that have suddenly given her that alien appearance.

I lick my lips, clear my throat. “Can’t find whom?”

She punches dainty fists into her hips' curves and waggles her shoulders. Her voice rises, strained and hard. “Ted, John. It’s Ted.”