I just signed a multi-book contract with Coffeetown Press to bring out The California Quartet and Gabriela and the Widow. All five novels should be available by December 2012.
The first release will be The Deification. Sounds like the Rapture, but it’s the first book of The California Quartet. We’re looking at a December 1 release.
The Deification tells the story of Eddie Iturbi, a young car-thief obsessed with the dark magic of Beat culture in 21st Century San Francisco. Taking a trip to the hazy Underworld of poetry gods where rats eat the ones who fail, Eddie links up with living legend Leo who sees in him a disciple worthy of continuing the Beat tradition. But first, Eddie has to survive the Buzzard Cult where a mysterious mentor reveals the discipline of blood and words….
Gabriela and the Widow is the story of a 19 year old Mexican immigrant who takes care of a 92 year old widow in a mysterious and mythical California. Here’s the opening–
The year the war ended, Gabriela led her sick Mother out of Tepeñixtlahuaca. The bones of the villagers still had meat on them then and the hearths still had embers in them but the retreating soldiers had chased the skinny dogs away and burned the houses. Scattered in the jungle the bodies of young women—always the first to pay—lay left to rot. The young men all were either dead or had become soldiers and had, in their own time, committed atrocities…