Guest Post from Dana Stabenow

 

Join me Saturday, November 20th at 2pm at the Poisoned Pen, where I will be holding Archer Mayor’ s coat as he signs his new Joe Gunther novel, Red Herring.

The twenty-first Joe Gunther novel takes the Vermont Bureau of Investigation commander into a series of deaths that appear less unrelated and more like murder with each new body. In the meantime, Joe’ s ex is running for governor, and his new girlfriend may have some issues with that. The two storylines intersect before the last page, and that’ s all I’ m saying because I don’t want to ruin it for you.


I’ m ashamed to say that Red Herring is my first Joe Gunther novel. It shouldn’t have been, because it appears that Alaska and Vermont were separated at birth:

By now, late morning, the sky was bright blue, ice-cold, and the frozen world below it so white, it pained the eye...Christmas wasn’t for two months yet, and no one Joe knew was prepared for ten inches of snow on the ground.

Right away, I’ m home, whether I want to be or not. There’ s a reason Archer and I come to Phoenix to sign our books.

Come on down and we can get Archer to tell us not quite all about it, and about his adventures as a death investigator for the Vermont State Medical Examiner’ s office, as a deputy for the Windham County Sheriff’ s Department, and as a volunteer for his local Fire Department and EMT squad. I personally want to know where he found T.H. White’ s The Book of Merlyn and how he got it into print, specifically so I could read it. I mean, I’ve never met the man, why was he being so nice to me?

While I’ m loitering in the background, I may drop a few bon mots about the next Kate Shugak novel, Though Not Dead, (available for pre-order here) which comes out on February 1st. The eighteenth Kate Shugak novel begins three days after -- and ninety years before -- the events of the previous novel, A Night Too Dark. This is the book where I thought I was getting Chopper Jim off stage for a while so Kate could get on with her own story. Then, to my considerable surprise, Jim starts having a life of his own, to which of course attention had to be paid, and I wound up with a three-plot line narrative instead of two.

If there is one imperative in the writer’ s life, it is that when the muse knocks, you must get up and answer the door. Bet Archer says the same.

-Dana

To order a signed copy of RED HERRING by Archer Mayor click here, or email your order to sales@poisonedpen.com. 

Dana's first novel A COLD DAY FOR MURDER will be re-released, in hardcover, from The Poisoned Pen Press on February 1st 2011 the same day as the launch of Though Not Dead. The launch party will be at The Poisoned Pen as well as live on the internet, as will Dana's interview with Archer, so tune in!