My friend Jill Blocker and I had our first Constellate Publishing meeting in a few weeks this morning. We’ve been busy with Indiana book talks and signings in support of our new novels HAPPILY AFTER EVER and SEVEN ANGELS, and then Jill went on to book events in her longtime town of Seattle as well as New York City and her home base in Zurich.
Today we had our usual Monday morning meeting and talked about what we’ve got on our Constellate agenda for the next few months.
I won’t get into specifics as to titles and authors, but we’ll be:
Editing a manuscript that’s in our 2027 release schedule.
Choosing at least one more MS to edit, publish and market from among submissions to us.
Planning e-book editions of our books and others.
And working toward publication of my novel GHOST SHOW, which I’ve written about here recently.
Jill’s next project is one that absolutely tickles me because it’s so perfect for her. I can’t wait until she tells you about it.
And I’ve got two novels to write, including what I hope will be a surprising spin on SEVEN ANGELS.
I wrote GHOST SHOW between writing SEVEN ANGELS and THAT OCTOBER.
I’ve always described it as “Rich Man, Poor Man,” but there’s no rich men. It’s VERY loosely based on the post-war years, when my mother’s family had moved to Muncie, Indiana (in the novel from Seven Angels, in real life, from Jamestown, Tennessee) to find work and a life.
The characters, several siblings from the Anderson family, work, play and try to survive and find their consciousness raised in the process.
The novel has gangsters, traveling Romani, infidelity, untimely death, lesbian college professors, a Bela Lugosi-type washed-up movie star, a traveling “ghost show,” a haunted theater with a real ghost named Milo and the President of the United States, Harry Truman, who visited Muncie that year as part of his election campaign.
But know this: Truman’s role is the most tearjerking of the entire book.
We’re going to publish it through Constellate Publishing in the coming months.
Photo above is by my friend John Disher and it’s a photo of the real Rivoli Theater, taken from just below its dome, in the theater’s final days before demolition in the 1980s.
GHOST SHOW is a big book. If you’re looking for a long and absorbing read, this will be it.
My longtime friend and fellow author Jill Blocker and I have been all over the Internet lately, talking about our new novels – HAPPILY AFTER EVER for Jill and SEVEN ANGELS for me – and we had the idea of interviewing each other and asking a few questions that we haven’t really addressed in the many articles, interviews and podcasts so far.
In the process, we worked out all the problems in the universe.
You believe that, right?
We did talk about our early writing days, what our journalism backgrounds brought to our writing and more.
For example, Jill on journalism:
I wish journalists were valued more in our society. Some of the most brilliant people I know are journalists -including some of the characters in the book. Journalists have the ability to sit down and understand important, complex issues and communicate them to the masses. Journalism definitely affects my writing style. I like short sentences and punchy lines, but more-so, I think accuracy and reliability in storytelling is one of our most important roles as writers. No one needs Fake News… real life is unbelievable enough.
And my writing routine:
My routine is to not have a routine, at least not in hours. I write almost every day, but the hours of when I write vary in that I work around other things, like taking care of our cats, laundry and exercise or appointments or interviews. Some days I don’t write fiction but I’m writing articles for sites like CrimeReads. One thing I almost never do is write in the evening, because I’m brain-fried by that point.
Here’s a link to the full interview, which is on the Constellate Creatives/Constellate Publishing site. While you’re there, if you have a book inside you or your computer that’s waiting to get out, consider clicking a button for more information about Constellate.
Muncie, Indiana – my hometown – has kept some pretty wild secrets over the years, including generations of crime and corruption that’s sent mayors and other prominent people off to jail.
It’s also been the scene of wild pop culture events. Remember Steven Spielberg’s classic “Close Encounters of the Third Kind?” The first half of the movie, where aliens abduct the little boy and Richard Dreyfus builds a mountain in his family room, is set in Muncie.
So with my friend and fellow author Jill Blocker and I planning on book talks and signings July 14 and 15, we’re planning something else … a little hang with the authors.
I’m not sure if you heard or not, but I’ve got a new crime novel, SEVEN ANGELS, out and my longtime friend Jill Blocker has a new novel out, HAPPILY AFTER EVER.
You know I’m kidding, because if you’ve seen me on social media for the past several months, you know these things.
But if you’re in Indiana – both of us are from the Hoosier state – and want to come see us, you can.
Here’s a quick rundown of where both of us will be. Jill will also have events in Seattle, New York City and Zurich after our Hoosier trip. (I’ll link to the Constellate Publishing events page below.)
Anyway:
Authors Roysdon, Blocker plan book talks, signings
Two authors with Muncie, Indiana, ties are releasing new novels and planning on talks and signings in Muncie in July.
Keith Roysdon and Jill Blocker will be speaking and signing books at events July 14 and 15 in Muncie.
The two will be talking about “Seven Angels,” Roysdon’s latest novel, and “Happily After Ever,” Blocker’s new novel.
They’ll be speaking and signing books:
Tuesday, July 14, 6-8 p.m., at the E.B. and Bertha C. Ball Center, 400 W. Minnetrista Blvd., Muncie. The talk is free and open to the public, but the Ball Center requests advance registration to ensure plenty of seating and refreshments.
Earlier Tuesday, at 3 p.m., they’ll be at Ink Drinkers Anonymous Bookstore, 108 S. Walnut Street.
Wednesday, July 15, 6:30 p.m. at Carnegie Library, 301 E. Jackson Street.
Earlier Wednesday, at 3 p.m., they’ll be at Aw Yeah Comics, 119 E. Charles Street.
Also earlier Wednesday, July 15, at noon, they’ll be at the Orchard Shop at Minnetrista, 311 W. St. Joseph St.
Blocker, a native Hoosier, is a Ball State University graduate who worked at The Star Press while she was attending the university. A resident of Switzerland, Blocker is the author of “What Was Beautiful and Good,” an epic but personal account of love and the beginnings of the Dada art movement in the early days of World War I, and her new novel, “Happily After Ever,” the story of a young writer from America who finds love, disappointment and renewed hope as a citizen of the world.
Blocker and her sister are principals of Constellate Creatives, a multi-faceted international company that publishes books (through its Constellate Publishing division) and provides editorial and marketing services for a variety of books, authors and clients. Constellate’s announcement of its 2026 slate of books was widely publicized earlier this year. Constellate also has a studio for recording audiobooks or podcasts.
Roysdon, a resident of Tennessee, was a reporter and editor for 40 years for The Star Press (and its predecessors) in Muncie. He won or co-won more than 30 first-place awards in Indiana and national journalism competitions. He’s the co-author with Douglas Walker of four award-winning true crime books about the Muncie area, including “Wicked Muncie,” “Muncie Murder & Mayhem,” “The Westside Park Murders” and “Cold Case Muncie.” Roysdon’s short fiction, news and pop culture writing has been widely published. His short stories are included in three 2026 anthologies, “Fighting Words,” “Bad Intentions” and “Daydream Believer.”
Roysdon’s first novel, “That October,” was published in 2025. Set in a fictionalized version of Muncie in 1984, the novel is about six high school friends who band together to solve the mystery of a friend’s murder and another’s disappearance. His new novel, “Seven Angels,” is about a young woman who returns to her small Tennessee town to help run the family funeral home. After she’s named county coroner, she must not only solve a murder but battle white supremacists, a pill-pushing doctor, a corrupt sheriff and a ruthless Russian trafficker hunting a young girl from Ukraine.
More about Constellate Publishing and the authors:
New right now on Indiana Public Radio, the Pop of Culture interview with me and Jill Blocker about our new books, our publishing venture and our Muncie appearances in July. Thanks to longtime friend Michelle Kinsey for the chance to talk.
As Michelle points out, she and Jill and I all have a newspaper in common: The three of us formerly worked at The Star Press in Muncie, Indiana.
The authors of Constellate Creatives and Constellate Publishing are going to be out and about this summer, talking about our books, our publishing journey and our quest to find new authors to bring to the reading public.
Okay, I should just acknowledge that when you’ve published a book, the promotional push for it is never over.
But it feels like we’ve reached something of a milestone as my new crime novel SEVEN ANGELS is published tomorrow, June 1, 2026, by Constellate Publishing, a publishing imprint of Constellate Creatives, a company founded by my longtime friend Jill Blocker and for which I do some editing and other work.
By way of noting that promoting a book is never ending, I’ll say that I’ll be darkening your doorstep plenty even after the book is published.
A few quick words on how I got here:
I wrote a few crime novels back in the early 2000s that weren’t completely baked and I didn’t pursue publishing them. A few years later, sometime before 2010, I outlined a book called SEVEN ANGELS, a crime story about a fictionalized version of the little town in Tennessee where my parents grew up.
(I was still about 14 years from being a Tennessee resident myself, but I’d been down here plenty of times, visiting family.)
After I outlined SEVEN ANGELS, I set it aside. I didn’t write a book-length project again until my first true crime book, co-authored with Douglas Walker, was published in 2016. Three more true crime books followed. It turns out that writing and co-writing and editing those books was essential for me in figuring out how to write a book-length manuscript. I’m a plotter and outliner, and turning out an outline – one paragraph per chapter, outline length in total 15 or 16 pages or more – is a step I can’t imagine skipping.
In 2019, I took a buyout from my newspaper job and finally felt I had time and focus to write novels. In a few years, I’d written SEVEN ANGELS, GHOST SHOW and THAT OCTOBER. The latter was the first to be published (self-published) in 2025.
I’d gone back to SEVEN ANGELS almost every year since 2019, fleshing it out with new characters and I hopefully made it better.
The blurbs and comments and reviews have been laudatory and I appreciate it.
For a few months now, I’ve been actively compiling ideas for a new novel, including using some elements from an aborted novel from 2025. (I’ve mined those early 2000s books for a number of ideas and characters, and I’ve done the same with GHOST SHOW, so nothing ever entirely goes to waste.)
So here I am with a promise: I’ll be working on the next novel, along with articles and short stories.
And I’ll be promoting it all, so forewarned is forearmed.
Less than a month until my second crime novel, SEVEN ANGELS, is out.
A young woman returns to her small Tennessee hometown to help run the family funeral business after her father’s death and discovers Seven Angels has changed for the worse: prescription drug abuse is rampant, murders go unsolved, the sheriff is corrupt, white supremacists rule and a human trafficker from Russia controls the town.
Gloria Shepherd grew up in Seven Angels and is shocked by the changes. She gets drafted into replacing her ailing mentor as the county coroner. The duties put her in deadly conflict with the sheriff and the trafficker, who pursues a Ukrainian girl.
Gloria assembles a close group of trusted friends – including an overlooked sheriff’s deputy, a fearless state investigator and an old mountain woman – to fight the forces of crime and corruption and rescue the missing girl.
You can pre-order the softcover anywhere now. Ebook to come late summer/early fall.
When my friend Jill Blocker and I started talking about publishing my crime novel SEVEN ANGELS through the Constellate Publishing imprint, I knew how I wanted the cover to look:
Like the covers of novels by Robert B. Parker, a grandmaster of crime and mystery writing and one of my greatest influences.
I would never compare myself favorably to Parker, whose books about Spenser and Hawk, Sunny Randall, Jesse Stone and other heroes protecting people and confronting crime are still my favorite novels. (Perhaps tied with Dennie Lehane’s Patrick and Angie books.)
But I was thinking about Parker when I wrote SEVEN ANGELS in 2019. Like Parker’s protagonists at times, Gloria Shepherd isn’t so much a detective as a bulldozer. I always thrilled at Spenser and his inclination to push the bad guys until they crack and make a mistake or overplay their hand.
Part of what appealed to me about Parker’s characters’ direct approach is that it was reflected in the best covers of his books: Spare and vivid imagery that matched the spare and relentless push to resolution of Parker’s characters.
There’s a scene in SEVEN ANGELS when Gloria, the coroner of Crockett County, Tennessee, pushes into the private office of a local corrupt businessman and confronts him and the Russian trafficker he’s working with. I was channeling Spenser the day I wrote that, for sure. Not sure if I was successful, but that’s what I was aiming for.
I told Jill what I wanted and she designed a cover that I loved immediately. This cover above will be modified some and authors’ blurbs will be added before SEVEN ANGELS is published this spring.
I can’t match Parker at his peak. Never will. But I can pay tribute to him.
Curious about Constellate Publishing, our company that’ll publish SEVEN ANGELS?
keithroysdon 