Tag Archives: SEVEN ANGELS

Paying tribute to Robert B. Parker covers with the SEVEN ANGELS cover

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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?

Constellate Publishing

Hey! It’s a video! It’s an hour long! Talking about THAT OCTOBER and newspapers and SEVEN ANGELS!

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Last year I did an interview with the wonderful Gabby Sandefer for the Muncie Public Library’s Pages and Partners podcast. We talked about my years in newspapers and my other writing, including my novels THAT OCTOBER and SEVEN ANGELS.

Gabby is so much fun and we had a good time.

Here it is:

Filling the void in indie publishing? Is that possible?

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I won’t pretend to sum up the weird state of small publishing here. If you’re been following the world of indie and small publishing, you know that 2025 has seen some small imprints go out of business – in some cases leaving authors unpaid – and others purport to try to fill that void.

I’m not sure that Constellate Creatives’ publishing arm, Constellate Publishing, the enterprise I’m affiliated with, will fill that void. For one thing, we can’t be all things to all people.

But as we started Constellate’s venture into editing – developmental editing and copy editing — and publishing and marketing a few months ago, it became obvious that somebody needed to be around to step in and catch a few worthy projects. Or maybe juggle chainsaws.

It’s making for a 2026 I’m really excited about. Constellate Publishing will publish my novel SEVEN ANGELS but there’s a diverse lineup of books on tap for the first two quarters of 2026, including a book of mindful self-help, a book of poetry, my novel and two by Jill Blocker, a reissue of her WHAT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND GOOD and her new novel, HAPPILY AFTER EVER. The latter is what’s increasingly termed a “new adult” book and will appeal to readers post-YA in their reading interests.

I’m proud to have noticed that every book besides mine is written by a woman and even mine has a cast of woman as protagonists.

And note the slide I’ve posted above: Constellate Creatives is offering editing, publishing and marketing services, or some combination of those, and at socially-responsible fees based on the regional wage in each writer’s local economy.

Some of us love to edit copy and help with developing your work. Others (raises hand) love marketing. Yes, I’m weird like that. We can’t promise that PR about your book will land on large market-share sites like KTLA, where our news release announcing our slate for the first half of 2026, was picked up. But we’ll be pitching your work and you won’t have to deal with the dreaded marketing.

There’s a button somewhere on the CC site that will lead you to a free consultation. We might be able to answer some questions for you.

https://constellatecreatives.com/

Cryptic chapter titles? We got ’em for SEVEN ANGELS

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I love a good mystery. Obviously, it’s what I write, at least a lot of the time. So as Constellate Creatives is putting together my novel SEVEN ANGELS for 2026 release, I’ve put titles to the novel’s 69 chapters.

Here are some. And yes, I deliberately tried to invoke the “say what now?” feeling of the cryptic episode titles of shows like STRANGER THINGS.

Looking forward to June 2026 publication of SEVEN ANGELS.

https://constellatecreatives.com/

My world and welcome to it: Seven Angels and Middletown, my fictional places

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When my short story “A Fighting Life” was published in the past couple of weeks in the FIGHTING WORDS anthology, it contained the latest reference to the fiction worlds I operate in.

Since I wrote four or five novels back in the early 2000s – books that’ll probably never be seen, unless radically rewritten with what I’ve learned about writing in the meantime – I’ve enjoyed writing in a universe where, despite some timey-wimey variations, most of my characters and storylines play out in a shared world mostly consisting of the small city of Middletown, Indiana – based on my hometown of Muncie, Indiana, which was referred to in 20th century sociological studies as Middletown – and Seven Angels, a Tennessee town based on Jamestown, the small town my parents came from.

The early 2000s books featured Jack Richmond, a Middletown newspaper reporter, and a group of friends including Jess Peterson, an affable cop on the Middletown police force. There are lots of other characters too, including Luna, a topless dancer Jack falls in love with. By the end of the series of books, the two are married and have a son, Cody, and the final, still-to-be-completed book features Jack and Peterson’s desperate efforts to get Cody back after Luna’s ex brutally assaults her and kidnaps the boy.

When I wrote SEVEN ANGELS in 2019, my first crack at writing a novel in 15 years or more, I set it in the titular small Tennessee town with a side trip to Middletown and a pivotal appearance by Peterson.

My next novel, the also unpubished GHOST SHOW, is set in Middletown, but in 1948 and follows the Anderson family, who came to the big industrial town from the small Tennessee town of Seven Angels. No crossover characters, though.

My third novel, THAT OCTOBER, which was just published in June 2025, is set in 1984 Middletown and includes, among secondary characters, Richmond and Peterson at the beginning of their newspaper and police careers, respectively.

I won’t detail it all here, but I’ve returned to the Middletown and Seven Angels wells numerous times in short stories. The foul-mouthed, fightin’ siblings in “A Fighting Life” are pulled from GHOST SHOW. My very first published short story, “Independence” from the MOTEL anthology, is set in little Seven Angels, complete with the sheriff/main bad guy from the SEVEN ANGELS novel.

The seeding of characters from my earlier stories – like Butcher Crabtree, who I posted about here recently – throughout my fiction just goes on and on.

And so do I. To quote one of my (hopefully) self-deprecating quotes, “Enough about me. What do you think of me?”