Can finally-finally say it without promising whoever I’m telling it to to secrecy, or to somehow post-date this info: sold two horror novels to Joe Monti at Saga! This is the outfit that did Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning. This is the imprint of Simon & Schuster that just moved to the Gallery Publishing Group, which used to be Pocket. This is the editor that, over the past month or so, pushed me to make what WAS Elk Head Woman, a slasher, into the new and improved, lean and mean:
You have to say it kind of with the same growl you might announce Die Hard, if you’re voicing-over a trailer.
Couldn’t be more excited. As for any specs on The Only Good Indians: it’s a slasher. It’s set in Montana, a lot around Browning. It comes at you in three parts and a . . . hm. I think this might be the first time I’ve done a prologue since The Fast Red Road, too? Or: does The Gospel of Z have one? It’s got an epilogue, so it makes sense I’d have opened that frame with a prologue.
Forget about “prologue,” though. What to lodge in your horror heart? “SLASHER.”
As for book two, I’ve got a few written right now, and I’m always writing more, so it won’t be about WILL there be one, it’ll about WHICH one, and when.
And, that pic in the header, it’s Ponoka—elk—from Eighth Generation. My old phone case, ‘old’ by about four days now. Already miss it.
So, yeah, this . . . it may be the first time I’ve done a novel set on the reservation since about Ledfeather? Though that story “Brushdogs” happens there, at least the way I see it.
Anyway, thanks to Joe Monti for acquiring these two novels, and thanks to my agent BJ Robbins, for making it all happen in all the hundreds of ways she always does.
Here’s the Publisher’s Lunch announcement:
is the NYT bestselling author of 35 or so books, +350 stories, some comic books, and all this stuff here. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, and has a few broken-down old trucks, one PhD, and way too many boots. More