Today, I’m showcasing “A Question of Allegiance.” A Day at the Zoo laid out all the characters and backstory. The trick with follow-on novels in the series was to make each novel standalone. Cue lists of key moments to be explained, biographies, and, due to the language, ensuring that each term is spelled and used . . .
Category: A Question of Allegiance
Michael Chambon and Orthodox Judaism
Austin Poet John Gibbons posted this NYTimes article about Orthodox Jews and an extension of an eruv, which lets Jews carry (anything other than clothes) on Shabbat between private (their house) and public (everywhere else) spaces. Reminds me of my friends when I was growing up with keys made into tie clips or embedded in . . .
On Fiction & Current Events
I’m doing one last pass on the 3rd book in the Shmuley Myers series, The Property of Blood, before handing it off to an editor and page-setter to prepare for publication. That equates to a few months before publication. These mysteries take place in an alternate reality, a few decades after the Citizenship From Conception . . .
Launch!
Shmuley Myers, an Austin homicide detective, is back! A Question of Allegiance joins A Day at the Zoo and is ready for ebook preorder as well as for ordering in paperback. . . .
And the consequences begin
I’m not going to make this site yet another unheard voice with a political bent. Detective Sergeant Shmuley Myers has too many real-world situations in my books to deal with for me to get distr—ooh, squirrel! My ex-brother-in-law is a constitutional law scholar, who’s been involved in several of the pivotal cases put before the . . .
On fiction, reality, and fantasy
The Shmuley Myers books are in an alternate reality, where a constitutional amendment in America means that citizenship is awarded at the time of conception. Those folks of the XX chromosomal variety can see how this turns every non-term or non-live pregnancy into a murder investigation. And that follow-on legislation broke the separation of church . . .
Cover and Art for A Question of Allegiance
The editor has yet to return my manuscript (it’s not due back for another week or three). In the meantime, it’s back to figuring out how to create the cover for A Question of Allegiance (AQoA for short). I messed up. When creating the cover for A Day at the Zoo, I envisioned something with . . .
Lurching Back to Life
Restart with a Goal Being an author with both a life and another full-time job makes adding the social media aspect hard. Add to that writing a series as well as working on other manuscripts, and you’ve got one overloaded human. But I’m going to try anyway. Starting with getting a team together: I’ve started . . .