Escaping the Flames: ‘The Bookstore War’ is Finally Here

I didn’t burn the manuscript after all

Photo by author

Several times over the past two years I have written about the temptation to simply set the manuscript of my latest novel on fire and be done with the thing. Somehow (in a move not at all normal for me), I have resisted temptation; The Bookstore War is now available in both paperback and e-book. This brings the number of books in The Last Word series to four almost exactly ten years after the publication of the first novel, The Last Word.

Now comes the part I (and most authors) hate even more than editing a novel: promoting the damn thing. Early in my time on this site, I wrote about how we must overcome our fear of self-promotion to have any hope of readers beyond our immediate family even knowing our books exist; as is often the case, I’m having a hard time taking my own advice. You have to start somewhere, though, so I’m starting here.

The back cover blurb is short and sweet:

Just when things seem to have calmed down at The Last Word Bookstore, all hell breaks loose. Sal, Camden, and the rest of the band of merry misfit booksellers suddenly face both a war with a nefarious rival and the possibility that a new bookseller in town is, in fact, a vampire. And you thought bookselling was boring.