“It’s weird,” my mother said when she finished reading Starfall. “It’s interesting, but it’s weird.”

Yes, folks, Starfall is out on Amazon and B&N. It’s been out, actually, but things here have been crazy so my official announcements have been awhile in coming.

It’s the first book I’ve released for myself since 2012, and there are no zombies in it. (I figured I’d get that out of the way, since a lot of my readers are into the zombies. I, too, am into the zombies, and hope to return to their glorious rot soon, but for some reason I had to crank this one out first.)

I can’t pinpoint the inspiration beyond a mental image of a woman stuck in some sort of endless maintenance cycle because there was no one to tell her to do otherwise. I knew there was a lighthouse involved, and a lost city, but it was the lighthouse* I kept returning to — and Marina standing there, watching the sea. She’s surrounded by the ghosts and gizmos of a past era, some of which are not very nice. When the bulb in the lighthouse burns out, she must venture into the lost city to find the replacement. Naturally this is not a walk in the park.

So yes, it is a weird little story, and not what I usually serve up. With that said, I think it’s one of my better tales, and I’m pleased with it.

Anyway, it’s out. I’m curious to see how Starfall does, both as the shortest work I’ve produced and maybe the most different. My zombies novels are my most successful works, and I don’t notice a lot of crossover — GNW and DBG have sold fairly consistently over the years, but Echoes has not. Echoes and GNW tend to be my “gateway” books; if a reader of, say, Echoes REALLY digs the story, they might pick up GNW, and vice versa,  but if this was happening consistently then Echoes would have sold much better. I’m pretty sure for the most part the two genres have separate readers.

I hope that made sense. It’s been a long day.

So, will you, Dear Reader, like Starfall? I don’t know. My general feeling is if you enjoyed Echoes or at least did not find it utterly repugnant, you might like Starfall. But if you’re looking for wisecracks and hijinks a la GNW, it might not be your pot of coffee.

*Props to the ever-wonderful Steven Novak, who somehow took my vague mental image of a lighthouse and the stars and put it on paper. What I wouldn’t give for an iota of artistic talent…