Engin_Akyurt / Pixabay

I don’t know about y’all (we had proper cornbread yesterday, so I’m allowed to drop a y’all), but I’m hiding at home right now. Black Friday (the shopping orgy the day after Thanksgiving, for the non-Americans or those who just woke up from 1960) frightens me. The only thing that might entice me to a retail establishment is the need to buy milk for my coffee, and even that probably won’t do it. Which is saying a lot, because Coffee is Life.

I’ll keep this brief, in case you did leave the house at some point today or you’re clicking at online retailers like mad and your brain is already overstimulated. As I told my Newsletter folks over the weekend, the long-awaited next Sydney Brennan book is currently with my copy editor. Woo hoo! It will be released next month (December 2017) and probably before Christmas. No exact date yet because things get crazy around the holidays, for retailers as well as regular human beings, and I want to make sure all my ducks are queued. (Do Brits say that? If not, they should.) But I’ll keep you posted as the timeline gets solid. And Newsletter folks, if you emailed me about being an Advance Reader (as many of you did), you’ll be hearing from me this weekend. And you’ll be reading soon. 😉

I wanted to get this out around the holidays because I feel bad that I’ve neglected Sydney’s fans (and Sydney) for so long while working on the Dead Hollow series. A novella, River Bound takes place just a few weeks after the Sydney Brennan short story, Club Revelations and a few months after the novel, Braving the Boneyard. (If you haven’t read Club Revelations yet, you can download it for free by joining my Newsletter—which you should do, because I only bug you with cool stuff once a month—or you can ruin your eyesight reading the story in your browser here.)

River Bound is a fun, fast-paced read that I specifically wrote with you fans in mind rather than trying to advance my own authorial series machinations. Okay, that’s a little bit of a fib. I’ve had a canoe trip novella in mind for Syd for years, and I’m so glad I finally got to write it! And while it features a character I know some of you want Sydney to spend more time with, shh—don’t tell anybody, he also happens to be the character I always imagined in the stern. On the other hand, I did have the set-up and the weather and a bunch of other things different in the original story nugget in my head. But it was a small nugget. Anyway, without further ado, here is the lovely new cover and tease for the new Sydney Brennan book, River Bound…

Is it bad luck to get held at gunpoint on a first date?

Sydney Brennan isn’t exactly the outdoors type, but when a friend asks her on an unconventional first date, the Tallahassee private investigator agrees. A lazy day canoeing down an idyllic Florida Panhandle river, with your date providing a picnic lunch and most of the paddle power—what can go wrong? A lot, and this time it’s not even Sydney’s fault…