The Pack is still my main focus this summer, and of course The Pack: Winter Kill is still available in trade paperback and in a Kindle edition. The short comic Big Bad Wolves will be going live I believe next month, and I’ve just finish scripting the second short.

Just as Big Bad Wolves is a prequel of sorts to The Pack: Winter Kill, the second short will be a prequel to the second prose book, giving readers a little more insight into one of the main characters and his behavior. And no, neither the second short nor book 2 have a title yet, just some working titles my editor and I are still kicking around. I usually don’t have a solid title until I’m done.

I’m already starting to talk to a potential artist for the second short as well. It’s a lot easier to find an artist for the short pieces than it is a longer project, especially for the kind of rates a new startup is able to pay, so the first comic book in the series, The Pack: Chimaera, will be delayed a bit longer. We’re taking advantage of the delay to do a bit more tweaking to the script for Chimaera, and I think those efforts will pay off in the long run.

Meanwhile, I’m pushing the deadline for the 2nd book, but I’m still confident I’ll make it. It’s going to take some extra knuckling down over the next several weeks, but I’m up for it.

There are a few more The Pack developments in store, but none that I can share just yet. Stay tuned.

I sold a short story last year that I hope will see print in an anthology soon. It’s not been announced yet, so I’ll keep quiet for now. I’ve got two more shorts sitting in a slush pile, and two more to write, one overdue and the other with a deadline imminent. It’s tough to make those a priority with my contractual obligations to Evileye for The Pack, but I’ve not written them off yet.

I’ll have some news on a webcomic soon. The artist is inking the strips, and we’re going to wait until we have several in the can before we launch. I don’t want to say too much right now because we’ve both fallen behind on it, but it’s kind of a new direction for both of us and the short strip format will be a new way to flex my creative muscles.

All of this has unfortunately back-burnered my novel Powerless. With The Pack taking center stage and so many other things going on, it’s been hard to revisit my older work. What’s written is edited on paper, but I haven’t been able to get the rewrite in gear. I had hoped to get back to it by the end of this year, but I think the next The Pack commitment may supersede it yet again.

I’m actually a little more interested in writing Sick Day, which also got preempted by The Pack, specifically the second draft of Chimaera. Crime thrillers have interested me a little more both in my reading and my writing, and Sick Day is a straight thriller with no horror or supernatural elements. Heck, I’ve even been tempted to go back and revisit An Ounce of Brass, an abortive first attempt at a thriller novel that has some good material at its heart but it needs to shed a ton of unnecessary weight.

I won’t even get started on the notebook. It’s got some good things waiting to come to light, like The Shattered Man, but I need to finish all this other stuff first and make some room. Until the writing can start paying the bills, I have to let the day job consume the bulk of my writing time. I’m a night owl and get most of my writing done then, but having to get up early makes it tough to do that consistently. Some see a romantic flair in the writer who forgoes sleep for the sake of his craft, but the fact is it actually harms the output in the long run.

Not to mention the toll it takes on one’s health. I’ve said many times I’d love to stay up late writing and then sleep well into the morning, but right now I just don’t have that luxury. It’s one of several reasons I look forward to Spring and Winter Breaks at work.

In the end it may look like it’s been a while since my last release, but never fear, the wheels are in motion.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and I hope you’ll keep coming back.

Following are the first three pages of Big Bad Wolves. The remainder will be posted to Evileye Books’ Evileye Reader when it launches, and will be included with future electronic editions of The Pack books. We hope to bring you more short stories like this in the future, offering character insights and brief glimpses of the history of The Pack.

Pencils and inks on this story were handled by Mike Henderson, who I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of in the future. The dude’s got talent.

Hope you dig the preview! Click each image to get the full size.

Big Bad Wolves: Page One

Big Bad Wolves: Page Two

Big Bad Wolves: Page Three

My Father’s Scar

The Pack: Winter Kill

Mike Oliveri, winner of the prestigious Bram Stoker Award, combines horror and mystery in his riveting new novel Winter Kill, the first in a projected series that will delight fans of fast-paced noir fiction.

Writing in the tradition of the hardboiled crime novel pioneered by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Oliveri pulls no punches in this hard-edged novel of gun-running and murder. What makes his novel memorably unusual is not only its realistic treatment of crime but also its additional element of horror, featuring the current runaway popularity of werewolf fiction.

Altogether, these many exciting elements combine to make Winter Kill a howling success!

Comparisons to Hammett and Chandler? Nice!

Reviews have been very positive so far. I’ll have to be sure to stay on top of my game as I finish book 2.

Thanks again to those of you hanging out in the chat room. I thought about trying to keep up with both the chat and the interview, but in the end I know I’m horrible at multitasking and would have ended up punching keys instead of talking horror flicks and Lovecraft. It was a fun time, and I’ll definitely have to link the show when they post it to their website.

I fully expected to be talking about the paranormal, but it was just a great conversation we could easily have had at bar instead of on the air. That’s what makes a great show as far as I’m concerned, and I recommend folks check them out. (And though I fall more into the skeptic category regarding the paranormal, I do enjoy that sort of thing. The geek in me never left, I just give him a swirley from time to time to keep him in line.)

So browse around, kick the tires, and maybe next time I’m on the show I’ll remember to mention there’s a small reference to Bigfoot in The Pack: Winter Kill.

Whatever you've got, there we are.

Thanks to the magic that is Amazon Kindle, you can get a copy of The Pack: Winter Kill on most mobile devices. Here we’ve got a MacBook Pro, an iPad, an iPod touch, and my wife’s Kindle. If my particular BlackBerry had been supported, I’d have slipped it into the picture, too.

I did a simple photo setup on this one: I arranged the devices, used an old curtain for a backdrop, and bounced the flash off the ceiling. I could probably have used another light source on the touch and the Kindle to brighten them both up, but I didn’t have anything available. (I’d buy some more lighting rigs, but I wouldn’t use them near enough to justify the expense.)

Of course, if you’d rather carry around a few slices of dead tree than a collection of bits, there’s still the paperback edition! All you have to do is order it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, take this form to your local retailer, or just wait a few days until I get my bookstore up and running (from which you’ll be able to buy a signed copy direct from my office, ooh ahh).

Okay, pimping and photography done. I need  some sleep after last night’s boilermaker outing kept me up ’til the wee hours of this morning.

Very, very cool. Now all we need is their buyers to notice us and start stocking the book on the shelves.

You know you want it.

That gives you three ways to get our hot little hands on my cool little book: Amazon; Barnes & Noble online; and via special order in stores. If you are going to order through a store, be sure to grab a copy of our retailer order sheet and the clerk should have all the information needed to place your order.

The online price is a few dollars below cover at the moment, but you’re probably going to give that back in shipping fees unless you’re ordering a few books at a time or you have an Amazon Prime account. You can also take comfort in knowing your in-store order is going to be a huge help to Evileye and I; the more in-store orders, the more likely it is a buyer will notice those orders and take a closer look at the book.

Then you’ll find it that much easier to get a hold of book 2 later this year!

Click the pic for the full PDF form

The form contains everything they’ll need to know to place the order, be it through their own system or directly from Evileye. We have confirmed Barnes & Noble is filling special orders placed in stores, but if you’re a Borders fan or you have a favorite local, independent dealer, they’ll be able to use the information attached to get their hands on a book for you.

Even if you already have the book, we’d appreciate it if you delivered the form to your favorite retailer anyway. We’re big fans of word of mouth, and if you put in a good word for the book, maybe the management will order a few copies for their other customers.

If there’s anything else we can do to help get books into your favorite stores, please let us know!

And hey, go recycle something, too, eh?

The Pack: Winter Kill

Here’s part of what the reviewer Colleen Wanglund had to say:

In this first book in a planned series, Mike Oliveri lays out a crime story with the promise of the supernatural mixed in and he delivers. … It is Mr. Oliveri’s take on the werewolf tale that is fed in small doses to keep the reader coming back for more.

Full review here (scroll down about halfway). I’m in good company, too: Joe Hill, Nicholas Kaufmann, Peter Straub… even a few other werewolf books. Not too shabby.

Remember, if you’re not into ordering from Amazon, Barnes & Noble online stocks it now, too. If B&N online has it, then you should be able to order it at a B&N retail store as well.

The Pack: Winter Kill

Now that looks sharp.

I’m told it reads just like it does in hard copy. I might be getting my hands on an iPad in the next few months (we seriously want to evaluate them at work), so I can’t wait to see it for myself.

The nice thing about digital editions is we can pack them with extras that aren’t feasible in print. Some of these things may not work so well on the black-and-white Kindle itself, but given the Kindle app is available for desktops, laptops, iPhones/iPod touches, and now the iPad, well, that really creates some opportunities.

Keep your eye on Evileye, because things are really getting exciting.