One Week ‘Til My Next Novel: THE SIDEMAN

On October 15th, I started a new venture. I took a book I knew readers loved, because I’d tested it, but hadn’t sold to traditional publishing yet despite editors all praising it, and put it out via a small press called Boralis Books. Since then Simon Says has not only earned back my initial investment but exceeded it and received mostly 5 and 4 star reviews in doing so, a higher percentage than any of the other 25 books I’ve done.

Simon Says was hard to sell traditionally because I mixed genres—near future science fiction and procedural thriller—in a way that has not really been tested. Only JD Robb is doing it in any noticeable way. So publishers didn’t know what to do with it. But as friends and family who’d test read the book kept asking me, again and again, when’s that book coming out, I knew I was onto something. I didn’t get that kind of enthusiasm on my prior books.

And Simon Says, while it can stand alone, is actually book one in the John Simon Thrillers series, so as part of my strategy, I planned to launch a new book every quarter in that series and eventually add other series and titles. So here we are, 4 months after release as of February 15, and I’m so excited about the next John Simon Thriller, I’m releasing it 5 days early on February 10th.

It’s called The Sideman, and preview of several chapters has actually been up since Simon Says released. (A preview of book 3, Common Source, will be posted Feb. 10 when The Sideman ReleasesIt’s up for preorder now via Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and IndieBound will have it soon. To see what people are already saying about The Sideman as well as those sample chapters (3) and buy links, click here.

And if you haven’t read Simon Says yet, check out the same for it here  and expect to see it on sale to celebrate the release of book 2 next week. I appreciate your support of this new venture and can’t wait for you to read my latest.  Here’s the first reader review on Goodreads:

Announcing: Final Table of Contents-Joe Ledger: Unstoppable Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt & Jonathan Maberry

With pleasure, we announce the final table of contents for the first anthology of stories written by others set in the New York Times bestselling Joe Ledger universe created by Jonathan Maberry. This will be released from St. Martin’s Press in 2017 (cover and details pending).

JOE LEDGER: UNSTOPPABLE
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt & Jonathan Maberry

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by Tony Eldridge

Introduction by Jonathan Maberry

The Honey Pot by Steve Alten

Confusion by Nicholas Steven

Target Acquired by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon

Vacation by Scott Sigler

Banshee by James A. Moore

Red Dirt by Mira Grant

Black Water by Weston Ochse

Instinct by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and G.P. Charles

No Guns at the Bar by Aaron Rosenberg

Strange Harvest by Jon McGoran

No Business at All by Javier Grillo-Marxuach

Ganbatte by Keith R.A. DeCandido

White Flame on Sunday by James Ray Tuck

Wet Tuesday by David Farland

Prince of Peace by Jeremy Robinson

Rookie by Joe McKinney

Three Times by Jennifer Campbell-Hicks

Psych Eval by Larry Correia

Crash Course by Dana Fredsti

Atoll by Jonathan Maberry

In addition to the numerous New York Times bestsellers writing stories here, we have crossovers with Sigler’s Nocturnal, Tuck’s Deacon Chalk, McGoran’s Doyle Carrick, Robinson’s Chess Team and Fredsti’s Plague World novels. The anthology has a foreword by Ton Eldridge, the Hollywood producer developing Ledger for film and by Grillo-Marxuach (Lost, Charmed, Middleman) who wrote a previ0us Ledger pilot film.