Fun...With Teeth

Back when I first got published, I signed a lot of my books with a little extra exuberance—I drew a toothy smiley face and wrote in under it the words “Fun…With Teeth.”

Which was how I saw my fiction—I always wanted my readers to laugh, but I wanted some real edge in there, too.

Because, let’s face it. Sometimes I want to scare your socks of.

As the wear and tear of publishing (and some pretty hard times in my life) began to get to me, I lost some of that exuberance. All of my books have funny places in them, but with some of them, you have to wade through a whole lot of darkness to find it.

But when I decided to walk away from the meat grinder that is professional publishing, to deal directly with my readers, and to publish my own work, something strange happened. It was as if someone switched on a light inside me.

I was digging through my early works, the ones for which rights have reverted to me, and I discovered how funny some of those early books were.

I’d forgotten. From cats with hands who liked to play with matches to winged horses with bad brakes to a Miata-driving, beer-swilling dragon to infesting the entire state of North Carolina with the denizens from Hell (to the serious detriment of Hell), I had a lot more fun back then.

I want to find my way back to that.

I’d like to have you share a part of my return to laughter. In my case, laughter with really big, sharp, pointy teeth.

In the next couple of months, as I start getting my reverted novels converted into digital and print versions and moved onto platforms like Kindle and iBooks and Nook, I’m going to put together a little private membership site especially for the folks who like my fiction. You’ll have a bulletin board there where you can talk to each other, and tell me what characters you’ve missed and who you want to read about next, as well as a place where I’ll post some snippets of work in progress, cover images, and news about each book as I release it.

I don’t know what else I’ll put in there. But it’ll be free, and I’ll make sure to include some nice surprises from time to time.

Here’s the place to ask questions, offer your wish list, comment on my radical career change…

I’m glad you’re here.