For those of you who like to listen to books in audio format, the latest Garrison Gage book is now available for download at Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. Like the last Gage book, A Kiss of Sand and Sorrowis once again narrated by the excellent Jarrod Taylor. A fantastic job.
Fall is definitely in the air here. It’s one of my favorite times of year in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, with crisp morning air, sunny but mild days, and all the trees awash with their autumn colors. The dry hot days of August recede into memory while the wet winter season is still a month or two out. There’s a big change this year, though. Outside my office window, I can see all the kids on their way to school each morning, but this is the first time in twenty years that my own children won’t be among them — at least here in town. With both kids now in college, the house is a lot emptier these days. So is my bank account, alas, but that’s another story.
Florence, Oregon
Summer seemed to go by quickly this year. Between the Iceland trip in June, and dropping our son off at his dorm a few weeks ago, there were a couple weekend jaunts to the coast, of course, as well as attending a friend’s wedding in Oregon City, but it’s a bit of a blur already, and it’s hard to believe we’re already putting up Halloween decorations.
My wife and I actually met at a Halloween party thirty years ago this month, so it’s a special one for us. With the kids out of the house, it’s almost like we’ve come full circle.
They called him Goon. Not the Goon. Just Goon, as if it was his name, which it sort of was …
Those opening sentences kick off The Goon and the Glass Swan, my latest book. If you’re looking for a light beach read over the weekend … well, this probably isn’t it. But if you’re looking for provocative tales of crime, lost loves, and heroic choices that will hopefully stick with you long after you finish them, this collection might be more up your alley.
More information about the book, as well as links to retailers, is below. As always, thanks for reading!
The Goon and the Glass Swan
by Scott William Carter
During a mafia hit with his sharpshooting partner, a thug named Goon finds a little girl hiding in a closet. Until now, Goon has been content playing the part of the dumb sidekick, but how far will he go when the little girl’s life is on the line?
This riveting tale of redemption and sacrifice kicks off Carter’s latest collection, six stories of crime, revenge, lost loves, and heroic choices. Whether the tale involves a down-and-out screenwriter looking for a fresh start as a journalist working the crime beat in his hometown, a grieving widower meeting an assassin-for-hire on an urban park bench, or a mysterious payphone at a rural gas station that might not quite be of this world . . . each of these powerful stories leaves its own indelible mark on the reader’s imagination.
What, August already? Rosie and I were looking forward to getting back into the swing of our weekly hikes, but somehow half the summer is gone and I’ve barely gone on any. Part of the issue was that we went almost straight from my son’s high school graduation to an amazing two-week trip to Iceland, where we rented a car and drove almost all of Route 1, what they also call the “Ring Road,” circling the island and staying in thirteen different hotels in fifteen days. I was originally skeptical there would be enough to justify a two-week trip, but boy was I wrong. Bathing in natural hot springs, seeing puffins at the Látrabjarg cliffs, touring caves inside the Katla glacier, beholding the awesome power of Dynjandi and many, many other waterfalls … Once you get outside Reykjavik (which is a great little cosmopolitan city), this is a land of awesome yet primitive beauty.
We were there over the summer solstice, and as close as Iceland is to the Arctic Circle, we never experienced any true darkness. There’s only a few hours of technical darkness, but even then it’s sort of a grainy twilight. It certainly gave us more time to be outdoors! Of course, in the winter it’s pretty much the opposite.
Here are just a few pictures:
Barely a week after we returned, we hopped back in the car to celebrate my in-law’s 50th anniversary, spending a fun few days in the River Meadows/Sunriver area in central Oregon, bicycling, river rafting, and just hanging out. Now that our kids are both adults, I know these times when all four of us are together are going to get increasingly rare, so I treasure them. Not long after, our daughter was moving out of her apartment into a house she’s sharing with two of her friends, so she finally needed much of her furniture here at our house. It’d been a while since I’d rented a U-Haul. I forgot how exhausting moving can be.
And here we are. For those of you who missed it, I have a new Garrison Gage book out. I’m pleased to say A Kiss ofSand and Sorrowhas been well-received. In fact, some of my readers have been calling it the best Gage book yet. Is it true? Well, those are subjective judgments, of course, but I’d rather hear more of that than the opposite. What really drives me, whether it’s as a writer or as a cartoonist, is the drive to keep getting better. That’s what I find most rewarding about the arts.
In addition to continuing to publish two Run of the Housecartoons a week, I’ve been working on a shorter standalone novel and some short stories. I’m in the process of putting together a new short story collection that I’m pretty happy with. Hopefully get that one out soon. Productivity has only been so-so this summer, partly because of all the life-related happenings I mentioned above, and partly due to allowing myself to get a bit too obsessed about the political turmoil here in the United States, but such is life. Yet even as I slowly get back up to speed, there never seems enough time to do everything.
Hope all’s well in your neck of the woods. Here at the Carter household, our son is about to graduate from high school. With my daughter in her third year of college, my wife and I are about to transition into that “empty nester” stage of life, I guess. Well, not if you include Rosie, but then we’ve pretty much accepted that we’re permanently stuck with our furry, four-legged child. (Don’t tell her that, though. She’s spoiled enough already, and I don’t want our intrepid Irish Setter to think she can just loaf around all day without pulling her weight.)
But let’s skip to the big news today: I’ve got a new book out, and it’s one a lot of you have been asking for: a new Garrison Gage mystery!
It’s hard to believe that A Kiss of Sand and Sorrow is the ninth book in the series, and yet I’m finding it more fun than ever to spend some time with my curmudgeonly detective. Now that I think about it, “fun” is a pretty strange word considering all the trouble Gage gets himself into, both in matters of the law and matters of the heart. There’s plenty of both this time around.
More about the book is below, including links to retailers. As always, thanks for reading!
A Kiss of Sand and Sorrow
A Garrison Gage Mystery
Gage might go mad. With most of inland Oregon enduring a record-setting heatwave, the hordes descend on Barnacle Bluffs seeking cooler ocean air, and it’s all the curmudgeonly private investigator can do to keep from shooting somebody. What’s the harm in one fewer tourist, anyway? Yet when a desperate young woman shows up claiming her depressed husband has gone missing, Gage will need all of his wits to find the man before something terrible happens. His complicated feelings for the beautiful but headstrong police chief, with dark secrets of her own, only make solving the case more challenging … especially when those secrets eventually bring Gage face to face with one of the most savage foes ever to cross his path.
