Here on the site, I list all of the marketplaces that offer my books but I try to be agnostic when it comes to a reader’s choice about where to buy. If you’re excited to read my latest novella, The Island of Small Misfortunes, but you don’t want to support Amazon, you have several alternatives.

You could purchase it from the publisher, Regal House. They’re a fantastic indie press based in North Carolina and buying direct is the best way to support them.

You can also buy it from Barnes & Noble. But they’re just another corporation like Amazon, you say. Yes, but it’s hard to portray them as much of a villain in the current landscape. Under the leadership of James Daunt, B&N has leaned into greater individualization and self-rule with their stores, and as a result many store managers in Connecticut have generously hosted me and the HWA chapter on numerous occasions. I truly see the modern B&N as an ally for authors and small publishers.

Probably the best option, however, is to buy the book using Bookshop. If you don’t know how Bookshop works, you start by selecting an independent bookstore you want to help. It can be your local shop downtown or that one halfway across the country where you picked up a beach read on your last vacation. After you’ve chosen, you buy the book, it’s shipped to your house, and the profits go to that indie bookstore. It’s an amazing service and I highly recommend it, even if you’re not Amazon adverse. As of this writing, Island is also discounted by more than a dollar on Bookshop, so you can save a little too.

Back in the fall I attended a party where a distant acquaintance commented that I seemed to be busier lately. By “busier,” the person meant the imminent publication of The Island of Small Misfortunes in March.

Behind the comment lay an assumption that somehow I wasn’t busy before Island was publicly announced. This is one of the frustrations of being a writer. Nobody actually believes that writers and authors exist — to most we are Bigfoots and Mothmen, creatures that exist purely in theory or in third-hand accounts by friends of friends, yet are never met face to face.

This is largely because the work we do often goes unseen. When a book lands on a table at Barnes & Noble, the reader may recognize the writing that went into it but probably not the countless hours that went into researching it, revising it, pitching it, editing it, marketing it, or any of the other invisible labor baked into its seemingly sudden and mysterious appearance at the bookstore.

This is further magnified when you consider that many authors also do writing that doesn’t result in books. A friend of mine runs a business writing corporate communications, and while she’s one of the most successful writers I know, very little of what she produces is seen by the general public. When I tell people that a large part of my freelancing over the years has consisted of editing and ghostwriting, they often give me the same look flashed by a red snapper lying on a bed of ice in the seafood department at Whole Foods. It has been my experience that few believe a writer can be busy in the absence of a firsthand tangible result of that busyness.

All of this is a long-winded way of me saying I’ve been very industrious lately, literally working seven days a week. When I’m not busy marketing The Island of Small Misfortunes (available March 25!), I’ve been ghostwriting another memoir project as well as banging away at a separate, high-priority, top-secret, I-wish-I-could-tell-you-more project.

I’m also a member of the planning committee for StokerCon 2025, to be held this June in Stamford, Connecticut. I am in charge of the Author Readings, as well as some informal responsibilities like menu planning. If you’re an author who has signed up to read at StokerCon, my intention is to have the reading slots finalized (more or less) by the end of April, after we figure out the programming. I know it can be frustrating to sign up for an author reading and then not know when I’m slotted to read until the very last minute, making it difficult to plan an itinerary for the con, so again, I hope to have a good idea of who is reading when by May 1. I will be contacting all authors when the schedule is live.

In the meantime, I must once again vanish in a cloud of brimstone. Work calls.