Author: Jackson

Spring Tour

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Spring has sprung and with it a bunch of dates where you can catch me.

• Branford Book Festival, Saturday, May 10, 12-3pm. Come find me and dozens of other authors signing books in lovely downtown Branford. The Thimble Islands off Branford’s coast is the setting for my new book, The Island of Small Misfortunes.

• Why Horror? Panel at the Bridgeport Public Library, Thursday, May 22, 6pm. The New England chapter of the Horror Writers Association will be discussing the appeal of our favorite spooky books and why we like to read and write them.

• Westport Barnes & Noble, Saturday, June 7, 2pm. I will be signing copies of The Island of Small Misfortunes.

• StokerCon 2025, June 12-15. As the Author Readings Coordinator and Co-Programming Coordinator, I will be there Wednesday through Sunday. I’d say come find me but it will be hard to miss me.

More to come.

Happy Publication Day

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Happy Publication Day to The Island of Small Misfortunes. This book was a journey for sure. I wrote the bulk of it pre-pandemic, then finished it in the early months of 2020. The manuscript was a total mess until the very end, when suddenly everything fell into place like a game of Tetris.

I’ve discovered with time that every book I write is a reply to the previous one. A Season of Whispers, for example, resulted after I became burned out (temporarily) by Smedley and nonfiction in general, which led to a period where I mixed history and fiction. Likewise, with Island I wanted to lean more heavily into the metaphors and language of Season while chasing the ambiguity of history, both personal and otherwise. One friend said she caught Raymond Chandler vibes off protagonist Sequoia Owen, which I now see is the bleed-through from that emphasis on description by metaphor.

Many thanks to my publisher Regal House Publishing for believing in the book and to my publicist Layne Mandros at Books Forward PR for a great campaign. And how about that cover? I could not believe the artist created it in Starry Night Post-Impressionism, my absolute favorite painting style. My jaw dropped when I first saw it and still does.

All of my books are messages in bottles thrown into the ocean. May the scribbled note inside The Island of Small Misfortunes bring you some enjoyment.

The Island of Small Misfortunes is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookstores everywhere. Please consider purchasing it directly from Regal House or support your local indie bookstore through Bookshop.

I will be touring to promote Island this spring. Stay tuned for dates.

Alternatives to Amazon

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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.

Cover Reveal!

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In the summer of 1898, Sequoia Owen accepts an invitation from his estranged uncle to visit his family’s summer home on Todeket, a private island off the Connecticut coast.

Yet the house, constructed by Sequoia’s unstable grandfather and the site of his cousin’s mysterious death, is a strange place. None of his odd relatives, who seem to have sinister agendas of their own, can agree upon the origin of the house, nor do they all believe the sightings of a ghost that haunts its halls, said to appear before tragedy strikes.

Trapped on the island by a storm, Sequoia must unravel the enigma of Todeket before the next life lost is his own.

The Island of Small Misfortunes will be published March 25, 2025. Pre-order is available now from Regal House.

NecronomiCon 2024

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I’m very excited to read a short story at NecronomiCon 2024 in Providence, RI, on Sunday, August 18.

I will be reading my stories “The Half That Matters” and “An Incident on Mulberry Street” in the Narragansett Bayview Room of the Graduate Hotel, 17th floor, at 2pm.

I will also have a few copies of A Season of Whispers available for sale.

If you’re attending this year’s convention celebrating weird fiction, art, and all things strange, I hope to see you there.