Making a Comeback
Comebacks don't happen over night.
Well, except in books, of course. Fiction and all that lot. And of course lurking in our dreams, wishes, fantasies, hopes, and expectations. Righteous and otherwise.
But an author often has little to go on but those hopes, expectations, and dreams. And the ability to summon the discipline--and energy--to forge onward into the unknown.
I do that on a daily basis, because I must (the importance of routine and ritual a subject for another day. Or week. Or month. My bad about the latter, but those two months were what it took to next the next of my Florida-based Tony Lowell Mystery series to release, which has now occurred (see below).
What other purpose might a past-middle-aged author have, after a brief splash of fame back in the '90s. Before the turn of the century, as it were. TC2, to coin an expression? Major publisher (St. Martin's), major agent who prefers to remain anonymous, major book tour, now somewhere back over the rainbow.
But now I restart my writer's life once again, after a brief decade or two of sabbatical including a teaching role as instructor in English at a university in northern China (in the former Manchuria), basically as a favor to a friend, which led to an ultimately failed marital experiment between races and cultures, each alien to the other. I wrote a book about that, in fact, Inside the New China, which was published by Rutgers University's Transaction Publishing.
Failed marriage, of course, is something else to write about. What should it be called? Romance? Hmm. Has anyone discovered that parameter of the paramour as of yet? Oh...wait...
So here's a news flash: once again mystery/thriller/intrigue author yours truly, E.C. Ayres is back from the dead, this time with a small publisher based in Santa Fe, Speaking Volumes:
http://www.speakingvolumes.us/.
My first updated revival, of Hour of the Manatee (updated meaning cell phones instead of phone booths, desktop computers and laptops, etc. etc.) was re-published in November (2019). The second in this series, Eye of the Gator, has now been released as well, and we expect monthly releases in the near future, completing the five-part (to date) Tony Lowell series, then introducing The Jake Fleming Investigations: a series featuring an investigative reporter on the international beat, for a San Francisco newspaper as well as AP/UPI. Fleming is my second of equally somewhat alienated male protagonists, with a varying number of females in their respective personal and professional lives, including young daughters of similar age.
Investigative reporters, I might add--like the newspapers that employ them--are an endangered species. And there is danger, most certainly, for a foreign correspondent, in this (or any) day and age.
Jake Fleming's third investigation (apart from ones of lesser import undeserving--thus far--of this author's time or effort) will bring him to China, to the aforementioned former Manchuria, also emulating my own numerous adventures and experiences there aside from marriage. (No, he doesn't get married there like I did--he knows better than I, without doubt).
Not that he doesn't encounter trouble.
And danger.
My third Jake Fleming Investigation will be 'Black Dragon River,' named for the far-northern river that forms the border between China and Russia: between Heilongjiang Province and Siberia. This will be based on events that actually took place on my campus occurring virtually at the moment of my ascension to the author-turned-instructor podium in Harbin, home of the Ice Festival of global fame. And now infamy, as will become evident in my book: a murder mystery set in a city of nine million, with eleven universities.
Jake Fleming, like me, will be there as a favor to an old friend, teaching English for a year (which became three, in my case, but not Jake's) on a brand new campus in the northern suburbs, while living on the old campus (but in a new building of very nice, furnished faculty apartments), in the heart of Harbin proper, about a mile east of the city center.
As a sidebar, I want to mention that Harbin is a beautiful city, with a mile-long pedestrian-only boulevard that runs south to the Songhua River--which flows north to meet and weds the Heilongjiang at a town called Tong Jiang--and joins with a river walk, also about a mile in length.
Both of which make for a splendid walk any time of the year, with numerous appropriate stopping points for an excellent Harbin Beer, or sampling of excellent northern Chinese cuisine.
But I digress: with apologies, this blog was originally simply intended to introduce--or rather re-introduce--my Tony Lowell Mystery series.
Thank you for your attention.
Ciao for now,
E.C. Ayres
Well, except in books, of course. Fiction and all that lot. And of course lurking in our dreams, wishes, fantasies, hopes, and expectations. Righteous and otherwise.
But an author often has little to go on but those hopes, expectations, and dreams. And the ability to summon the discipline--and energy--to forge onward into the unknown.
I do that on a daily basis, because I must (the importance of routine and ritual a subject for another day. Or week. Or month. My bad about the latter, but those two months were what it took to next the next of my Florida-based Tony Lowell Mystery series to release, which has now occurred (see below).
What other purpose might a past-middle-aged author have, after a brief splash of fame back in the '90s. Before the turn of the century, as it were. TC2, to coin an expression? Major publisher (St. Martin's), major agent who prefers to remain anonymous, major book tour, now somewhere back over the rainbow.
But now I restart my writer's life once again, after a brief decade or two of sabbatical including a teaching role as instructor in English at a university in northern China (in the former Manchuria), basically as a favor to a friend, which led to an ultimately failed marital experiment between races and cultures, each alien to the other. I wrote a book about that, in fact, Inside the New China, which was published by Rutgers University's Transaction Publishing.
Failed marriage, of course, is something else to write about. What should it be called? Romance? Hmm. Has anyone discovered that parameter of the paramour as of yet? Oh...wait...
So here's a news flash: once again mystery/thriller/intrigue author yours truly, E.C. Ayres is back from the dead, this time with a small publisher based in Santa Fe, Speaking Volumes:
http://www.speakingvolumes.us/.
My first updated revival, of Hour of the Manatee (updated meaning cell phones instead of phone booths, desktop computers and laptops, etc. etc.) was re-published in November (2019). The second in this series, Eye of the Gator, has now been released as well, and we expect monthly releases in the near future, completing the five-part (to date) Tony Lowell series, then introducing The Jake Fleming Investigations: a series featuring an investigative reporter on the international beat, for a San Francisco newspaper as well as AP/UPI. Fleming is my second of equally somewhat alienated male protagonists, with a varying number of females in their respective personal and professional lives, including young daughters of similar age.
Investigative reporters, I might add--like the newspapers that employ them--are an endangered species. And there is danger, most certainly, for a foreign correspondent, in this (or any) day and age.
Jake Fleming's third investigation (apart from ones of lesser import undeserving--thus far--of this author's time or effort) will bring him to China, to the aforementioned former Manchuria, also emulating my own numerous adventures and experiences there aside from marriage. (No, he doesn't get married there like I did--he knows better than I, without doubt).
Not that he doesn't encounter trouble.
And danger.
My third Jake Fleming Investigation will be 'Black Dragon River,' named for the far-northern river that forms the border between China and Russia: between Heilongjiang Province and Siberia. This will be based on events that actually took place on my campus occurring virtually at the moment of my ascension to the author-turned-instructor podium in Harbin, home of the Ice Festival of global fame. And now infamy, as will become evident in my book: a murder mystery set in a city of nine million, with eleven universities.
Jake Fleming, like me, will be there as a favor to an old friend, teaching English for a year (which became three, in my case, but not Jake's) on a brand new campus in the northern suburbs, while living on the old campus (but in a new building of very nice, furnished faculty apartments), in the heart of Harbin proper, about a mile east of the city center.
As a sidebar, I want to mention that Harbin is a beautiful city, with a mile-long pedestrian-only boulevard that runs south to the Songhua River--which flows north to meet and weds the Heilongjiang at a town called Tong Jiang--and joins with a river walk, also about a mile in length.
Both of which make for a splendid walk any time of the year, with numerous appropriate stopping points for an excellent Harbin Beer, or sampling of excellent northern Chinese cuisine.
But I digress: with apologies, this blog was originally simply intended to introduce--or rather re-introduce--my Tony Lowell Mystery series.
Thank you for your attention.
Ciao for now,
E.C. Ayres
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