The past couple of days, I've been preparing to post a new (though also old) ebook to Amazon and Kobo. The title is E.F.T. and it's what authors call a "trunk book," which usually denotes an early effort that was not good enough to be published. But that's not the case with this crime novel.
It was good enough to land me a New York agent with a solid reputation. Unfortunately, before she could really get any traction with placing the title, a close family member was grievously injured in a car crash, and lingered on the cusp of eternity for months afterward. My agent, understandably, dropped everything to stay by the hospital bedside until the loved one was out of danger and recovering.
After a few weeks, I thought it best to look for another agent, since there was no knowing when she would return to the business, if ever. That is when I discovered that, if an agent has "gone out" with a book, however briefly, and failed to place it, no other agent will be interested in handling it.
So, E.F.T. went into the trunk and stayed there. Besides, by then I was getting offers to write SF and fantasy, so my original ambition to be a crime writer went on hold. And by the time I was in a position to reconsider placing it, the technology at the heart of the story -- E.F.T. stands for Electronic Funds Transfer, which was abstruse when I wrote it -- had become commonplace.
If you read it, you'll have to think of it as almost a historical novel, a tale from that foreign country that is the past, where they do things differently there. But you'll see that it also fits into that recurring motif of mine: a story about an outlier who doesn't quite fit his environment. That's Harry Lukovitch, a detective sergeant with the Vancouver Police Department, and an oddball.
I
t will be live on Amazon and Kobo in a day or so, and I'll post the blurb and some links.
