We'll start the hype train with the cover reveal of the current cover for the story. It is a scene from the story. Actually a key scene, though you would not realize it at the time. However, I have in mind what I think might be an even better cover; a black and white drawing like I did for A Night on Isvalar. But I haven't drawn that one yet, so it's one of them birds in the bush. I want to give it a try, but never seem to get around to doing it. We'll see. I have several weeks, and it's the work of a day.
So what is The Isle House Ghost about? I probably talked about a month or two ago, but if you haven't read that piece; briefly, it is the third story featuring Mr Redinal Hu, sometimes known as Red or Reddie Wine, a gentleman for hire in the Great Games played by the Great Houses of Lorria. Which is to say, a sometimes operative hired by the rich and powerful families of Lorria to further their ends, one way or another. In Red's case, for good causes. In this case, he is hired to capture another operative, known as Compliant Agent Nine, who is breaking into the country house of a wealthy industrialist to deliver notes urging him to put his name on a memorandum advocating social change in pre-revolutionary Lorria. Innocent enough, at the moment. The industrialist, however, fears it will soon turn into threats, or dire action, and given the ease this operative seems to have entering his house, he wants this intruder out of action before things go south. So he hires Red Hu to trap and captured this Agent Nine.
The story turned out to be a 40,000 word novella.
However, just as I was finishing writing that story, a follow-up "what if?" story, occurred to me. To tack it onto the end of the story I'd just written would have given that story an awkward shape, and well, it would also have ruined the little gag at the end that I had written, which I really liked. That being the case, I decided to write it as a separate short story, which ended up running some 9,000 words. This short story, Nine Again, is a direct sequel two The Isle House Ghost, taking place less than a week after the events of that story. It will be included with The Isle House Ghost as a special bonus story rather than as a separate short story. I know a lot of writers release short stories as "books" on Amazon, but I personally don't like that practice, so it will not get its own release.
Looking further ahead, I am currently about 10,000 words into the next, and the last, Red Hu/Red Wine story, with a target publication date in the May-June 2026 time frame. I had envisioned this series of stories as sort of a prequel to the fictional Red Wine Agency stories of the fiction writer character in my own Chateau Clare novel. I wrote them as prequels because I don't think writing the type of elaborate thriller stories that I envisioned the actual Red Wine Agency stories to be are in my wheelhouse to write myself. So instead, I opted to write less complex and more cozy mystery/adventure stories in which Red gradually decides to become the Red Wine Agency fellow of those fictional stories.
In this last story, its working, but likely not final title, being The Little Game. The "Little Game" being family conflicts within the Great Houses, as apposed to the Great Game involving conflicts between the Great Houses. Stilh Alive might be a better title? Who knows? In it Red Hu is hired as a lawyer/bodyguard for one Constance Stilh, a woman who is about to inherit the estate of one of the Great Houses, becoming the Head of the House of Stilh. But she has two ruthless uncles and one ruthless aunt who are currently running the House of Stilh's three business ventures all three of them want to become the Head of the House themself. And at least one of them may be ruthless enough to see that Constance doesn't live long enough to inherit the Stilh estate. A real threat, seeing that Constance's grandfather died in a motor accident that, official report be damned, the collective staffs of the Rivers Borough Great Houses consider very likely to have been murder. While this is a variation of a plot device I used in The Darval-Mers Dossier, it is characteristic of the type of power plays that go on within the powerful and wealthy families of Lorria, and they type of stories that the Red Wine Agency books would have included. Progress is slow, but I'll be quite content if it also turns out to be a novella, and if that proves to be the case, I'm at least 25% in to it.
Stay turned for more details on The Isle House Ghost, and Nine Again, and progress on The Little Game.
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