Just out today, Part III of the Knowers series: The Duplicity. I love this series, and this book in particular, because all of the characters are forced to work together, despite their relative animosities or amorosities. The fact that everyone's super smart makes the awkwardness and struggles that much more pointed. Very fun, from my second favorite author.

Untouchable

Today, my new novel is officially out on the street. Or up on shelves. Or ready to be cradled in a cardboard box with little plastic pillows and delivered to your home, a new born novel. 

Untouchable is about FBI Special Agent Leah Capello, a member of the Bureau's Art Crime Team and the underside of the New York art world. And it's about her relationship with Joshua Fawls, who claims to be an art expert, seems a little psychic and is probably, more than likely, a conman. The book was inspired by a quote from the artist Edgar Degas: Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. Just like the perfect crime. 

You will love it more than the year 2020. Promise.

Retiring Unprecedented

Numbers get retired all the time. When an athlete does something exceptional their number gets hoisted on a banner, never to be used again. Take Jackie Roosevelt Robinson, for instance. Not only the first Black player in Major League Baseball, but a six-time all star in a ten-year career. Jackie was everywhere and did everything. He was so good that after 1997, no baseball player gets to wear 42. And not just Dodgers. It’s the only number to be taken out of circulation by the whole league.

Jackie Robinson was unprecedented. After 2020, no one should use that word any more, either. Unprecedented should be retired. No, it didn’t shatter the color barrier or bat .342, but it did so much work this year it deserves a break. Send it to a beach. Let it fish. A quick look at Google shows searches for the world increased ten-fold in March of this year. From COVID to the machinations of the Trump administration, the word got used like a lighter at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. Let’s put it out. I’m sick of it, myself. It has been nearly impossible to make it through a news cycle without hearing it over and over to the point of lost power. In 2020 unprecedented became the “new normal” (which is next on my list.)

Everything is, in a way, unprecedented. Nothing with a human hand in it happens exactly the same way twice. If you want me care about the abnormal – donning masks in public, a loser that refuses to concede, a parade with no spectators watching the bands go by – tell me why in more than one word. Especially when that word is really, really tired.

Go ahead, judge the book by this cover

Well, here it is. The cover of my newest novel, done by the remarkable Cole Johnson. The book officially comes out January 6, 2021. Thank God. The year 2020 just doesn't look right. You can't even correct for it, no matter what kind of lens you grind. 

This is a wrap-around, and the back is just as intriguing as the front. And that's not me bragging, as I had nothing to do with it. If I could illustrate this well, I'd probably never write another novel.

Untouchable will be available in print or epub. Hope you check it out. 

My Cup of Tea

Check out the other Martineck's writing in the Autumn edition of My Cup of Tea.  Nina Martineck's short story "Streetlight" is a quick flash of night in New York, that sadly reminds me of a city more romantic and sparkly, with the kind of prospects one might welcome, as opposed to requiring bed rest or hospitalization.

(Photo note: When the magazine arrived, Nina tossed it down on the table, next to a cup of tea already sitting there, as one always is, and took the shot. No staging.)

Loving this article in Strange Horizons. I'm not anti-capitalist, but I'm not blind to its flaws, either. Which is why I wrote The Milkman and its sequel, The Link Boy. Check it out. ""SOMETHING OF FREEDOM IS YET TO COME": THE ENTANGLED HISTORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION AND CAPITALISM" by Olav Rokne, author and co-fonder of the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog. 

I'm also glad there is still some interest out there in economic-based science fiction. I thought I was the only one carrying a sign at my demonstration.

New Book

I may have a new novel coming out soon. It’s a mystery. As in the book is about a crime and because I can’t seem to reliably predict any moment in my immediate future. Long term, sure, things are going to be great. Two weeks from now? Halloween or Thanksgiving? No idea. So who knows when the tome will hit your shelf. I’m going to guess at a late fall release of my next book, The Untouchable.

Watch this space.