CHICAGO LIGHTNING did very well on its Kindle Deal of the Day 99-cent sale – something like 8000 copies. For a short story collection, that’s amazing, even at the discount. If you prefer a real, physical object (it’s called a book), you should pick this up. Also, the audio version read by Dan John Miller really is fun.

The Simon and Kirby CRIME comics collection from Titan hit the New York Times list, another amazing accomplishment, for which I can take zero credit, though my intro is getting some nice comments in reviews.

I am wrapping up SPILLANE ON SCREEN (I’ll ship it out this week) and starting serious work on SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, the Jack and Maggie Starr novel for Hard Case Crime. I am delighted to be returning to this series. The cover is by Glenn Orbik (can’t share it yet, but it’s an eye-popper) and Terry Beatty will do interior chapter illos and a fake EC-style cover as a frontispiece.

Thanksgiving here was low-key and very enjoyable, with Nate and his girl friend Abby joining us (as well as our granddog, Toaster) and Barb cooked a fantastic traditional turkey dinner. We watched lots of movies, also episodes of AUCTION HUNTERS (a good rival to STORAGE WARS), saw the very good ARTHUR CHRISTMAS (after suffering through an abysmal Justin Bieber video that almost ruined a good movie), and did very minimal Black Friday shopping (picked up some cheap Blu-rays at Walmart, mostly for Riff Trax purposes).

On Saturday night, at the VFW Hall in Lone Tree, Iowa, for an anniversary party, Crusin’ had its first gig with new bass player, Brian Van Winkle, who did a fine job. It’s going to be a very good version of the band.

See you next week with less personal stuff, apologies for which are mitigated by the holiday season.

M.A.C.