Today is publication day for my new Seychelle Sullivan novel, MOURNING TIDE, book number five in the series. It never gets old, that feeling of releasing your creative child out into the wild. It's exciting, but also frightening. Will they like it? What will the reviews be like? Will anyone buy it?
Seychelle Sullivan and I have a long history. I first wrote about her in a short story that was part of my thesis for my MFA degree back in 1993. That short story is included in my collection entitled SEA BITCH. I went into that program thinking that I wanted to write literary fiction. I had my subscription to the New Yorker Magazine, but after a while I realized the magazines were piling up still in their plastic wrappers, and what I was reading was the latest novel by John D. MacDonald, James W. Hall, or Randy Wayne White. I also read Sue Grafton and Nevada Barr, but I couldn't find enough books with female protagonists who were outdoorsy types willing to mix it up physically with the bad guys. I wanted to read about women who weren't afraid to get their hands dirty.
Once I'd decided I wanted to write in the crime fiction genre, I began thinking about what her job could be. I didn't want to write about a private eye or a cop. But I also didn't want it to be a stretch for her to encounter dead bodies. That's when I came up with the idea for a female towing and salvage captain with her little aluminum tug just like the real tug Hero I'd admired for years on Fort Lauderdale's New River.
Choosing that profession for her was also rather cheeky I felt, since I so admired MacDonald's character Travis McGee whose profession was "salvage" in Fort Lauderdale. Like her predecessor, Seychelle was really always more about salvaging lives than boats, and I was thrilled when many reviewers over the years referred to her as a female Travis McGee.
In MOURNING TIDE, readers will encounter a more mature Seychelle. Five years have passed in the fictional world she inhabits. She is now in her mid-thirties. Readers sometimes used to tell me they they she was too reckless, and she has recognized that in herself and vowed to change–for a very good reason. She is part of a family now after having adopted the baby Nestor who was born in the final scene of the previous book, WRECKERS' KEY. Nestor is about to start school and she might even have to join the PTA since she has settled down to live in domestic bliss with B.J.
But this is Seychelle we're talking about, right? How long do you think that's going to last?
The book is available right now in most of the stores as an ebook, and the print version should be up on Amazon's page by the end of the weekend. If you choose to read it, I sure could use some honest reviews on Amazon or whatever site you use to buy your book. The product pages look awfully lonesome right now without a single review.
Happy reading!
Fair winds!
Christine