The first month of 2026 is over. Wish its winter was too!
It has been SERIOUSLY cold these last few weeks.
HOW COLD IS IT?
It has been so cold... you folks will have to make up your own jokes about it because I'm too busy trying to stay warm to do so myself. 😉
NOVEL: PRIVATE BATTLES, I have broken the 21,000+ word mark.
This has been one heck of a novel to write so far because, while I'm trying to set up the series for whoever winds up being the revived HUGH's new publisher once I'm done with this manuscript and start looking for them, I don't want to use anything that I already did in the existing books.
The previous HUGH MONN novels from the late, lamented Pro Se Press are part of my long term plans to restart the series.
I plan to take as many of the cases from the original short story collection and rework them into one novel to be called EARLY DAYS, which starts after PRIVATE BATTLES' last page when HUGH has earned his private detective license and sets up his own practice.
Whether or not there will be a totally new novel after that book remains to be seen, but there will be a new case for the private detective in the far flung future between the rereleases of CATCH A RISING STAR and FEMME FATALES, the other books Pro Se published in HUGH's previous print history.
Of course I will be going back over and revising those manuscripts before they're published again but afterward everything will be brand new from that point on.
Now then, two quick points of interest before I end this post.
The first being I would like to thank everyone for the 8,368 page views FILLING BLANK SPACES received this past month, which is the highest ever according to Google's Blogger logs.
The second should come as no surprise, but SOLITAIRE'S DEBUT NOVEL as well as SOLITAIRE 2: THE AGENDA are both on sale at Amazon from Airship 27.
Now then, I better get back to writing now.
Take care.
STAY SAFE!
And I'll see you around the Internet.
And I'll see you around the Internet.
Lee Houston, Junior
1 February, 2026
