My new novella, Auction Yard, is up for Kindle and Nook. I debated making a paperback edition available, but I think I’ll wait until I have a collection of three novellas at least. I think there’s way too much time and expense involved in the paperback version to make one novella viable. Who’s going to pay six or seven bucks for a fifty page story? (I mean besides my mom.) I know I wouldn’t. So, that said, on to the new story, Auction Yard:

Auction Yard is a contemporary fiction work. It’s about temptation and desire, but don’t think it’s easy or cheap. It’s not a smarmy romance or a sappy love story. I hate those. I hope it is a real examination, a fair examination, of real life, of sacrifice, of love, of honor, and, well of humanity. Ironically, or perhaps not, a lot of this examination of humanity is done through the lens of animals and how we as humans interact, or not, with them. (The story is set on a cattle ranch. It is a modern day ranch, not something out of the old West, so, sorry, but there are no gunslingers or tribal massacres.) This idea has a lot to do with the novella’s subtitle, “A Story of Love, Desire and . . . Meat.”

For those of you who don’t mind reading outside of the science fiction and/or fantasy genres that does and likely will continue to dominate the theme of my website, I hope you will consider having a peek at Auction Yard. Keep in mind it’s a novella, and a short one at that, so it’s great for a nice quick read. I hope you will enjoy it. I’ve tried to make something beautiful with this story. Time will tell if I had any luck pulling that off.

I would also like to say, before I get back to work on the sequel to The Galactic Mage, that the cover art for Auction Yard was done by our very own resident artist, Lauren Daulton. This young woman has more talent in her little finger than the sun has gas. It’s so amazing to watch her work and grow as an artist. This particular cover is something well out of her normal fare, but when I tried to pull off the circular fence with my own meager drawing skills, well, let’s just say it mostly sucked. So, off I went, hat in hand, and… poof! There you have it. (Any fault with the layout, fonts or that sort of thing is mine, but she gets full credit for the beautiful and stylish illustration that is center front.)

Anyway, have a look at Auction Yard if you enjoy more serious work from time to time. I hope you laugh. I hope you cry. But mostly I hope you’ll give it a try. (Hey, that rhymed. … Could there be a book of poetry in my future…? Could there be some other campy 1960s Batman-like question after this…? Stay tuned next time to see if your author can recover from this terrible blog entry close…)

And don’t worry, no poetry. I promise. Only prose.