Brian January, Thriller Author

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Emerald update!

One of the joys of writing novels is the creation of characters who seem to come to life--people who, just like actual human beings, change and evolve over time and with experience. This, of course, is the classic character arc of literature. Even so, to my mind, action-adventure protagonists should stay relatively stable--James Bond, for example, is always James Bond. Still, over the course of three novels and four novellas that chronicle the exploits of OSR field officers Park Skarda and April Force, subtle changes have occurred in these characters' interactions that just weren't conceivable when I first wrote Emerald, the flagship book of the series. While Skarda is still Skarda, still haunted by the murder of his wife, and April will always be April--enigmatic, competent, and dangerous--nevertheless they have changed in subtle ways over the span of their adventures.

Therefore I've decided to update Emerald with a second edition (WIP), taking into account what I've come to learn about Skarda and April over time. I hadn't re-read the novel since I published it in 2011--at that time it received some favorable attention from agents and publishers, but I decided to self-publish, anyway--and when I recently went through it again I was pleased to find that the story held up well as did the all-important pacing (I write for entertainment purposes--plane or beach reads that make my readers happily turning pages and take them away from their daily cares for a few hours--so fast pacing is a must). I did find a couple of typos and duplicated words that I and my proofreaders missed the first time (we're just human after all, but reviewers will give you a 1-star rating for a missing period), and there were a couple of factoids that my research at the time told me were correct, but which turned out to be wrong. It's essentially the same story, but a few things have been deleted and few added. So if you've already read it, no need to buy a new copy (unless you want to!) and if you haven't, I hope you will read it and enjoy it! It should be out soon! As always, many thanks to all my readers and fans!