Have I mentioned that I have another book coming out next month?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Repossessed Ghost<\/em> served as the first introduction to Mel Walker, a young scoundrel with a heart of gold and a psychic gift. Next month, in the middle of July, The Psychic on the Jury<\/em> will be out, continuing the story a few years after the events of The Repossessed Ghost<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s a novelette, around 13,000 words in length.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But Brian, how many pages is that?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assuming around 225 words per page, that’s about 58 pages. It’s a short story. By way of comparison, The Repossessed Ghost<\/em> is just under 80,000 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why a short story? Why not a novel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are two main reasons. First, a story should be as long as it needs to be, based on the number of characters, settings, and plot elements. I had the idea quite some time ago, wondering what it would be like for someone like Mel to serve as a juror. It’s a perfectly fine idea for a story, but it doesn’t inspire a particularly long tale unless I pad it a bit. The Psychic on the Jury<\/em> is relatively streamlined, and I think just the right size for what I wanted to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second reason for putting out a shorter story is to give people a cheaper alternative to starting the Mel Walker series. I don’t think $15 is that much for a trade paperback, but that’s still more than some people are willing to invest in checking out a little known writer like myself. I don’t know what the price will be for The Psychic on the Jury<\/em>, but I assume it’ll be around $5 like so many of the other Dragon Gems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One can read The Psychic on the Jury<\/em> first, as it contains no significant spoilers for The Repossessed Ghost<\/em>. However, they’re probably more fun reading them in chronological order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’re attending Baycon, you’ll be able to buy the book early, just like last year with The Repossessed Ghost<\/em>. If you’re not attending Baycon, you’ll still be able to pre-order it around then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is exciting! A sequel!<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, I’ve made a little more progress on the outline for the next sequel novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I get more concrete information, I’ll share it here. Soon, I’ll post covers, anecdotes about writing The Psychic on the Jury<\/em>, and other stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have I mentioned that I have another book coming out next month? The Repossessed Ghost served as the first introduction to Mel Walker, a young scoundrel with a heart of gold and a psychic gift. Next month, in the middle of July, The Psychic on the Jury will be out, continuing the story a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57494,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57492\/revisions\/57494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}