What comes next... — STEVEN HARDESTY

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I bet you're on the hunt for good reading and want to know if my books are worth your time and eyestrain. So let's get on with it and talk about my books.

I've been writing all my life, mostly for cruel taskmasters but as often as I could for myself. I had a war novel published in hardback in the traditional way and published again in paperback a bit later. Magazines bought my mystery and science fiction short stories. But mostly I piled up manuscripts without knowing if I'd ever see them in print. Until I discovered indie publishing.

Like AirBnb, Uber and Netflix, independent book publishing is a gift of freedom to readers and writers. I quit my day job and now indie writing and publishing are what I do. The downside is it's all so much fun that I'm piling up projects faster than I can finish them. So I’ve decided to use both hands on the keyboard.

Here's what I'm working on now…

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● With Harry Seaburn's "noir on wry" crime caper series done (7 books, a nice, round number), I’m filling out the series’ backstory along Florida's snapping-gator Everglades. First, with short stories about the one-legged thief Bitter Bob and that pair of kidnappers who never get anything right. Then with a spin-off mystery novel featuring the pacifist-sniper-hippie-swampwoman Marjorie (AKA Tang Gramophone Weinstock III) from one of Harry's wildest heist capers. And, of course, I'll throw in the usual dozen retired circus elephants trampling the swamp and the Miami mafia.

● I've done a first draft of The Long Run, next in the Dirty Wars Series of gritty international thrillers, opening with a failed helicopter breakout from a Bolivian prison in the high Andes and the hero (well, a very anti-hero) running wild across South America thereafter.

● And - by popular demand - I'm working up a sequel to Running in Heels telling the even tougher half of the story of a woman who changes from wimp to hero as she steals back a fortune stolen from her which she accidentally stole from a psychopath and her drug-running familiar, an assassin who can never remember who to kill without written notes.

● I’m also halfway through drafting the sardonic comedy War and the Newby about how young soldiers become old soldiers, if they're very, very careful. With luck, I'll have it ready for Christmas gift-giving, if you really want to give your giftees something that bites and won't let go.

Hope to have all of this done this year, if I can learn to use all ten fingers to hammer the keyboard.

☼ Cheers and thanks for asking!