Tag Archives: romance

Last Rites – A Last Healer Mystery

When I wrote The Last Healer, I did not intend to continue the story in a sequel, but several people who read the book said they wanted to read more about Katie and Joe. I decided to get to work on a second book that I titled Last Rites. I am happy to say it is now available.

Last Rites starts three months after the events of The Last Healer. Katie and Joe return from their honeymoon and learn that Katie’s friend, Ashley has been shot and near death. They race to Milwaukee so Joe can use his healing powers to save her and end up investigating the murder of Ashley’s mother. Like the first book, their investigation again leads them into danger.

This story continues to highlight the differences in personalities. Katie is the outgoing one. She knows how to talk to people and has a good moral compass. She also is a modern girl with fashion sense. Joe, being over a hundred years old, is grounded in the past. He is polite, chivalrous, and wise. He is also uncomfortable with technology and can sometimes be blunt when talking to people.

If you haven’t read The Last Healer, you can find it here. If you would like to read Last Rites click here. While it is better to read the books in order, you can read Last Rites by itself. If you do read one of my books, I would be grateful for a review. As of this writing, the print versions of Last Rites are not yet available due to an error in the cover design. I’m hoping to have that fixed soon.

Three Books in Six Months

I self-published my first novel, Identity Crisis, on July 9th, 2023. Granted, it took 20 years to start writing it and five years actually to write it, but I did it. I then wrote and published my next book, The Last Healer, a little more than two months later in September of last year.

Once I knew I could actually write a book everything seemed to become much easier. That is what I thought after I finished my second book. Then things got hard. The next book I started went well for a few chapters but then I got stuck. I had the beginning and I had a good idea of the ending but I couldn’t figure out how to expand the middle without boring the reader. That story just wanted to be a short story so I gave up.

I then tried something different. I decided to write a family friendly story. A story you might see on Disney back when Disney was family friendly. Unfortunately, after several chapters, I just couldn’t get excited about the story so I stopped writing it.

I then started writing my latest book Shooting Star. This story I felt better about writing and was able to get through the first draft pretty quickly. I wasn’t entirely happy with the story after the first draft although no first draft is ever perfect. At 30,000 words it was too short for one thing. I also felt that the characters needed more depth.

I spent some time working on the story. I added a little more romance between the characters and increased the word count to about 36,000. It’s still fairly short but it falls into the novella category. I suppose I could have added scenes to make it longer, but I didn’t want to dilute the story. Often times when I am editing my writing, I find deleting parts of the story works better than adding to it. In the end I am happy with the final version of this book.

For now, the book is available only on Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats. I wanted to enroll in the KDP program. Doing so means that I can only sell it on Amazon for 90 days, but I can offer the eBook for free for, I believe, a total of five days during that period. So today and tomorrow you can get the Kindle version for free. I am hoping I can get people to read it and leave a review for me. If you would like to help me by reading my book and leaving a review, you can get the book here.

I would also appreciate reviews for my other books. I can’t offer those for free, but I can offer my gratitude and a good story. Thanks for reading.