Summer 2009
On September 9, 2005, during the LOCKED DOORS book tour, I walked out of the Bisbee Coffee Co. in Bisbee, Arizona, caffed-up on some of the best java I'd ever had. Whether it was the high-octane coffee or the stir-craziness of being alone on the road in beautiful-desolate southern Arizona, I made a pact with myself that I would drop everything and write the story that had been gnawing at me for a long time, but which I had neglected because I wasn't sure I had the chops or the endurance to pull off. It was going to be a big, epic thriller about a mining town that vanishes toward the end of the 19th Century and a present-day group who returns to investigate the mass-disappearance. So I abandoned the book I was working on at the time and jumped in.
Four years, three hundred pages of notes, one 40-page outline, 22 character sketches, 8 drafts (and more research than I will ever attempt again in this lifetime) later, that book is finished, printed, bound, and off into the world. I know writers aren't supposed to say this kind of stuff, but I love this book. It's the story I really wanted to tell, it's from the heart, and I hope you have half as much fun reading it as I did writing it. ABANDON arrives tomorrow everywhere books are sold, in hardcover from Minotaur Books and CD/MP3 from Brilliance Audio.
And finally, a little contest for everyone who hasn't read the book (and maybe even those who have). Email me what you think caused every resident in the mining town of Abandon to disappear on Christmas Day in 1893. The best entry (which could mean the funniest, nastiest, strangest, most sadistic, or even something I wish I'd thought of) will win a signed, 1st edition hardcover of ABANDON, as well as a very limited edition chapbook of the novella, SERIAL, which I wrote with Jack Kilborn and was designed by Jeroen ten Berge. Norwood Press printed up 500 of these, and they're numbered and signed by Jack and me. The contest will be open through July 14th, and I'll post the best entry on my website.
As always, your support means more than you know.
All best,
Blake