Introducing THE SUMMER SON

Monday, May 24th, 2010 | Posted by: Craig Lancaster

(Cross-posted from my blog, A Mind Adrift in the West)

I’m pleased to announce that my second novel, THE SUMMER SON, will be released in October 2010 by Missouri Breaks Press*.

I started writing this story in the middle of 2009, just as my first novel, 600 HOURS OF EDWARD, was making its way from a self-released version to a newer, sleeker, better edition published by my friends at Riverbend Publishing in Helena.

Unlike EDWARD, which was written in 24 days and self-published soon thereafter, THE SUMMER SON took several months to draft, and has taken nearly a year to become what I wanted it to be. The reasons for this are many, but the biggest is that it is a deeply personal story. It’s fiction, certainly, but teasing out the story of Mitch Quillen and his long-estranged father meant going deep into my own feelings about some of the people and places that shaped me. I’m honored to have written it, and I’m equally honored to have it read.

Here’s a bit more about the story:

Mitch Quillen is in a bad-marriage-and-job-heading-for-disaster rut, and his problems are about to multiply: His estranged father, Jim, has just called his house … and said nothing. Over and over again.

The mystery sets Mitch on a journey not just in the here and now but also backward through his memories, to a violent summer nearly thirty years earlier in a small Western town, the time and place to which Mitch traces a lifetime of losses.

What if the lives you thought you knew held secrets that changed everything?

Would you still open the door?

Would you still look inside?

Want to see the book trailer? Here it is at YouTube.

THE SUMMER SON is now available for pre-sale. Those who order a copy before July 1st will receive a signed, numbered edition about a month before the book is available through retail outlets. There’s also a financial bonus for ordering early: the pre-sale price is $10.50 (plus shipping), 30 percent off the retail price. Just go to www.craiglancaster.net and follow the big banner link off the homepage.

* — You may be wondering about Missouri Breaks Press. Allow me to fill you in: It’s a boutique (that means, among other things, “small”) literary press that I’ve founded. By launching with my own novel, I’m walking my talk, as it were.

Publishing is in a sea change unlike any we’ve seen. With more avenues to publication available to more people than ever before, I felt compelled to take my own shot at the sort of literary endeavors that speak to me. I look forward to identifying projects and people with whom I want to work as this moves forward. While I’ll certainly be routing my own work to Missouri Breaks Press, I’ll also be publishing others — one or two books a year, maybe more if results exceed my expectations. I have more than twenty years’ worth of experience as a writer, an editor and a designer/typesetter. Bringing physical books (not to mention e-books) to market is something I’m well-positioned to do. (Selling them is something else, of course, but I’ve also learned much about that in the past year-plus.) In any case, I expect to have more exciting news about Missouri Breaks Press in the near future.

As part of all of this, I’m also throwing in with this collective of independent authors and publishers here at Backword Books. These are folks whose work has been validated in the most exacting of marketplaces — with critics and readers alike. I’m really looking forward to working with this fine group of writers in bringing great reads to people who hunger for them.