My new novel, Software by the Kilo
In the summer of 2005, I was about to venture into my third
small start-up company, wrapping up the last items with my previous employer. As luck would have it, my previous employer had offices in Europe, in Milan, Munich and London. We were lucky enough to wrap in a non-business trip to Greece, including the island of Paxos around my visiting the European customers and offices.
I was hiking around that island one day, being pursued by thoughts of start-up company financing, when I came across a large villa, facing out across the Adriatic Sea towards Italy. Wouldn’t it be great, I mused, if there were a nice angel investor in that villa who would like to invest in this next venture?
What if he were an Italian drug smuggler?
That was the genesis for my new novel, Software by the Kilo.
But it wasn’t until last November, several years after that first trip, that the novel was finished, with a World War II back story that tied the original start-up plus Italian drug smuggler story line together.
It is no coincidence that the book is released on December 2, the anniversary of “Little Pearl Harbor”, the bombing of Bari, Italy in 1943, which ends up as a pivotal setting in the novel.
Of course I had to add in that one of the Italian henchmen loves Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, and that led to the body count game…
I never thought it would be more than three years between novels; obviously Stephen King I’m not, in more ways than just output. But I’ve enjoyed thoroughly the writing process, getting the pieces of the story to fall into place, bouncing ideas off of friends and fellow writers. The voices in my head never shut up, so my therapy to keep what little sanity I have left is to keep putting them down on paper.
The book is available at your local independent book stores like The Twig in San Antonio (now in the Pearl Brewery!), Books Inc. in California, BookPeople in Austin, Murder by the Book in Houston, Katy Budget Books in Katy Texas (if they don’t have it, stomp your feet and ask them to order it, please), at Amazon
If you have any questions or feedback before, during or after, please let me know. More info on the novel is here.
