Swap now available for the Kindle

My novel, Swap, is now available for the Kindle. It's only listed at Amazon.com, not Amazon.ca but it does ship (download, I guess) to Canada.

You can find it here.

It is also listed at Amazon.com under the US title, Let It Ride, but that one doesn't download to Canada.

I'm very pleased that my next book, Tumblin' Dice, will have the same publisher for the USA and Canada (ECW Press) and there won't be any of this confusion between territories.

The Pitch

My first Kindle book.




The cover pretty much says it all, but here's the Amazon description:

After working as a writer on the CBS/CTV cop drama, The Bridge, novelist John McFetridge (Dirty Sweet, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Let It Ride) began pitching his own ideas for TV shows to American and Canadian networks. The four stories in The Pitch are based on pilot scripts written for three of these potential series; Pulp Life, a comedy-noir half-hour cable series about a crime novelist helping an ex-con write his memoir – and commit crimes; East Coast, a network-style police procedural about narcotics cops on the Maine-New Brunswick border and; Revolution, a spy story set in Montreal in 1968 with a KGB agent as the hero.

One of the two Pulp Life stories first appeared in the Do Some Damage anthology, Collateral Damage, and the story East Coast has been available from Smashwords for a while.

The Second Pulp Life story and Revolution have never appeared anywhere before.

I've had this idea for a while to write e-books as if they're TV series - a "season-long" story arc playing out over 6 or 13 "episodes" but each one also having a self-contained story. Maybe publishing the "episodes" once a month and then also making them available as single collection, like a TV series box set of DVDs.

The stories in this collection were adapted from pilot scripts I wrote so the two Pulp Life episodes are about the same length that half-hour TV shows would be and East Coast and Revolution about the same length as an hour-long TV episode.

If you're interested, you can find the book here.

And maybe you could let me know if you think there should be any more 'episodes' of any of the 'series.'

The Cold Cold Ground

What is it with novelists setting books in the years when they were around ten years old?

I'm working on book now set in 1970 - I was born in 1959.

Stephen King has a new book out this week that starts in 2011 and the main character time travels back to 1958 - Stephen King was born in 1947.

Adrian McKinty has a new book coming out in January set in Northern Ireland in 1981 - Adrian was born in 1968.



I like Stephen King's books and I expect I'll read this new one soon and like it well enough but I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of Adrian's, The Cold Cold Ground, and it is a fantastic book.

The back of the book description says:

There may be troubles ahead...Northern Ireland. Spring 1981. Hunger strikes. Riots. Power cuts. A homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera. And a young woman's suicide that may yet turn out to be murder. On the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things - and people - aren't always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It's no easy job - especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA, but last seen discussing business with someone from the UVF. Add to that the fact that as a Catholic policemen, it doesn't matter which side he's on, because nobody trusts him - and Sergeant Duffy really is in a no-win situation. Fast-paced, evocative and brutal, "The Cold, Cold Ground" is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles - and a cop treading a thin, thin line.

I really hope there are more Sean Duffy books, the guy's a great character.