My next novel, Annie's Bones, only employs Willie Black as a walk-on character. The protagonist is a man, an acquaintance of Willie's, who has lived under a cloud for almost half a century, suspected of murdering his girlfriend the night she dumped him in 1968. Now, with Annie's bones dug up by a backhoe operator in a small town on the Virginia-North Carolina border, Gray Melvin must deal with the past at last, taking a trip down a memory lane he'd just as soon have bypassed.
The next Willie Black mystery, Scuffletown, should come out sometime in the next year or so. Like the other Willie books, it takes its title from a real Richmond setting, in this case Scuffletown Park in the Fan. It's all fiction after that, of course, but I guarantee you it will entertain you, whether you know where the Strawberry Street Cafe is or not.
The series keeps getting praise and picking up readers. Grace was a finalist for Killer Nashville's Silver Falchion award. The Devil's Triangle got a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
I'm working on something else Willie-ish. Probably will start writing, as is often the case, on New Year's Day.
