Thanks to all those who have reminded me to update the website. It has been a shamefully long time, and all my fault. What have I been doing all this time? Writing a new book, what else? It's called TRUE EVIL, and it will be published on December 12th, 2006. The paperback of "Turning Angel" will be released a few weeks before, in November. The new novel is a "Natchez book," and while it does feature a cameo by Penn Cage (and some other familiar characters), the book introduces two new protagonists, one male and one female. Dr. Chris Shepard is a newly married physician who believes that his life is as close to perfect as it can get. Alex Morse is a female FBI agent who knows that Shepard is dead wrong. These two come together in a Hitchcockian web of suspense that leads to some very dark and dangerous places. My readers know that I sometimes go all over the map with my books. TRUE EVIL is more of a classic thriller, like "24 Hours" or "Dead Sleep," rather than a semi-literary thriller like "The Quiet Game" or "Mortal Fear." Last year everyone was a bit upset that "Turning Angel" did not come out until AFTER Christmas. This year we can all give TRUE EVIL for Christmas (as strange as that sounds.) I'm not going to post much detail about the book in this note. I will provide more info in a couple of weeks. Right now I am proofreading the galleys, which still have many mistakes and which the reviewers will be reading warts and all. So it goes, as Vonnegut said.

On to more important matters. About three months ago, thanks to the design of that wonderful program called AOL, I lost 5 years worth of stored email (over 5,000 letters from readers). I know, I should have had it all backed up, but my understanding was that it was. Tragically, no. I say tragically because I lost many emails that I had not yet answered. My habit is to answer "light" emails when I read them, but to save the "heavy" ones for later when I have time to write a thoughtful reply. Well, among those were some very moving letters from special readers, women who wrote to me about suffering sexual abuse as children, and telling me about the effect that reading "Blood Memory" had on them. Many of these women had reached the age of 40 or 50 without ever telling a soul what they had endured as children. The letters were heartbreaking, but also hopeful in many cases. There was quite a large number of these letters, and many I had not yet replied to. Please, if you sent me an email in the past 4 or 5 years (about any of my books), I am asking that you resend that letter if you still have it stored on your computer. It is my hope that in this way I can reconstitute that file of readers who have been touched by my books, but particularly by "Blood Memory," and reply as I intended to from the beginning. I've been consulting data retrieval experts in an attempt to restore this lost information, but the prognosis is bleak. If it's not too much trouble, please resend any surviving letters (however casual or trivial they may seem) to my old address at giles34@aol.com. I want to be able to stay in contact with all of you, sometimes for research help, in some cases to respond at length to your letters, and at the very least to inform you when the new book is coming out or if I am coming to your city on tour. I will be changing to a new email address soon, but for now please use the old one.

My thanks to everyone who has written to me in the past year about "Turning Angel." That turned out to be quite a polarizing book, mostly around the issue of older men with younger women. I had thought "Blood Memory" would be my most controversial book, but I learned that sexual abuse is such a terrifying subject for most people that they simply refuse to address the reality in their own lives, families, or even communities. Teen sex is apparently much easier to get upset about.

I will also be posting my tour schedule as soon as possible. I look forward to seeing old and new friends on the road!

Until then, my warm regards,

Greg

PS I recently blurbed a book by a new writer named Brent Ghelfi. It's called VOLK's GAME and it's set in present-day Russia. It's a bit violent, but for you classic thriller fans out there, this is the real deal. I couldn't stop reading it. I don't blurb many books, and I'd like to help this guy as much as I can. He deserves to be read, and you deserve the treat. I'm not sure when it hits the shelves, but look for it. VOLK's GAME.

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