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| THE NEW COVER FOR THE FIRST TRADE PAPERBACK EDITION OF ONE TRUE SENTENCE |
February, 2011: One True Sentence is released, the fourth of the Hector Lassiter novels.
At its climax, crime novelist
Hector Lassiter wanders into a woman’s Paris apartment, bleeding and pushed
past all points of exhaustion. The story ends on a dark and ambiguous note:
“In the blackness, Hector
felt himself falling.”
Then, a kind of real
blackness swallowed up Hector and his ongoing series.
Nearly all of the planned Lassiter
novels were finished long before OTS was published. But logistics, competing
publisher nibbles and various other factors resulted in a kind of accidental purgatory
for the Lassiter series.
Hector has lingered in that
blackness far too long.
It’s a fact made more
frustrating because One True Sentence
and its intended follow up are the only two chronologically and plot-linked
books in the series. There was every intention of having Hector Lassiter and
fellow novelist Brinke Devlin reconnect on Valentine’s Day 1925 (or, for his
readers, February 14, 2012), as was set up in the closing pages of OTS.
While the series has been on
forced hiatus, I’ve steadily recovered publishing rights and now have complete control
of all Lassiter novels, past and
future, for the first time since 2006.
The plan now is to publish the
series in hyper-accelerated fashion between this and next summer.
The entire Hector Lassiter
series and a collection of Lassiter short stories will be made available in eBook
and uniform trade paperback editions over a course of mere months.
Each novel will feature an
introduction and reader discussion questions, along with new covers and overall
packaging.
I see these as the
definitive Lassiter editions and they will in fact represent the first
paperback editions available in English of Print
the Legend and One True Sentence.
There’s something else very different about this edition of
releases.
Readers of the Lassiter
series know time is used in a most unusual way in the novels. The books are
designed to present a larger story and arc for Hector when the series is viewed
as a whole.
However, the novels can also
be read in any order. Upon original publication, the first four novels jumped
back and forth through time, with Hector variously presented as an older and
younger man.
The new releases of the Hector
Lassiter series will try for something different. We’re going to present the
books in roughly chronological order—at least in terms of where the main story
starts as the novel opens. In other words, the repackaged series now begins
with One True Sentence, the fourth
novel in original publication sequence, but the first novel chronologically.
Set in 1924 Paris and
featuring Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and a host of other historical
notables from the period, that novel is now followed by its intended sequel, Forever’s Just Pretend, enjoying its
first-ever publication.
FJP completes another story,
revealing how Hector became the guy we come to know across the rest of the
series: “The man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives.”
Before autumn’s end, you
will also be given a repackaged, expanded version of Toros & Torsos (1935), quickly followed by two new Lassiter
novels, The Great Pretender (1938) and
Roll the Credits (1940).
The rest of the repackaged
series briskly unfolds in similar fashion, a mix of old and new titles.
As I’ve said, the Lassiter
novels were written back-to-back and the series mostly shaped and in place
before the second novel was officially published. It’s very unusual in that
sense—a series of discrete novels that are tightly linked and when taken
together stand as a single, far larger story.
I reserve the right to tell
smaller, “standalone” Lassiter stories here and there perhaps, but the heart
and soul of Hector’s saga is in the ten books coming your way over the next few
months.
Welcome back to the world of
Hector Lassiter.
STILL TO COME: New cover reveals, novel descriptions and book trailers.
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