If you’ve looked at my Amazon author page or checked out the books page on this site recently, you may have noticed that Chasing The Dragon is missing from my catalogue and is no longer available for purchase digitally (CreateSpace may take some more time to remove the print versions or you might find them from resellers). The reason is because I recently made the decision to pull it from distribution.
Chasing The Dragon has long been the black sheep of my catalogue. It’s a book a wrote a while ago and I always intended to do more with Riker Stone, but it never really materialized. I wrote part of the sequel to the first book, titled Die By The Sword, before I burned out on it. It was around that time that I moved on and started Love & Bullets.
Chasing The Dragon was a pretty experimental book for me. It’s far and away the darkest thing I’ve ever written. I also experimented with point of view, writing some chapters in the first-person perspective and others in the second-person.
I didn’t mind delving into that darkness, but the experimental prose was something I’ve never fully been comfortable with. I think that’s what caused me so much trouble with the second book. I also wasn’t really satisfied with the second half of Chasing The Dragon. I still think the story behind the first half was wonderful, if too much for some people. The cover is also something I’ve never quite gotten comfortable with. I wanted something grungy, but the more I look at it with everything I’ve learned since about cover design, the more I hate it.
Recently, I’ve had reason to re-evaluate my books and this has meant some reworking of covers and branding. In some cases, this meant complete retools of some covers. I’ve already produced these new covers for the Infernum books, Love & Bullets and Outlaw Blues:
Covers for future Infernum books will also be done in this same style so that the series link is still obvious even without the Infernum logo. I’ve also got an artist working on new covers for The Myth Hunter books. I’m happy with the current covers for SoulQuest and Fallen, so those will stay as is.
But what to do about Chasing The Dragon? That was still the big question in my mind and ultimately, I decided it was best to just retire the book for the time being. For about a year or more, I’ve been thinking about revisiting Chasing The Dragon and retooling it and now I have the opportunity to do exactly that.
I won’t do it right away, though. Right now I’m about two thirds of the way into the third Myth Hunter book, then I’m going to do the third Infernum book. Both are long overdue. I’ve also got the Vanguard serial and the Luther Cross series for Pro Se.
I will revisit Chasing The Dragon at some point and bring back Riker Stone in a way that the character deserves. But it’ll be a little later down the line.