John L. Monk

by John L. Monk

I may be unique in the universe, but after 2 years of not being able to read due to an illness, my return to the world of books included a complete change in the way I select material.  Many readers stick to their list of known authors.  I did that for a long time.  If a Grisham, King, Cook, Clark, hit the stands, that was who I read.  This is fine, but now that indie authors have many ways to get their work out to the public, sticking to known authors is a disservice to yourself, and some pretty talented people who didn’t necessarily get a big break from publishing companies.

I also no longer stick to genres.  In my younger days, I was post-apocalypse (before it suddenly became the “in” thing), medical and legal thrillers and some real life crime drama.  I still like that…

There’s a gap of 100 years between the mountain women of the historical series and Angela, the main character in my contemporary “romantic suspense” novel Ridgetop, but the setting is the same. Angela’s hometown is the fictional mountain town of Winkler, and she’s a descendant of some of the characters in the historical series. 

On sale this week for 99 cents

It’s been nearly a year since my sister Gretchen died, and I still don’t know quite what to do with myself and this blog. It may go the way of the dodo. In the meantime, I’m writing and illustrating again, and the antrollogy will soon be republished with two new stories and a couple of fine new Easter Eggs. But now, in honor of a year’s passing since her passing, here is a reprise of my post about Gretchen, A Letter to Neil Gaiman:

Dear Neil,

The odds that you are reading this are slim. Very slim. I probably won’t finish writing it, but if I do, I almost surely won’t be brave enough to send it to you. If I am uncharacteristically brave, what then? I send it, and it never reaches you; it slips between the cracks of your magically real life and goes to Neverwhere — or wherever…