For those who want a slightly deeper dive, Rissy Reviews did a pretty great video on it recently. So if you haven't seen it yet, go check that out now!
What folks might not know is the ink was barely dry on my contract when I started work on the sequel. I finished it around Christmas last year, got it to my publisher once I'd made some adjustments, and now it brings me great pleasure to say that Painted Cats is available for all my avid lovers of hard-boiled detective stories, cats, and books that combine the two!
So What's This One About?
While Marked Territory established a lot of Leo's neighborhood, and some key facts about the world, Painted Cats gives us a very different kind of mystery to dig into. An old flame of Leo's named Delilah comes around asking for a favor; it seems a friend of hers has gone missing, leaving her kitten behind. While Mischief has seen some hard times, and made her share of bad decisions, she loves Trouble. If she hasn't come back for him, that means something is really, really wrong. While he's leery of what he might find, Leo agrees to go looking.
Reasons you should read the sequel (beyond it just being another of Leo's adventures in NYC) include:
- More heads of animal crime families (cats, possums, and even a reference to one run by snakes that I hope to get to in future sequels).
- A night spot for gay animals to mingle, meet, and eat.
- The adorable Trouble, who may end up recurring in future stories if the audience takes a shine to him.
- Celebrity animals, who earn their owners a living with their picture-perfect grooming.
You know, just in case you needed another reason to go out and buy your copy today.
Wait... Isn't This The Second Sequel?
For folks who want to get technical, there is a prequel to both of these novels. The short story "Stray Cat Strut" in the short story anthology From a Cat's View was Leo's debut into the world of fiction, and the first glimpse anyone got into his world of street beasts. The fact that I sold out of this book entirely at the first convention I brought it to was why I decided to expand Leo's adventures in the first place!
For those who are wondering, no, you don't have to read any of these stories in any particular order. I set out very specifically to mimic the style of serial detective stories like the Spenser series, or arguably Sherlock Holmes, where the order in which you choose to take in the cases won't affect your grasp of the narrative too much. There might be references to characters you haven't met, or to things that were said in other stories, but you can usually infer what happened or didn't happen without too much difficulty.
Which one should you start with? Well, I'll generally recommend Marked Territory as the official starting place since it was written to give a wider introduction to Leo's world, but if you wanted to start with either of the other two you could always fill in the blanks later.
In either case, I'm super excited to have gotten this far. For all the folks out there who've supported me, thank you. And for those who want to see even more of Leo's adventures, well, get your copy, leave a review, and tell your friends about the series! I'll keep writing them as long as people keep reading them.
Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!
That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!
If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!
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