We had a busy April at Eagles Hill Publishing, my LLC. Mostly good stuff, little bit of bad. Such is life.

It kicked off with a fun visit to Blake’s Backyard Book Club, where I got to speak to about two dozen new readers and answer a lot of excellent questions. Their club reads a new book every month, alternating between suspense/thrillers and romance, and they chose Crying Call for their April read. I’d never before had the privilege of talking about writing to that big a crowd. It was a lot of fun, and I hope I get to do it again soon!

Then, we had a brief health crisis. Becka ended up in the hospital for a week — don’t panic, she’s fine. It’s a little scary when something like that happens to the woman who is my everything. My wife, my best friend, and now stepmom of our rampaging teen kaiju. My editor, my co-author, and the reigning queen of pub trivia. She does it all. She’s my Swiss Army wife.

The dust from that is still settling as she and I make some subtle, healthy life changes. I had to cancel a signing event over in Ann Arbor, but was still able to vend at a few night markets where I sold and signed oodles of books. To my surprise, Blood Game tends to outsell Crying Call at these events. Personally, I think Crying Call is the better book, and they can be read in either order, but when I pick up new readers they usually insist on reading the first book first. I guess that’s not surprising.

In all the hullabaloo surrounding that stuff, plus the end of my Winter semester at UDM, I found out that Crying Call won a few awards! Specifically, it took the bronze at the Spring 2026 BookFest in the categories Thriller/Espionage and Thriller/Literary. Blood Game won silver last year … I guess the competition was tougher this time around.

It’s kind of nice doing well in contests, I suppose. It feels validating. But in the end, all it means is I get to call my books “award-winning” on Amazon or elsewhere. But it doesn’t make me feel appreciated — that’s something that only comes from talking to my readers. What my readers think and how my books make them feel are what truly matters. Everything else is just the superficial trappings of the business.

So on that note, I’m lining up several more events for May and June, getting out there to meet new readers. On Saturday, May16th, I’ll be at a Boozy Book Fair at Coyote Joe’s all evening. That’s a country music bar not far from me, which I hear is a jumping place with good crowds on the week-ends. The Saturday after that I’ll be down in Toledo at the Muddy Maumee Book and Art Festival, another night market.

It’s finally warm enough in Michigan for farmer’s markets, so I’ll be sprinkling some of those into the week-ends between major events. That’s a bit of advice I’d give to any new, independent authors — hit a lot of farmer’s markets in your first year. You’ll do better at them than you think, and it’s a great place to practice your repartee before setting up at major markets and book festivals.

Maybe my next long post should be a general advice post: what I learned in my first year as an indie author. Secrets revealed! Scandals exposed! Inquiring minds want to know!