For those of you who prefer to read in paper, but may have found the hardcover a little too expensive, this is just a quick post to say that the paperback edition of my latest book, One for the Monkey, is now available. Links to all the various formats are at the bottom of the post.
Personally, I think the hardcover is a handsome book (admittedly, I’m biased), but I get it. $32 is a lot to plunk down for a book these days, but I am glad to have all three major formats (hardcover, paperback, and ebook) available depending on your needs and preferences as a reader.
A number of people have asked if an audio version is forthcoming. I’m exploring some new options on that front, which is holding things up, but hopefully something will come together eventually.
Making good progress on the latest Garrison Gage book. I know many of you have been asking for it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy One for the Monkey. It’s a very different kind of mystery than the Gage books, both in character and in tone, but I had great fun writing it.
The above photo was from a couple weeks ago, when Rosie and I went for an afternoon hike at Silver Falls State Park, about thirty minutes from where I live. It was a nice reminder of why the Willamette Valley can be such a lush, green paradise. I sometimes take it for granted. We’ve had some erratic weather lately, but that was a particularly nice Thursday. I got ten pages of writing in the morning and nine miles of hiking in the afternoon, spending a blissful three and half hours east of the waterfalls up in the forest where it’s a lot less crowded. Did I say less crowded? I saw only one person the whole hike.
Of course, afterward my body reminded me that I’m in my fifties now. I don’t recover nearly so fast.
First, some happy news: My short story, “The Seduction of Doctor Dimension,” which appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, is a finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award in the Best Short Story Category. It may be a cliche to say so, but it really is an honor just to be one of the five finalists. The winner will be announced at the 2026 Thriller Awards during the Awards banquet at ThrillerFest in New York City May 2026. Sadly, I won’t be able to attend this year, but in the very unlikely event my story wins, the editor of EQ (the excellent Jackie Sherbow) will be accepting on my behalf. I told her to extoll the virtues of subscribing to great short story magazines like Ellery Queen!
My new novel, One for the Monkey, has been out in both hardcover and ebook for about a month. Thank you for all the kind emails. I especially appreciate those of you who take the time to write a review at Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, etc. It really does help, even if your review is just a sentence or two. A trade paperback version will be out in a few weeks, for those of you who prefer paper but may have found the jacketed hardcover too expensive. (Personally, I think the hardcover is a gorgeous book.) There are no more autographed copes for sale at this time. While I enjoyed making those available, I only plan to do that a few times a year (usually when I release a book) because of how time consuming it is.
As far as what I’m working on now, fans of my Garrison Gage books will be pleased to hear that I’m well into the tenth book in the series. It’s going to be a while yet, but I’m having a blast revisiting my cranky PI with the bum knee, and I hope that joy carries over into the book itself.
And just because I can, I’ll cap off this post with a few pictures from our 10-day trip to Costa Rica back in February. Neither Heidi or I had ever been to Central America, and my wife, who is quite the bird lover, was also eager to see the wildlife. We spent half it in La Fortuna, at a resort near the Arenal Volcano National Park, then hopped on a 12-seater turboprop Cessna to spend the second half within walking distance of Manuel Antonio National Park. Plus a little bit of lounging on a sunny beach, of course. Man, those little planes never let you forget you’re flying.
Gotta watch out for the little capuchin monkeys, though. At Manuel Antonio, they’ll grab the snacks right out of your backpack.
What, August already? Rosie and I were looking forward to getting back into the swing of our weekly hikes, but somehow half the summer is gone and I’ve barely gone on any. Part of the issue was that we went almost straight from my son’s high school graduation to an amazing two-week trip to Iceland, where we rented a car and drove almost all of Route 1, what they also call the “Ring Road,” circling the island and staying in thirteen different hotels in fifteen days. I was originally skeptical there would be enough to justify a two-week trip, but boy was I wrong. Bathing in natural hot springs, seeing puffins at the Látrabjarg cliffs, touring caves inside the Katla glacier, beholding the awesome power of Dynjandi and many, many other waterfalls … Once you get outside Reykjavik (which is a great little cosmopolitan city), this is a land of awesome yet primitive beauty.
We were there over the summer solstice, and as close as Iceland is to the Arctic Circle, we never experienced any true darkness. There’s only a few hours of technical darkness, but even then it’s sort of a grainy twilight. It certainly gave us more time to be outdoors! Of course, in the winter it’s pretty much the opposite.
Here are just a few pictures:
Barely a week after we returned, we hopped back in the car to celebrate my in-law’s 50th anniversary, spending a fun few days in the River Meadows/Sunriver area in central Oregon, bicycling, river rafting, and just hanging out. Now that our kids are both adults, I know these times when all four of us are together are going to get increasingly rare, so I treasure them. Not long after, our daughter was moving out of her apartment into a house she’s sharing with two of her friends, so she finally needed much of her furniture here at our house. It’d been a while since I’d rented a U-Haul. I forgot how exhausting moving can be.
And here we are. For those of you who missed it, I have a new Garrison Gage book out. I’m pleased to say A Kiss ofSand and Sorrowhas been well-received. In fact, some of my readers have been calling it the best Gage book yet. Is it true? Well, those are subjective judgments, of course, but I’d rather hear more of that than the opposite. What really drives me, whether it’s as a writer or as a cartoonist, is the drive to keep getting better. That’s what I find most rewarding about the arts.
In addition to continuing to publish two Run of the Housecartoons a week, I’ve been working on a shorter standalone novel and some short stories. I’m in the process of putting together a new short story collection that I’m pretty happy with. Hopefully get that one out soon. Productivity has only been so-so this summer, partly because of all the life-related happenings I mentioned above, and partly due to allowing myself to get a bit too obsessed about the political turmoil here in the United States, but such is life. Yet even as I slowly get back up to speed, there never seems enough time to do everything.
Hope all’s well in your neck of the woods. Here at the Carter household, our son is about to graduate from high school. With my daughter in her third year of college, my wife and I are about to transition into that “empty nester” stage of life, I guess. Well, not if you include Rosie, but then we’ve pretty much accepted that we’re permanently stuck with our furry, four-legged child. (Don’t tell her that, though. She’s spoiled enough already, and I don’t want our intrepid Irish Setter to think she can just loaf around all day without pulling her weight.)
But let’s skip to the big news today: I’ve got a new book out, and it’s one a lot of you have been asking for: a new Garrison Gage mystery!
It’s hard to believe that A Kiss of Sand and Sorrow is the ninth book in the series, and yet I’m finding it more fun than ever to spend some time with my curmudgeonly detective. Now that I think about it, “fun” is a pretty strange word considering all the trouble Gage gets himself into, both in matters of the law and matters of the heart. There’s plenty of both this time around.
More about the book is below, including links to retailers. As always, thanks for reading!
A Kiss of Sand and Sorrow
A Garrison Gage Mystery
Gage might go mad. With most of inland Oregon enduring a record-setting heatwave, the hordes descend on Barnacle Bluffs seeking cooler ocean air, and it’s all the curmudgeonly private investigator can do to keep from shooting somebody. What’s the harm in one fewer tourist, anyway? Yet when a desperate young woman shows up claiming her depressed husband has gone missing, Gage will need all of his wits to find the man before something terrible happens. His complicated feelings for the beautiful but headstrong police chief, with dark secrets of her own, only make solving the case more challenging … especially when those secrets eventually bring Gage face to face with one of the most savage foes ever to cross his path.
