When this column started, I had given up on writing novels. Now?

The debut novel of my first series is HERE!

Behold, HEX-RATED: A BRIMSTONE FILES NOVEL is now released from Night Shade Press!

Publisher’s Weekly: “Steeped in the style of 1970s pulp detective fiction . . . Brimstone is cut from the cloth of the classic wisecracking detective, and Ridler peppers the text with perfectly pitched hard-boiled vernacular. The novel’s wild mix of comedy and supernatural perils bodes well for its detective’s future adventures.”

And the great Brian Keene called it, “Deliciously uncomfortable, wonderfully gritty,
and a worthy successor to the occult detectives of old.”

I’m a legit author.

Published from New York to Cali and all points in between. Positive reviews and endorsements, from my command of plot to characters.

So the big question is . . .

… how the hell did it happen?

We will return next month to get the final installment of The Gutters, which will explore the years Before Brimstone, when I paid my dues in massive amounts of failure, broken dreams, and stupidity. When I stopped worshipping success and had to survive. Because in a strange way, when I gave up on dreams, better things than dreams happened.

Things like reality, in the form of a debut novel.

Now, please, go forth and make me the raging success you WANT me to be!

ONWARD!