Say hello to the cover of my new novella, Flight, which debuts September 1, 2026!
Here’s the official summary of the story:
Daniela López is on a life-or-death journey.
Forced to flee her beloved home in Honduras, Dani and her family were headed north in search of safety–until a treacherous mistake ripped Dani’s parents away. Now Dani and her younger brother Carlos are on their own, and have no choice but to keep going in the desperate hope of finding their parents at the Mexico-United States border.
But to get there, they will have to ride on top of a roaring freight train known as “The Beast.”
Rickety and deadly, The Beast makes hairpin turns at terrifying speeds, shoots through dark tunnels, and stops for nothing. And there is the constant danger of being caught by gangs and kidnappers along the way.
Surrounded by hundreds of fellow refugees, Daniela will have to figure out who she can and cannot trust–and fast. Otherwise, she and Carlos don’t stand a chance of surviving…
Here’s the unofficial back story:
When I was researching and plotting my 2022 novel Two Degrees, I found a lot of stories I wanted to tell about people adversely affected by human caused climate change. In fact, my original pitch to my editor was for a book of twenty-seven short stories, featuring people from many countries and continents, all over the world. (I really wanted to show the global in “global warming.”)
My editor wrote back and said, “I think you maybe need fewer characters and stories in this book.” Okay, I said, how many fewer? She said, “Four?” Great! I said. I can cut four stories from the twenty-seven.
“No,” my editor said. “I think you need a maximum of four.”
Ouch.
Dreams die hard in publishing.
But it was healthy reality check. Twenty-seven stories was going to be a lot, and it was going to be hard—nay, impossible—to draw any connections between so many characters in so many parts of the world. Twenty-seven stories isn’t a novel; it’s an anthology.
So I went back to my ideas, and picked four in wholly different parts of the world. I chose one in the Arctic, one in the United States, one in Africa, and another in India. But again, that felt like too much, as I was not only having to establish the climate change parts of the stories, but also the different cultures, histories, and geographies of each tale.
So I went back to the well, and picked four new stories. I would do two boys escaping polar bears in Manitoba, Canada, a girl and her horse escaping wildfires in California, a girl and her dog escaping a hurricane in Florida, and a girl and her little brother fleeing food scarcity in Honduras. Different cultures and histories, yes, but all North American, so there was a built-in familiarity with all of them. Perfect! Done.
Yeah, so, if you’ve read Two Degrees you know one of those four stories wouldn’t make it into the novel. I just didn’t know it back then.
I researched and plotted each of the four stories, and then dove into the writing. The way Two Degrees is set up, you read a chunk of one story, then a chunk of another, then a chunk of another, and so on. It doesn’t alternate chapters like, say, Refugee, or Ground Zero.
By the time I had written the first two chunks of the first two stories, I knew there was no way this novel could have four stories in it. Not and be less than 400 pages. Which would have been way too long. So I made the heartbreaking decision to cut one of the four stories—the one about the girl leaving Honduras and traveling up through Mexico with her brother to the US.
As a bit of an in-joke, I wove references to most of the other original twenty-four stories that hadn’t made the cut into the finale of Two Degrees—including the journey of the girl and her brother fleeing Honduras. But that story in particular stayed with me, long after the book was out. I felt as though I hadn’t done them justice, especially after doing all that research into their lives. But there also wasn’t enough there for an entire novel.
So I was very excited when my Allies-adjacent novella Resist did so well, opening the door for more novellas connected to my books. I immediately knew the Honduran girl’s story was the one I wanted to tell next, and I’m thrilled that the full story of Dani and her family’s trek north through Mexico riding on top of The Beast will finally be told in Flight.
The book debuts September 1, 2026, but you can preorder your copy today!
Pre-order FLIGHT on Bookshop.org
Pre-order FLIGHT from Green Bean Books!
And just a reminder, books ordered from my local bookshop Green Bean Books here in Portland, Oregon come signed and personalized!
I was talking with my friend and fellow thriller writer April Henry recently about podcast interviews, and I realized I’ve done a few lately that I haven’t told people about.
Last year, I joined my friend and fellow middle grade thriller writer James Ponti on The Sherlock Sessions, his limited-edition writing workshop podcast, to talk all things plot…
I talked about War Games, and what historical fiction can tell us about the present, with Justin Hofstetter for YALSA’s The Hub…
And just recently I spoke with Mercedes and Anastasia Korngut for their Hack Your Happiness podcast, where we discussed how reading about history offers hope for the future. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify:
Check them all out, give them a like, and share them with young readers or educators in your life!
Want to hear me answer questions live? This is your reminder that I do free, live, virtual events each month that anyone can attend. This month’s virtual event is Thursday, April 23rd at 11am ET/10am CT/9am MT/8am PT. Register here. If you’ve been putting off joining me, get on it—there’s only one more virtual event this school year after this one!
Boy, I have been giving books away like crazy lately. So why not let the insanity continue?
I have a weird one for you this month. It’s two different paperback editions of Ban This Book. And they’re both in English. But they are the Australian editions of Ban This Book! So they will read almost exactly the same, except for a few cultural differences.
For example, in Australian English elevators are “lifts,” the trunk of a car is the “boot,” cookies are “biscuits,” and “thongs” are sandals, not what we call thongs. Though, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I never mention any of those things in Ban This Book. So I have no idea what’s different about these books! Maybe nothing??? Crikey.
Just imagine you’re watching Bluey, only it’s not as cute and doesn’t make you cry.
I have enough of these to give away one class set of each edition. So this is a giveaway for the educators out there only. If you don’t work at a school, please don’t put your name in the drawing. There’s nothing I can do to stop you, of course. I’m just asking on your honor to leave these sets for a classroom or library to win. Thanks!
Oh, and despite the fact that these are Australian editions, I’m afraid the contest is open to US residents only. Sorry—the price of shipping books outside the country is prohibitive for a one-man operation like me!
The deadline to enter is the end of the day on Sunday, April 26, 2026. Good luck!
Play the Fool by Lina Chern is a terrific mystery I picked up in February at Left Coast Crime. The main character, Katie True, is a cynical, twenty-something tarot-reader who has never lived up to all the “potential” her family and her teachers saw in her. Though Katie feels the pressure to do something with her life, nothing yet has pushed her to leave her dead-end retail job in a dying mall in the Chicago suburbs. Until her friend from the shop across the hall turns up dead. Good thing Katie’s got all that experience “reading” people with her tarot cards. She’ll need that, and the help of a handsome young police detective with regrets of his own, to get to the bottom of things—and perhaps find her True calling in life. (See what I did there?) Tons of fun, even for a skeptic like me. A sequel, Tricks of Fortune, came out last July, and I’ve already got it on order.
And I’ve been reading the individual comics on the Marvel Unlimited app, but two graphic novels—Get Back Up and Through the Gates of Hell—collect the first ten or so issues of the excellent recent run by writer Joe Kelly on The Amazing Spider-Man. As the new series begins, Peter Parker’s got a good job, his love life isn’t a total mess, and he’s kicking butt as Spider-Man. He’s doing okay for once! Until an interstellar badass named Hellgate shows up to “learn” from Spidey, and in the process opens a portal and punches Peter Parker into space. It sounds bonkers, and it is (what comics aren’t bonkers?), but it leads to some terrific storytelling. In space, Peter’s confidence is wrecked, and he weighs physically modifying himself to become strong enough to defeat Hellgate—at the risk of losing who he is inside. Meanwhile on Earth, in my absolute favorite take on the character ever, Peter’s old adversary-turned-ally Norman Osborne (the erstwhile Green Goblin) puts on the Spidey costume in Peter’s absence and plays Spider-Man—with decidedly mixed results. The two storylines, illustrated alternately by Pepe Larraz and John Romita, Jr., are, dare I say it, amazing. (See what I did there?)
That’s it for this month! If you liked this newsletter, please share it online, or with anyone you think would be interested:
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