Back to Boston

Back to Boston

Pushing new projects

You may have noticed that although Montreal is the home base for my Dale Hunter novels, Boston is also frequently the scene of the crime. That’s because my own history as an entrepreneur is similar to Dale Hunter’s (except for the crime and corruption); I had a distribution centre in Ashland, near Boston, for TTX Computer Products, my business based in Montreal.

So a return to Boston was appealing, not just because it’s a great city, but because I want my books presented there for Boston readers to enjoy. So instead of pushing computer products on resellers like I did thirty years ago, I was pushing my novels and business books on local bookstores. Cold calling like the good old days! Apparently the old sales tactics of patient, persistent, polite and persuasive, still work. You can now find my books at two Boston bookstores, More Than Words and Trident Booksellers & Café. Or ask for them at your local bookstore and insist they get them for you. (Or go to your favourite online bookstore anywhere in the world.)

While I was in Boston I also did some research and planning for my next writing projects. The tour of bookstores led me to the fascinating and comprehensive collections of rare and used books at Commonwealth Books and Brattle Book Shop. Maybe my own books will be there someday too – either rare collector’s editions or on the discount tables at $5.00, $3.00, or $1.00?

It was a pleasure to browse all the choices of new editions and old, and since I’m planning to add to my collection of short stories, both memoir and fiction, I couldn’t resist acquiring some short story collections by two great Canadian writers – Margaret Atwood’s, Old Babes in the Wood, and Alice Monroe’s, The View from Castle Rock. Then I was introduced to the short stories of Sherwood Anderson, an eccentric former businessman and late-life writer (like me?), who influenced Hemingway, Faulkner, and others with his style and characters in the 1919 classic, Winesburg, Ohio; and the impressive collection of New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield’s eighty-eight Short Stories published in 1920. Lots of good reading to study and improve my writing as well as pick up some new ideas and themes for my own stories.

And what are you reading that you would recommend?

As a VIP reader and subscriber to this author newsletter you may be interested to read an advance copy of my sixth novel, WHATEVER IT TAKES. In this story, Dale Hunter is drawn into crime and corruption in Montreal city politics and faces recurring nightmares of violent death and betrayal by the people he thought he knew and trusted. While trying to extricate a friend from a gangster plot and to explain an unexpected murder, Hunter is also forced to recognize and reveal more of the evil in his own past.

You can download a.pdf copy at:  https://bookhip.com/BZQWTVC.  Any comments, feedback, or suggestions are appreciated. Enjoy the sneak peak.

Have you read all of the first three published novels in the Dale Hunter series? Each novel may be read and enjoyed as a standalone, but you may prefer to start at the beginning with NO EASY MONEY, which introduces Dale Hunter and his crime-fighting buddy, Frank the Fixer, as well as other continuing characters in the series. That novel and SIMPLY THE BEST are set in the 1980s with “an explosive mix of crime, cash and computers.” MERGER MANIAC follows with the same themes of Dale Hunter facing threats of death and destruction from the Mafia in Montreal and from other gangsters in the Far East, New York, Boston and Las Vegas.

Learn more at: https://delvinchatterson.com/dale-hunter-novels/ and click through to your favourite online bookstore or ask for them at your local bookstore.

Enjoy your reading,

Del 

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