Next in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series…

Back in late November 2011 when I released A Real Piece of Work, I promised to release book #2 in the series, The Rich Are Different, once book #1 sold 1,000 copies.

When I wrote that, I was convinced it would take me at least 10 months to sell that many copies (an average of 100/month). Therefore, I would have plenty of time to give The Rich Are Different another polish and to format it and publish it on the Kindle platform.

As most of you know, over this past weekend I had a promotion and sales bonanza, selling over 1,000 copies of A Real Piece of Work in three days alone. While I’m tremendously grateful for the overwhelming response, it does alter my planned timetable considerably.

And so I’m here, dear reader—dear fan of Dakota & Svetlana—to ask for your patience.

I want The Rich Are Different to be every bit as good as A Real Piece of Work, and in order to ensure this, I need time—time to read it again (it’s lain in a drawer for 2 years), time to revise it, and time to get it into the complicated Kindle format for publication. I also need time for my talented cover designer, Elisabeth Pinio, to create the new cover.

Ultimately I want every reader to have as enjoyable an experience with book #2 as s/he did with book #1, and I want every reader to feel that The Rich Are Different stands up—in entertainment value and literary quality. Getting the novel to a level of quality where I’m thoroughly satisfied with it will take me anywhere from a few months (for summer release) to several months (for holiday season release). The best answer I can give is that it will take as long as it takes.

As I get further into the process of preparing The Rich Are Different for publication, I’ll post updates on where I am.

When the cover design is complete, Elisabeth and I will release that in advance as well.

For now, I’ll leave you with what I hope is a tantalizing synopsis of book #2:

The Rich Are Different, the second novel in Chris Orcutt’s Dakota Stevens mystery series, explores the rarefied world of a Long Island heiress and her murdered brother who owned an Old West resort in Montana. Going undercover as actors in a make-believe mining town straight out of 1885, Dakota and his associate, Svetlana Krüsh, hunt down the man’s killers, discovering a mother lode of a motive in the process.

Like bullets from a Gatling gun, the suspects come fast and furious: eccentric heiresses, aimless party girls, greedy CEOs, catty thespians, sexy henchwomen, angry Native Americans, mysterious mobsters, menacing mercenaries, kinky housewives and contract killers. It’s a classic case of East meets West as Dakota and Svetlana follow a trail of clues that takes the reader from the urbane setting of The Great Gatsby to the forbidding land of Pale Rider.

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