Your novel had an unusual publication history. Can you tell us about that?
I actually finished this novel several years ago. I turned it in, and my editor was very enthusiastic, but both she and my agent thought it would be a better career move to publish my next novel first. They thought this book, which became The Whiskey Rebels, would do a better job of building audience. I was disappointed, because I did not like sitting on a finished book, but I understood their reasoning. In any case, I can't argue with results since The Whiskey Rebels did, in fact, bring in many new readers.
How has book marketing changed over the years in your own experience?
As I mentioned in an earlier, ranting response, the mass media has increasingly edged fiction-reading out of the American mainstream. I think this is especially strange in the case of newspapers, which are devoting less time and money to book reviews than ever before. Newspaper readers, after all, are already readers. But that's why I love that there are now so many outlets for fiction readers, reviewers, and enthusiasts on the Internet. It is great that those of us who love books can now find so many places for news, reviews, and other exciting tidbits.
What’s next for you, David?
I've recently begun to work in the world of comics, and I have my first issue coming out with Marvel in September: Daring Mystery Comics Annual #1, featuring the Phantom Reporter. And there is another project in the development stage as well. Otherwise, I am hard at work on my next novel, which is set in England in 1811-12, centering on the Luddite uprising, romanticism, and practitioners of traditional English magic. It's fun stuff.
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