Wednesday, April 27, 2011

PARIS IS A BITCH—A Rain/Delilah Short Story


Hi all, my new John Rain/Delilah short story, Paris Is A Bitch, is available now. It covers an important event that occurs sometime between the end of Requiem for an Assassin and the start of The Detachment, the new Rain book that'll be out this summer. You can download it to your Amazon Kindle, your B&N Nook, or via Smashwords directly to your computer as a PDF. There's also a program called Kindle for Mac, available from Amazon and Apple's App Store, that will allow you to download it from the Kindle store and read it on your Mac computer, iPad, or iPhone.



For most couples, a quiet dinner for two at Auberge de la Reine Blanche on the Ile Saint Louis would be just the thing to smooth out the complications in a romance. But for gorgeous Mossad operative Delilah and trying-to-retire contract killer John Rain, nothing is ever easy, and when Rain sees a crew of hard-looking men setting up outside the restaurant, he realizes someone has been bringing her work home with her. Is it a hit—or something even worse? When it comes to killing, business and pleasure are the most dangerous mix of all.

This short story is about 8500 words, or a little under 40 pages in paper. The download comes with the first three chapters of the new John Rain novel, The Detachment (available soon), plus an essay called Personal Safety Tips from Assassin John Rain, which includes information that will be at least as valuable to civilians as it has been to Rain.

Here's a collection of photos of locations that appear in the story. Tough research, I know. :)

Enjoy!

10 comments:

  1. What a rough life you do lead, Barry. Paris, adventure, writing and great views to shoot. C'est la vie.

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  2. Really, really enjoyed your story, Barry. Very much looking forward to The Detachment. =)

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  3. I just popped over from J.A. Konrath's blog :). It's awesome to see you releasing shorts as well as novels.

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  4. Barry, quick question for you. Did you find that you needed to change the formatting from Kindle to Nook? I'm in the process of putting my own novel up on PubIt! and have had trouble finding any good guidance on.

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  5. Thanks all! JM, I try not to complain...;)

    Fletch, I know little about formatting other than that Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords have different requirements. These are the guys who handle formatting for me and they've been excellent:
    http://www.52novels.com/

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  6. Just got it Barry! Looking forward to reading it!

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  7. Thanks, Barry. I have another question for you. I am in the middle of working on a novel about a female assassin not too dissimilar to John Rain. Now, I'm not looking for you to blurb, but part of the story is an homage to both your series and Eric Van Lustbader's Nicholas Linnear novels. To make that clear, I give two characters your last names and do one assassination in the same style as each of your leads (in Rain's case, the pacemaker kill in Hard Rain), making reference to the specific book it's from too. I was wondering, would you mind taking a look at the manuscript at some point, to make sure you are okay with what I'm doing? If you're uncomfortable reading the whole thing, then maybe you could just read the pacemaker assassination scene. I just want to make sure I don't step on any toes and end up getting sued for it.

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  8. I've enjoyed reading your stories and understand you are now going with Digital Publishing with Amazon and others--why did you leave traditional publishing? Cheers, Jk

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  9. Read your dialogue with Joe K and now I understand better. Good luck!

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  10. Great story Barry. My sister once stayed in an apartment in Ile Saint Louis and I've been promising to do that too... but you've beaten me to it. I participated in an ITW roundtable recently: March 14th to 20th: “Is setting just a backdrop, or a key element to your story?” and your setting here is most certainly a key element in your story.

    And - congratulations on your Amazon deal! I've followed the great discourse on publishing between yourself and Joe Konrath. Super stuff. So I have dipped my toes in that water and put a few of my short works and a couple of my latest novels on Kindle.

    Best wishes,
    Pat.

    THE ITW ROUNDTABLE on 'setting as a key element to the story'
    http://www.thebigthrill.org/2011/03/coming-march-14th-to-20th-is-setting-just-a-backdrop-or-a-key-element-to-your-story/

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