It’s bird! It’s a plane. No, it’s Halley’s Comet. No, it’s … Blood on Their Hands.

Take a look at the pictures on this page. Pretty easy to imagine the one of the flaming wheel as a comet hurtling through space, don’t you think? Hey, they don’t look that awfully different, and it’s kind of coincidental that they’re making simultaneous appearances.

Actually, the famous comet can be seen only about every 76 years, but gives off this meteor shower twice a year, including now. Wednesday morning, before dawn, will be the third day in a row that the twinkling space dust can be observed – if you’re up and about at that ungodly hour (I’ve just gone to bed).

Okay, so forget the comet. As you can see, the flaming wheel is the cover for my new novel, Blood on Their Hands, which was supposed to be available on Amazon in the print edition Monday, but as of tonight hasn’t made its appearance. Halley’s got ahead of it.

Amazon. Don’t you love it? Sure, COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on companies’ operations. But Amazon’s star has risen during this crisis as people hunker down in their homes and order stuff online. I’ve phoned  the company (Company? That’s like calling a whale a sardine) several times, and get the automated response that no telephone assistance will be provided.

So people are working out of their homes. A heck of a lot of people stuck in their homes because their employers are closed would like to be working. Why can’t Amazon use a small portion of the extra profits it’s generating to hire these unemployed people to man and woman the phones and make everybody happy? Does Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world with $131 billion at last count, need to save his money? Sheesh!

Jeff Bezos

Anyway, the Kindle edition of Blood on Their Hands has been available on Amazon for pre-ordering for a couple of weeks or so, and now can be ordered for immediate delivery. As for the paperback, I’m hoping it’ll be listed very soon, but have no window into the inscrutable workings of the corporate behemoth. We authors are at its mercy.

However, a glowing review is up, and I expect more will appear in the coming days. Check them out at https://tinyurl.com/yazamzpp. Oh, and the Look Inside feature displays the first three-plus chapters for free reading. Have at it. You may even want to find out what happens next.