by Richard Helms
I became one of the early adopters of POD-based self-publishing, when I formed my own publishing company (Barbadoes Hall Press/Back Alley Books) in 2001. At the 2006 Bouchercon in Madison, Wisconsin Edgar Award winner S. J. Rozan proclaimed during a panel presentation that she was aware of two self-publishers who went about it the right way—Richard Helms and Sandra Tooley. By that time, I received three PWA Shamus Award nominations for my self-published works, a record that stands to this day. However, I abandoned my company in 2007, and my next five novels were published by Five Star/Cengage, including The Mojito Coast, which provided my fourth Shamus nomination.
Five Star eliminated its mystery/thriller division in 2016, just as I planned to submit Paid In Spades, my fifth Pat Gallegher novel. With my self-published novels now out of print, and my Five Star novels also going out of print, I realized earlier this year that my long tail consisted of e-books only. Clay Stafford Books in Nashville, Tennessee contracted with me in 2018 to publish Paid In Spades, which comes out March 12. I decided to republish my entire backlist in trade paper through Amazon’s KDP program.
In the process, I discovered a great deal about my skill trajectory as a writer, as I rewrote, edited, and toned up works I wrote as far back as a quarter century ago. Next month I’ll describe some of my most jarring revelations.
Richard Helms’s Thriller Award-winning knight errant Pat Gallegher (Juicy Watusi, Wet Debt) returns in the steamy, action-drenched New Orleans tale in Paid In Spades. Pat Gallegher tales have been nominated for the PWA Shamus Award and SMFS Derringer Award, and have won the ITW Thriller Award. A prolific writer, Helms also pens the San Francisco-based private investigator Eamon Gold and small-town North Carolina police chief Judd Wheeler books.