So this is a great week for me to be blogging here on the Penguin Blog, as my new Horatio Wilkes mystery, Something Wicked, officially hit the shelves last Thursday. You can read more about it in last week's introduction to me, or by heading over to www.alangratz.com.

I post almost every day over at the blog my wife and I share, Gratz Industries, which focuses on our attempts to pursue a meaningful, creative life together. Interspersed, of course, with YouTube videos of ukulele orchestras playing the theme song to Shaft and old Planet of the Apes action figure commercials from the seventies.

We do manage to talk about our creative projects every now and then though, which feels strange. I grew up in the South, and among the many things I was always taught about being a Southern gentleman was that I should never brag or talk big about myself. The trouble is, that's kind of tough when you're an author. There are so many great books published every year-every season-that you have to do a little crowing to make yourself heard above the clamor.