Announcing The Outfit

 So, that bit of news I've been dropping hints on for quite some time now?  Well, today's the day I finally get to stop hinting!

Toward the back end of 2019, Rebellion editor David Thomas Moore got in touch to ask how I felt about the possibility of writing a fictionalisation of the Tiflis bank robbery.  Clearly, my first step was to learn what the heck a Tiflis bank robbery was, for which, being only human, I went straight to Wikipedia.  Roughly five seconds later, having discovered that the Tiflis bank robbery was one of the most wildly insane events ever to occur in human history, positively gawking at the fact that nobody had yet written about it and that I might conceivably get to be the one who did, I was already trying to think of ways to reword "Seriously though, when I can I start?" into something a business-savvy professional writer sort might say.

For those who didn't follow that Wikipedia link: the Tiflis bank robbery is the occasion when, on the instructions of Lenin and other high-ups in the Bolshevik command, a young Joseph Stalin led the gang of career revolutionaries he was at the time in charge of in one of the most outrageous, profitable, and bloody crimes in history.  And yes, I do mean that Joseph Stalin.  This a real thing that really happened in actual history, and when you dig beneath the surface, it only gets weirder and less plausible.  One example off the top of my head: there's a scene in the book in which Stalin recruits someone to his cause using their passion for his, Stalin's, youthful poetry.  Oh, and it takes place over a glass of milk, because milk bars were a thing in early twentieth-century Georgia.  Did I mention that this all really happened?!

The Outfit is still quite a way from release, having been put back a couple of times for the same reason that every damn thing's been put back over this last year and change, but at least, as of today, it's public knowledge and has a definite landing date.  It also has a press release, which you can read here - if you're not sold at "The Russian Revolution meets Reservoir Dogs" then I'm not sure I can help you! - and I wouldn't be surprised if there's an unveiling of the cover in the not terribly distant future.  And meanwhile, I, obviously, will be rattling on about it at every possible opportunity!