General Store Publishing House published my first novel, Bad Blood, in August 2014. This past January 7, Elenka took me to a fancy restaurant to celebrate my birthday. When we returned home, there was an unexpected gift in my inbox informing me that the publisher had ceased operations.  


The good news is that Tessellate Media has picked up the rights for Bad Blood. The re-release date is May 8. Tessellate combines the talents of Susan Mclean, an e-book designer who has also worked in sales and marketing for a number of Canadian book publishers, and Michael Carroll, an editor with a great deal of experience as the former associate publisher and editorial director of Dundurn Press, publisher at Beach Holme Publishing, and managing editor at Raincoast Books.
 
Amazon, Kobo, Apple iTunes and a host of other online retailers are now taking pre-orders - even from far off Europe and the United Kingdom - for the downloadable E-book. Bad Blood (eISBN 978-1-938150-27-5, 196 pp., $3.99).
 
For those of you who aren’t aware of my Bad Blood, below is a short synopsis: 


Three men with big ambitions grapple in a near-future world where baseball could get bloody. Felix Martinez started out running drugs in Petare, a down-and-out barrio of Caracas, Venezuela. Now, even with a murky, murderous past, he aspires to be a major league baseball agent. Errol Boghan is a second baseman who’s spent most of his career in the minors but is finally in the big leagues with the Toronto Blue Jays, though perhaps not for long. Enter Santi del Oriente, a superstar with a shady background who’s just been acquired by the Jays. The three men and the women closest to them struggle in a world where past and present merge, betrayal and love intertwine, and dark secrets inevitably rise to the surface. 


My take on it all: Bad Blood started out as a baseball book with nice and not-so-nice characters. As the mystery developed, the characters began to evolve and show startling sides to themselves — how was I to know?


Below are a few Bad Blood reviews, B.B (before bankruptcy)   
 
There's more to this than baseball, by Lynn Fraser, Sept. 10 2014 - See all my reviews Goodreads.com  

I'm not a baseball fan but this story which is set in the world of professional baseball held my interest from the opening lines to the surprising twist at the end. The descriptions of Toronto are very atmospheric and the characters are interesting. I specially enjoyed the author's musings on how players are compensated, the dichotomy between preserving the old while incorporating the new, etc. As an armchair traveler I also very much enjoyed the way the story takes the reader to foreign locations. The love story was fun too. There is something for everyone in this book. I'm looking forward to Drury's next book.

Bad Blood - A Great Fast Read!, by Jim Patterson, Sept. 22 2014. This review is from: Bad Blood (Kindle Edition) Amazon.ca.

This was the first book written by the author, but had I not known this I could have sworn he had been writing books for some time! I'm not a baseball fan, but after reading the cover description of the book, I was interested. Sure enough there is a fair amount of baseball detail, but this was necessary for the story and provided a framework on which the twists and turns of the main plot were balanced. The characters were well developed, descriptions of foreign and home country locales were perfect for the storyline (i.e. not too lengthy but just enough to make you feel you are there), and the dialogue was wonderful. As the story contains characters from a number of different countries, the author has provided inflection into each character's dialogue reflecting their local culture, language and background, which really helped to form a picture of each of them. This is a hard thing to do when a story is written for the English language! As a final comment, I found there were no "dead spots" in the book - every page kept me wanting to read more until I reached the end. It's a small book, but well worth your time - buy it!

J.P. Morris on 12/11/2014 This review is from the paperback version and placed on GSPH.com   

Wow! the ending of this book blew me away! A grand slam of a finish that had nothing to do with baseball, the game I love. There is a sweeping curveball in the final chapter that will knock your socks off. Awesome! I truly enjoyed this Bad Blood.

Vickie Bandoski from Massachusetts on 03/10/2014 Amazon.com

I am a baseball fan. I read the gossip column. So Bad Blood met and surpassed my personal criterion for an unusual and satisfying summer read. More than a story about baseball, it is a study of the human condition: why do we judge sports figures, celebrities or ANY person before knowing what makes them tick? Sometimes we need to dig deeper. This intimate tale of professional baseball introduces Santi and Errol who play for the Toronto Blue Jays. They have an underlying, inexplicable and intense dislike for each other. And it's more than their contrasting approaches to the sport, women and life. As the intrigue unfolds and we meet team-mates, lovers, family, friends and enemies of these two men, we are left scratching our heads with each turn of the page. A surprising twist at the end bowls us over and suddenly everything makes sense. The moral of the story? Don't judge a book by it's cover or a baseball player by his stats.

Stephanie Zilinski January 5, 2015. This review is from: Bad Blood (Kindle Edition) Amazon.com

Wonderfully written book even for a non-baseball fan like myself - a real page turner. The story line was intriguing, suspenseful and with a powerfully dramatic conclusion.
I loved reading about the sites of Toronto, where I grew up with fulsome descriptions. I found the characters to be both genuinely charismatic in their own right, with a lot of unknown history to be revealed as the plot progressed.
I look forward to reading from this new author soon.