New story finished

Finished the second draft of a short story--"Ripper." This is a Val Lyon story, set on the North Shore of Oahu. It is about a woman surfer, the ripper of the title, who disappears and is feared killed by a shark. Val is hired to find the surfer's computer which is also missing. The computer supposedly contains a journal the girl was writing. The girl's mother wants to keep the journal as a remembrance and to prevent others, such as an ex-boyfriend, from exploiting it.

I'm aiming this one at Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. When published, this will be the eighth Val Lyon short story. I considered making it an Ava Rome story but decided that all of the Val stories deal with sports as does this one. My goal for a long time has been to write 12 or 15 Val Lyon short stories, all about sports, and try to publish them as a collection.

Michael Bracken sent an update on Sex, Lies and Private Eyes, the anthology he edited which has another Val Lyon story--"Horns." It was supposed to be published in Spring 2005, so it is a little bit behind, but the publisher assures him it will be published. We can only hope. Maybe "Ripper" will end up as the seventh story and "Horns" as the eighth.