My new novel, The Foothills of Heaven, is a 'stand alone' sequel to A Thousand Bridges, and is now available through Amazon. It can be found through a title search or on my author page. My first novel, A Thousand Bridges, is available on Kindle, and can still be found in the original hardcover edition through Amazon.com, It can be found digitally through all other eBook readers. I grew up in the rural South, where everything begins with a story. I love stories. What I love most is words, and the way a good writer can make one lean against the other in a perfect fit. Like an old stone wall in Ireland. How Shakespeare or William Faulkner or Solzhenitsyn make their words come to life. When Solzhenitsyn tells, in Cancer Ward, of how the little dog who was afraid of water apologized, first with his ears, then with his tail each time he approached the lake, I can see that dog. That's magic. Maggie and I live in an old farmhouse in the Florida Panhandle, deep in the lush jungle that borders the wild Gulf of Mexico, where there are no street lights and, on moonless nights, stars, thick as dust, make a pure white light that can cast shadows on the ground. It's here in the deep woods that I find it easy to imagine and to dream. It's where I write novels and songs, and though we love to travel (and we tour from Texas to Nova Scotia, from Florida through Ireland and England with our music), I miss it when I'm gone. The house is surrounded by huge pecan trees, and skirted with a wide porch filled with chairs and little tables, and we sit there (as the old folks say) "of an evening" and listen to the night. It was here I began writing a story I called A Thousand Bridges. The story became a novel, and I found first an agent then, through him, a publisher. My title, A Thousand Bridges, held on and the book was published to critical acclaim in 1992. I'm a sixth-generation Floridian, and love writing about the land I grew up in - the land I love. I'm also a Vietnam era veteran who never had to fight, but I still hate the sound of helicopters. I was stationed at Tyndall Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle in the late Sixties when I met my wife, Maggie. I worked on the flight line and she was leading the anti-war protests on the marina. It was love at first sight. We've been together for a long, long time, and we spend our lives mostly as a singer/songwriter duo called "Lucky Mud". We've had the chance to play our original, lyric based music around the world, but Florida is still our home. Our musical website is at luckymudmusic.com The reviewers called A Thousand Bridges a political thriller, a detective mystery, but I think of it as a love story with a lot of death in it. I called it A Thousand Bridges after one version of a saying fighter pilots in Vietnam passed around: 'You build a thousand bridges and you're a hero, but just let one of those bridges fall down on market day and you're a bum again.' A recent review from a blog called it "An amazing fore-shadowing of today's current political climate!" A Thousand Bridges was released by Walker Books, NYC. In a hardbound edition, it received a coveted Starred Review in Publishers Weekly, who also chose the book as one of their Top Ten First Fiction of the Year. Fantastic reviews followed in publications like Kirkus Reviews, The San Francisco Chronicle and The St. Petersburg Times, among others. The Library Journal chose it as one of their top First Novels in the October 1992 issue, which had the effect of delivering A Thousand Bridges to public libraries all across America. The Associated Press sent a lengthy review out on its news wires titled A Thousand Bridges Bats 1,000. Then, the division of Walker Books that released the novel folded. Times change. But I believe this novel is as vital now as it was when it was first released. Kiki Olsen, a reviewer from Philadelphia, PA, wrote in a review published in the St. Petersburg Times Sunday edition, September 27th, 1992, that it was " an astoundingly articulate novel set in Florida..." She says of McDonald Clay, the protagonist, "Mac is a supremely engaging hero. He is brave, honest, bold and begrudgingly romantic....The all-but-impossible mission McKinney sketched out for him is packed with action, desire, suspense and mystery. McKinney does a sensational job of putting his 'it could happen here' story together, and much of his art lies in the economy of words. He is succinct and precise in moving the action and emotions, making it unnecessary for readers to slog through dreary, unnecessary descriptions." More reviews followed in The Times Picayune (New Orleans) and the Buffalo Times. Jerome Sterns of NPR, writing in the Tallahassee Democrat, said A Thousand Bridges is a thriller with just enough resemblance to today's political weirdness to make it downright scary. The cast of villains are involved in the stuff of today's headlines. Dope dealing and arms deals that involve the very pillars of the community. Corruption wrapped in the cloth of high righteousness and the American flag. A avidity for power and money that violates all notions of decency. And most interesting of all, an impatient intolerance with the inconvenient people of America - "them," as Pat Buchanan put it in a recent speech." The sequel, The Foothills of Heaven, is the story of how Katherine and Mac go from love to marriage to murder. It's a story of love and survival. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope this isn't too long-winded. I wait to hear from you. Mike