San Francisco Night - Stephen Leather

Jack Nightingale fights his battles in the shadows – in the grey areas where the real world meets the supernatural. But when he arrives in San Francisco to take on a group of Satanists bent on opening a doorway to Hell, the danger is out in the open and all too real. The Apostles – a Satanic coven using murder and torture to pave the way for a demon to enter the real world – realise that Nightingale is on their tail. And unleash their own brand of monsters to take him down.

STEPHEN LEATHER WRITES

My publisher Hodder and Stoughton decided they didn’t want to continue with the Jack Nightingale series, so I published San Francisco Night myself. Why did they pass? I guess sales weren’t up to expectations, but I did find it a bit strange as Hachette (who own Hodder) also publish Steve Mosby through Orion and his horror books sell a fraction of mine. Publishers are cutting back on books that don’t make big profits and I think there will be a lot of pruning going on over the next few years. Having said that, Jack Nightingale does have a firm fan base and I love to write about the character, so I produced San Francisco Night, taking the character to the United States. I think it’s a cracking read and I plan to do more Jack Nightingale books, taking him to various cities in the United States. The next will probably be New York Night followed possibly by Los Angeles Night. The great thing about self-publishing is that I can control things like price and marketing, plus I get to design the cover. The downside is that it’s harder to do paperbacks – I use a company called Createspace and they sell through Amazon – but doing it myself means that the books aren’t on the shelves in bookshops or supermarkets. Swings and roundabouts. But one thing is certain – I will be writing more Jack Nightingale short stories.