Back in 2009, a small traditional press picked up my standalone noir novel, The Take, and published it. It was my first time, so you can imagine I was pretty stoked. I was going to be published! You get the idea.

Well, reality soon set in. I hated the cover, I was forced to make some edits I didn’t care for, and I didn’t like the formatting. Not only that, as is the case with most small presses, it took forever to come out and when it finally did, they did absolutely nothing in the way of promotion. Whatever few books sold were due to my limited promotional efforts. Once I realized the book was doomed, I forgot about it and dove headfirst into self-publishing with my Key West Nocturnes series and my Jack Barnett / Las Vegas series. Like a lonely orphan wandering the streets of an uncaring industrial city, The Take wallowed in the icy depths of the Amazon rankings, hovering near death.

Okay, so fast-forward to July of this year. The publisher goes out of business and much to my surprise, reverts all the rights to The Take back to me. I immediately got a new cover, cleaned up the edits and formatting problems, and voila! The new, improved version of what I think is an outstanding noir tale, if I do say so myself.

I won’t bore you here with a description of it. If you want to read more about it, you can go to its Amazon page, where you’ll find a pretty snappy description. It’s also in paperback on CreateSpace, and digitally on Nook. Soon to be on iBooks and Kobo. I will, however, share a blurb by Vicki Hendricks, author of some of the best contemporary noir anywhere.

She said, “Dennis writes true noir. The Take is a fast-motion train wreck from page one, twisting the reader’s heart for the desperate souls on a ride they never chose.”