Our readers here at The Hayride might have noticed that I’m in summer mode to an extent, and I have an explanation. I haven’t been lazy – I’ve been working on something else.

It’s a novel. It’s called The Necessary Men, and it’s the fourth in the Mike Holman series. I’m telling you this because while it’s due out September 26 – you can pre-order the Kindle version at Amazon, and pre-order a signed copy of the paperback version at the new MikeHolman.com site – we’re posting the book in 10 serialized episodes at The American Spectator.

And over there, The Necessary Men — Episode 1 is up. It posted yesterday. The title of the episode is “Nothing Left to Rent,” and it begins with a discussion between Manuel Cabrillo, whom readers of the Mike Holman series will remember as the Cuban commander of the beleaguered Venezuelan troops in King of the Jungle and who’s now working as a fixer for the Mexican and Colombian cartels, and Manolo Candela, who’s the president of the communist Cuban regime.

What’s happening in that scene is more or less ripped from the headlines. Cuba is turning into a narco-state, because they’ve run out of options to be much of anything else. That country is overdue for a regime change and the Trump administration is trying to engineer something other than a hostile takeover. Trump has talked about a “friendly invasion” of Cuba.

The Necessary Men games that scenario out within the Mike Holman/Pierce Polk universe. You can begin to see how that looks in Episode 1 over at TAS.

And you can read Episode 1 here.

New episodes will be dropping every Wednesday and Saturday between now and the full book’s release on September 26th, when it lands at Amazon and at MikeHolman.com. As said above, you can pre-order it right now.

And you might really like MikeHolman.com. It’s the new home base for the whole Mike Holman series — all four books, the full cast of characters, and yes, you can get signed copies shipped straight to your door.

One more thing, because I can’t help myself: we’re building something new over there that I’m not ready to fully unveil yet — a video novel version of these books, scene by scene. It’s early, but here’s a taste: a clip from the prologue of King of the Jungle, generated for what’s coming.

More on that soon. For now — go read Episode 1!