I’m delighted to be able to announce a new Audible original book-length project coming your way, released on December 12 worldwide.

This time round I’m switching between a remote island in Venice and upstate New York for a two-narrator thriller about a writer locked away in a crumbling mansion in the lagoon, suddenly finding he’s facing the most dangerous deadline of his life.

Welcome to Shooter in the Shadows, available for pre-order now. Here’s what to expect…

Tom Honeyman made his name cracking a horrific double murder in his hometown of Prosper, New York. He got an international best seller out of it, made a small fortune, and left his newspaper reporting days behind. 

But was it all based on a lie? 

Now, more than a decade after his one and only success, Honeyman’s life is in tatters. His wife committed suicide, his daughter hasn’t spoken to him in years, and his books don’t sell. He’s sequestered himself in his wreck of a retreat on an island in Venice, desperate to find the inspiration that will revive his career. 

But Tom Honeyman is not alone. 

An unseen stranger tells Honeyman he got it wrong all those years ago. And he has just four days to uncover the real murderer. 

Tom Honeyman is no longer writing for his livelihood. He’s writing for his life.

This is a fast-moving story that moves between the present in Venice and the past in New York as Honeyman tries to reconstruct a story that will keep him alive. It’s a taut, exciting listen, but one that’s about people too, about family, and about how difficult it can be to bury a lie, however much you want.

I’m lucky as ever with Audible to have some fantastic talent on board for the tale. In this case not one but two award-winning performers, both of whom have got Audies and lots more besides to their credit.

Jonathan Davis, right, is acclaimed narrator of over 5oo audiobooks, and an Audible Narrator Hall of Fame inductee. He’s got an amazing range of audio titles under his belt, including a whole line of Star Wars books.

Ramón de Ocampo is an Audie winner too, and a regular on TV with Notorious, Guidance, 12 Monkeys, The West Wing, Medium, Killer Instinct, Sons of Anarchy, and Major Crimes, as well as memorable GUEST STARRING roles, most recently on: HAWAII 5-0, NCIS: New Orleans, CSI: Cyber, the Player, Castle, Bones, CSI, NCIS, and Gang Related.

Jonathan takes the role of the harassed Tom, trying to unpick the secrets of the past against a fast-ticking clock, and some other characters too. Ramón is his mysterious nemesis, hiding out of sight but never out of mind.

It was a blast to write and I gather Jonathan and Ramón had quite a time recording in the Audible studios in Newark too. Roll on December…

Please note this post is very out of date now as is the template. It was written for an early version of Scrivener 2 on the Mac. How it functions with Scrivener 3 I don’t know. I imagine you can update it but it’s up to you to play around with that. I won’t be putting out a new version for Scrivener 3 because frankly the app is now so mature I suspect most people don’t really need it.

As part of a general tidy-up around here I’ve taken a look at the free Scrivener template associated with Writing A Novel with Scrivener. It needed a bit of a cleanup too. So feel free to download this one and play with  it — you don’t need the book to do that.

This is just a set of suggestions to play with. Scrivener is incredibly flexible so as always please cherry pick what you like and reject the rest.

To use unzip the compressed archive. If you’re on a Mac you will see a standard Scrivener file. If you’re on Windows you will see a folder (as is usual with Scrivener projects on Windows). Open it in the usual way (please see the Scrivener help file if any doubt). I always find it easiest to run Scrivener then locate the key file in the project folder rather than trying to double click anything (but I’m not a regular Windows Scrivener user so that may just be me).

This is a freebie. No tech support so please don’t ask.

Download David’s Scrivener template.

You can get the general idea from the screenshot below.