Ok, this is one of my favorite things I’ve built into the Logan Hollister books…

The fictional newsroom from my novels is a real website you can actually visit.

And it just reported the first death from Book 2!

Yes, we’re talking about a fictional murder in my next novel, The Rival. But the website, the articles, and your ability to follow along right now are very real.

How fun is that?

If you’ve read The Confessor, you already know WLTLH is part of Logan Hollister’s world.

Well, I decided that world ought to have an address you could type into your browser.

So I took the fictional news website from the book and built it into a functioning site in real life: WLTLH.

It has its own newsroom, staff bylines, articles and an archive. You can click around and read the coverage as though you’re living in the same city as Logan.

Which, judging by what keeps happening there, is probably more enjoyable from a safe distance!

The next book is starting to make the news

Here’s the part I’ve been waiting to get to…

As I’m writing the next book, new deaths from that book start appearing on WLTLH in real time.

You get to see the news break. Then you can come back as the reporting continues and new pieces of the investigation emerge.

All before the finished novel launches.

That’s the signal: when new killings start showing up on WLTLH, a new Logan Hollister book is getting closer.

And that signal just went off.

The first story is about Raymond Delgado, whose retirement gala takes a very bad turn at the Ashworth Grand Pacific.

Four hundred guests. A champagne toast. An evening that was supposed to end with applause.

Then the police seal the ballroom.

I’ll let the newsroom take it from there. You can read the first report on WLTLH.

I’m having a ridiculous amount of fun with this.

You can follow a case before you’ve even opened the book it belongs to. Notice a detail, form a theory, come back for the next report…

Then, when you finally read the novel, you get to discover what was happening beyond the headlines.

The newsroom only gets to report what it can know at that point in the story. I’m certainly not handing it the killer’s entire playbook!

And Book 1 doesn’t just stop when you close it

This works in the other direction, too.

If you’ve finished The Confessor and wondered what happens to that world afterward, there’s more waiting for you on the site.

The aftermath keeps unfolding. Court coverage, fallout from the cases, people and institutions still dealing with what happened.

Because the last page of a book doesn’t mean everybody in that city packs up and goes home.

Logan’s world keeps moving.

I love that you can finish the novel, open the newsroom, and spend a little more time there.

If you’re still reading Book 1, save the aftermath stories until you’ve finished. They pick up where events in that book leave off.

Keep an eye on the newsroom

I’m already through Chapter 17 of The Rival, with a November 1 release planned.

In the meantime, more news posts and investigative follow-ups are coming over the next few days. More killings from the new book will start surfacing in the days and weeks ahead as I keep writing.

So bookmark the site. Check back.

See what the newsroom has uncovered since your last visit.

And if you think you’ve figured something out, I’d love to hear your theory.

Whether I’ll confirm it is another matter entirely…

Start with Ray Delgado’s gala on WLTLH.

Welcome back to Logan Hollister’s world.

Apparently, I’ve made sure he won’t be getting much time off.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.