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Wow–those time differentials are a bear. 

It’s been a while since my last update. Part of that has been because life, the universe, and everything has made my world a lot busier than it was a year or so ago. But a larger part of my silence has been because I was beginning to feel like I’d been overpromising and underdelivering with the completion of the next book. Consequently, I made a conscious decision to lay off until I actually had something you’d want to know. 

So–here it is: the first draft of The Deadly Analogues is FINISHED. It was WAY harder to write than I could have possibly imagined, but I’m really happy with the result, and I can’t wait to share it with you! 

There’s still work to do before it’s ready to launch… my first few rounds of edits and revisions, running it past my beta readers (more on that in a second), more editing and revising, then sending it to my pro editor for finishing touches, then production/layout, blah, blah, blah. 

No official release date yet, but I’m spitballing for early March ’23 at this point. When I know, you’ll know. 

Yeah–I said beta readers. 

I will need beta readers to offer their feedback on the early draft, and I’ll need them soon. Yup, this is real. It’s actually happening. I don’t know exactly when yet, but once I have the draft where it needs to be the specifics hashed out on which platform it’ll be on, I’ll be sending out invites! 

So stay tuned… in the coming months for release updates, sneak previews, and a cover reveal! 

At last, The Heisenberg Corollary gets the cover I always wanted for it!

Not that I disliked Book One’s original blue-green cover–it was a pre-made that I had acquired for the preview I gave out to my subscribers (some of you probably have that!). I never intended for it to become the actual cover, and it was never the one I imagined for the story I wrote. Not a bad cover…

Just not the right cover. 

But now that it was time for me to think about the cover for The Deadly Analogues, I decided to work with J Caleb Design for a custom job. I had been impressed with his work for authors I had actually heard of and read, like Scott Baron and Michael Anderle. While I was at it, I figured I’d do both books, and create some brand consistency now that I actually had a series. 

The result, I think, really captures the verve, the whiz-bang energy of the story, as well as the snark and sense of fun. 

I love it.

It’s the right cover.

I hope you’ll think so too.

And so–without any further ado… 

Drum roll, please…

HERE IT IS!

If you haven’t already heard, The Heisenberg Corollary is now available as an audiobook, through Amazon, Audible, and iTunes! The adventures of Zeke and the Slagmasters are brought brilliantly to life by the talented and enthusiastic William L. Hahn, complete with sound effects that give the experience an old-time radio show kind of feeling!

Planning a summer road trip? Download The Heisenberg Corollary today for audio adventures on the go!

The audiobook of The Heisenberg Corollary is quickly becoming a reality! I’m beginning to receive preliminary tracks from the narrator–and I am VERY excited!! It was at first strange to hear my own words not just read, but performed by someone else. It sounds nothing like it does in my head.

It sounds better!

I’m working closely with the narrator and it’s been thrilling to participate in bringing the Slagmasters to life and giving each of them their unique voice. (We’re still trying to figure out Qaant Yke!)

We’re producing through ACX and I’m hoping for a summer release–just in time for pre-marketing of The Deadly Analogues! When there is a definite release date–you’ll read it here first!

I hope this finds you all safe and healthy. In the famous words of almost every bad sci-fi movie or show… “Be careful out there, damnit.”

I had gotten away from the ocean of steaming content for a good while last year. That ended in December when The Man In The High Castle and The Expanse dropped new seasons. I was sorry to see The Man In The High Castle come to its conclusion, since I had really been enjoying its expansive interpretation of not just Philip K Dick’s novel, but the alternate world in which it’s set. I thought the end of the final season was a bit rushed as the show runners struggled to resolve the many intertwined plot lines. In the end however, it seemed fitting that many of the show’s threads ended with more questions than answers–just like the book did. And The Expanse has quenched my thirst for gritty space opera in a way it hasn’t since the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Given the tonal direction of The Deadly Analogues, it’s serving as a solid inspiration. I look forward to new seasons with the crew of the Roci!

But once I was done with these shows I felt bereft–and very much in need of quality, on-demand SFF programming. I knew about the embarrassment of riches in terms of content out there… but what to watch next? I had already watched Altered Carbon–and although I find Joel Kinneman perpetually annoying it was some top notch cyberpunk.

The first possibility to present itself came from the fantasy side of my watch list. The Witcher, on Netflix–I’d never played the game, but I’ve spent enough time browsing ArtStation to have seen countless renditions of the saga’s four central characters. I felt like I knew them already. I was immediately engaged by first episode. But I turned it off after 30 minutes, deciding that I wanted to read the books first.

What happened next was a happy accident. After additional browsing and an accidental toggling of the auto-play option… I found myself watching Season 1 of Netflix’s new Lost In Space.

Now keep in mind, I was more-or-less potty-trained on the original Lost In Space. (Long story–not now.) I still hold a soft spot for its gee-whiz trappings and high camp antics. And because of that I really wanted to like that 1998 reboot. But–as history has proven–the movie was vomitable*, and from that point I pretty much thought that any update of Lost In Space would be DOA. So when I heard about the new Netflix series, I thought, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

How wrong I was.

Coming to the new Lost In Space late, I had the pleasure of careening through both seasons in less than a week. I really appreciated the wholesale rethinking of the entire premise, making the journey of the Robinson family part of a much larger enterprise. The Jupiter 2 being but one ship in a whole fleet of colonists fleeing a dying Earth gives the story much more fodder for drama, over and above the alien-of-the-week formula of the old series. The robot is ingeniously reconceived as an alien with a startling connection to not just Will Robinson, but to the entire mission. The cast is amazing–standouts being Parker Posey as a tragi-comic reinvention of Dr. Smith, and Molly Parker as Maureen Robinson, the moral and emotional center around which the whole action orbits. It looks phenomenal. The visuals are among the best I’ve ever seen on TV–or on film. And at the end of the day, this new Lost In Space does not forget what the original was, under all that tin-foil and camp–the story of a family.

And I think that might be the part I appreciate the most. This ensemble show, where the relationships are as important as the explosions, remind me of how important the relationships and connections are among the crew of the Friendly Card. And in the upcoming installment of the Slagmaster saga–those relationships are going to be tested. It’ll be good to have a show like this to hold up as an inspiration as the draft unfolds.

Of course, once that was over, I was left adrift again… so here comes Disney+ and CBS All-Access to the rescue! Picard, Discovery and The Mandelorian are next on the list!

*One of these months I’ll post about some of my least favorite SFF films…

I had heard, of course of writers making use of advance reader teams and ARC copies, but this all was so new and, in early 2019, it was all I could do just to get the book out there!

So… better late than never, I guess. Booksprout makes it possible for readers to sign up and read books for free–with the understanding that they will leave an honest review in return–all within the confines of Amazon’s byzantine terms of service.

This service is really geared towards pre-release books, but Booksprout makes there service available to already published books as well. Lucky for me, and maybe lucky for you!

If you have yet to acquire The Heisenberg Corollary, now is your chance! Click the link and grab a free copy–all for the price of an honest review! Available copies are limited–so take advantage of this offer today!

It’s September and the video of that Earth Wind and Fire song is making the rounds on social media. The beginning of another school year has locked my schedule back into its old teacher routine and, although the writing has been coming, the progress has been… well, not what I would have liked considering we’re coming up on 90 days since the release of The Heisenberg Corollary.

Which is not to say it’s not progressing! I’m 12,000 words in and (mostly) done with the first act! I’m not going to drop any spoilers, but the new installment is opening up with some good, rollicking action, showing the newly minted Slagmasters coming into their powers. Four words: Spacequakes and Time Tornadoes. I’ll just leave that there.

Although still snarky and fun, The Deadly Analogues will venture into darker territory, as problems and unforeseen consequences arise resulting from actions and unresolved plot threads from Book 1. So–it might not feel as much like Firefly as it might like… THIS.

So now I’m plotting Act 2 and looking forward to diving into the fray once more. I’ll keep you posted as things progress!

I couldn’t put it off any longer. The Heisenberg Corollaryis finally available on Amazon. It’s been a long, hard road to get here, but it has arrived. It feels a bit surreal.

To celebrate the release, I’m making The Heisenberg Corollaryavailable for the discounted price of .99for a short time, before it goes up to its regular price of 4.99. Grab yours today!

The print edition will be ready in a few weeks.

Early feedback has been great:

This is going to be epic… Read it all on my phone last night and am begging you for more! Way to go!

…the story was really enjoyable. As a reader, I wouldn’t hesitate to read a book 2.

[Your book does] what few books and movies do: make the reader continue the world in their imagination. The reader imagines what they would do, or what the other parts of the story might be if they were written. Your book does that. 

I applaud you for getting this epic tale written and look forward to reading the continuing slagmaster saga!

I really want this launch to make a splash–and I really can’t do that without you. I realize that we all have loads of back reading on our devices and on our nightstands. Even if you’re reading something else at the moment, buying The Heisenberg Corollarynow at the special launch price and adding it to your To Read pile will mean that the purchase counts towards the ranking and will make it much more likely that we can really make a noise with this launch. And then you’ll have the opening adventure of Zeke Travers and his crew on your device and ready for your summer vacation…

I hope you love the book. It was certainly a blast to write. Let me know what you think… and please please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. It’s one of the best ways you can support my work as a writer.

The Heisenberg Corollary came back from the editor last month–and I’ve been super busy making final edits and tweaks to the manuscript. I finished the changes my editor suggested–but in the process got wound up in a cascade of additional ideas that kept dogging at my creative heels and begging for attention. I kept thinking, “just one more change, just a minor revision…”

I realized quickly that I could have kept working those “last few” changes indefinitely–working and worrying over the manuscript, over and over, for a benefit that most likely only I would recognize.

So I stopped. I saved the word doc, shipped a backup to Dropbox, and opened Kindle Create.

The book is done, as far as the words on the page are concerned.

So… now I get to scale a whole new learning curve as I figure how KDP works and how to format a MOBI and how to set up a Facebook ad that won’t bankrupt me. A lot to know. A lot to do.

But it’s all happening. And I expect the next time you hear from me it will be to announce the release date! Not quite there yet–but it will be soon. Very soon.

We are almost there, y’all! The Heisenberg Corollary is finally off to the editor! After a couple of reading and note-taking rounds, followed by beta-reading reading courtesy of BetaBooks.com (and some wonderful readers who were very generous with their time and insights), I got the manuscript to a fairly respectable second draft.

After that, it was time to do some editor shopping. I’d never done this before, so it was somewhat daunting. There are so many, offering such a wide variety of services, it was educational just learning about the spectrum of editing options available to an independent author. Everything from high-end, top-dollar, soup-to-nuts professionals on reedsy to bargain-basement freelancers on fiverr. I test-drove several and ultimately went with one within my (nearly non-existent) budget, whose client and title list felt like a good match with my material.

I expect to get the edits back in the next few weeks. Hopefully, things will move quickly after that. I hope to actually announce a release date the next time you hear from me!