State of the Author, Start of 2025

My plans for the New Year are always kind of vague, because “Mann tracht un Gott lacht” (Man plans, and God laughs).

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Happy New Year!

Going into 2024, the Grand Moff was expressing my feelings pretty well:

(Note: This meme is only funny if you have the movie so thoroughly memorized that these words go through your head at the sight of this image: “Evacuate? In our moment of triUMPH? I think you overrrestimate their chaunces.”)

I know a lot of people went through hard times this year. Two members of my extended family passed away this year, and another member of my family came home from a funeral to find sewage in the basement which created all kinds of hassle for them and sped up their plans to find a new place. That being said, I personally have no reason to complain about how 2024 went for me. Prayers up that in 2025 we’re Harrison and Mark’s characters, complete with throne room scene, and not Peter’s!

State of the Author, 4Q2024

-First off, I think my books are all in Kindle Unlimited now, free to anyone with a subscription to KU. If you see any sign that they are not in KU, please let me know in the comments.

Undead Flight (Hunter Healer King Book 2) is now in the hands of my proofreaders. Barring complications, should be ready to publish by Christmas time. Ebook cover is done; blurb is done with AI help (stay tuned, my post on the blurbing process will be out tomorrow. Print cover is dependent on my final cleanup of the manuscript to determine page length.

-Also started Hunter Healer King Book 3 by writing a fairly dark and distressing scene from the last third of the book. This is kind of suboptimal, because stitching together scenes written out of order tends to add (wo)manhours to the first draft process, but I hadn’t figured out the opening scene at that point. I don’t know when it will be released but I know that I am aiming for Christmas of 2025.

-I have had a sci-fi Pride and Prejudice retelling in development for a long time; finally got the first scene down. No projected completion date at this time. My main inspiration for this concept was, weirdly enough, Star Wars: A New Hope. If you dig deep enough into the filmographies of the supporting cast, you will find one with a Pride and Prejudice connection in his earlier career. Regrettably, the catchy working title explicitly references Star Wars, so the official title will probably be something rather sedate of the “Pride and…” format.

-New ebook covers using AI art for Shadow Captain and Spider Star are done; still need to do new paperback covers for them, and ebook/hardcover for the 2 in 1 volume for the duology. Projected release date for the 2 in 1 is first/second quarter of 2025.

-Early stages of AI art covers for the Jaiya Series and Ancestors of Jaiya series. No text layout yet. A four in one of Ancestors might come out in third quarter of 2025; a seven in one of the full metaseries might be sometime in 2026 but a lot could go sideways between now and then.

Weird Wednesday Meets Midjourney Monday

I did a Midj thing based on a joke about Elon Musk, Techlord of Mars, and an internet friend with a twitter account very kindly decided to circulate it. Thank you Foxfier!

My friend Caroline Furlong also played with the same idea in some other AI art engines on Night Cafe, with even beefier and more outrageous results.

Likeable and Unlikeable Main Characters

Elsewhere on the web, there was a discussion going on about whether readers of popular fiction would tolerate an unlikeable main character, and I stuck my oar in – well, a whole galley’s worth of oars actually. I thought I would try to summarize some of my opinions here:

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Spring Book Sale

Happy (Upcoming) Easter!

This year, I’m participating in AetherCzar’s Based Spring Book Sale

Steampunk author Hans G. Schantz (aka AetherCzar) has graciously included Shadow Captain in his sale. As usual Hans pulls together dozens of indie and small-press titles, which emphasize fun and escapism over Serious Messages and the grinding concerns of the real world, all on sale or for free. I hope you can find something you like here.

Weird Wednesday: My Star Master Books Tried to Warn You About This Tech

Some crazy scientists or other are trying to make quasi-organic computer chips, a technology which plays a small but sinister role in my Star Master duology: https://newatlas.com/computers/human-brain-chip-ai/

Some excerpts from my novels below the cut.

Continue reading “Weird Wednesday: My Star Master Books Tried to Warn You About This Tech”

Spider Star is Leaving Kindle Unlimited in 7 Days!

Jetay must destroy the Spiderstar…with or without his new allies!

The psychic warrior Jetay has freed himself and his brother from slavery, and joined Lady Lanati and the Partisans in their interstellar war against the evil Red Knights. Unfortunately the Partisan military is an undisciplined, poorly led force, and the Red Knights grow ever closer to their goal of unleashing the ancient, deadly weapon known as the Spiderstar. Lanati has a plan to destroy the Spiderstar, but it would force Jetay to choose between love and duty. Even worse, he might have to use the same memory removal techniques which were once used against him….

Spider Star, the second and final book in my space opera series, is leaving Kindle Unlimited on June 3, 2023, at which point I plan to publish the novel to other ebook vendors besides Amazon. If you are a KU subscriber, I would advise you to download Spider Star before the deadline, and then hold onto it until you feel like reading it.

I will probably also raise the price on my first space opera, Shadow Captain, at some point after June 3, 2023, so you might want to purchase that one while it is only $0.99.

Happy Reading!