Another location for my space regency:
Midjourney Monday: Withdrawing Room, Last Repose
Tag: Star Wars
That Horrifying Moment…
When you create a space regency setting as kind of a joke about
Continue reading “That Horrifying Moment…”Midjourney Monday: The Bennets’ Drawing Room in the Space Regency
I have like one line in the space regency about Longbourn having a drawing room with turquoise walls and pink furniture, but Midjourney kind of ran amok with the idea when I prompted it.
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.
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!
1984 and Sobering Thoughts on Ash Wednesday
This isn’t explicitly religious (the source material is anything but religious in fact), but I thought it more appropriate to post the Weird Wednesday material yesterday, and put this up today.
This is a story about how people who have no values beyond their own desires and sense of mistreatment are easily destroyed by people and organizations who have no values but the will to power. The main character may be the product of his environment, but ultimately, being Winston is a choice.
Don’t be Winston or Julia. Understand what matters to you, do your best to cultivate habits of virtue and live up to whatever code of conduct you’ve managed to discern. Pray. But also, don’t feel smugly superior to Winston. Look at St. Peter the Apostle, virtue signaling about his courage and loyalty on Holy Thursday, and then denying his Lord that very night. We all have the opportunity to rise or fall. What will we do when that opportunity comes?
Weird Wednesday: Super-Deep Geothermal Drilling
Normally, geothermal power is only used for generating electricity in places that have “hot spots” relatively close to the surface, like this location in Italy. Meet Quaise Energy who believe that you can generate electricity with geothermal heat anywhere in the world, if you just drill deep enough.
Here’s hoping they end up emulating this Peter Cushing character, not this one. Good luck, guys.
Done. Again. For Now.
I just completed the new ending and some of the expansion scenes for Star Master Book 2. For more about the long, complicated evolution of this space opera novel, see here, here and here. Yes, I have been working on this book for a while, but I hope to have it out by the end of this year, especially since I have no plans to do NaNoWriMo.
For now, my plans are a short break to work up a presentation for day job, play mobile games, read Golden Age mysteries, watch Fringe and Don Matteo with family members, and brainstorm whatever comes after the Star Master duology.
Where Did THAT Come From: Essem and Co, Ularti
Ularti, the owner of the tramp freighter Vanner, keeps Jetay and Khed in indentured servitude, and is one of the main antagonists in Shadow Captain. Jetay’s story arc, as previously told is that of the drifter Drafted Into a Good Cause, and frequently in that arc, there’s a character who the drifter used to work with, who represents the pull away from the Good Cause. I didn’t have a good sense of what that might be in this case, until I hit on the “Hansel and Gretel” framing for Jetay’s situation.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Essem and Co, Ularti”
Jaglion Press 