A quick update

If life had a crazy-meter, the needle on mine would be somewhere in the yellow green right now and trending toward the red.

Next week, Future Mrs. Vasicek and I will be traveling to Iowa for my nephew’s baptism. It’s going to be a big family affair. Future Mrs. Vasicek has met everyone already, minus some of the nieces and nephews, but this will be the first time that we’re all in the same place together. Should be fun, but also very busy.

Next month, we’re getting married, and that’s a whole other source of craziness right there. Good craziness, but craziness all the same. Things are coming together one thing at a time, but there’s still a bunch of stuff to figure out, and a bunch of unknown unknowns as well. It will probably take at least a couple of months after we’re married before everything fully shakes out.

As far as writing goes, I’m making slow but steady progress on Edenfall, and should still finish it before the wedding. I’ll share more details on that in the email newsletter that I plan to send out this week, but the short version is that I seem to be over the hump and making good progress. That’s where I’m putting most of my energy, so if the blog falls off for a while, don’t worry—I’m still here.

As for the publishing side of things, I’m figuring out how to get all my books out in print, which was something I thought I’d figured out back in January until I learned just how crappy KDP Paperback really is. That said, it’s the best option for the present time, so I’m trying to figure out how to work within those limitations and design covers that their POD printers won’t mangle too badly. Still, it’s going to be a while.

An area where I’ve really dropped the ball is short stories. It’s been months since I wrote the last one, and I need to put a bunch out on submission again too. Also, marketing is an area that I need to do better in. I’m experimenting a bit with AMS ads, but it is so freakishly complicated that I hardly know where to begin.

But reading is an area that I really need to do better. I try to spend an hour or two each night reading, but the last couple of weeks that hasn’t happened at all. My TBR list is about three shelves long right now, and that’s just the print books. That’s definitely an oversight that needs to be rectified.

At the same time, I’m well on my way toward collecting all of the works of David Gemmell, mostly through Paperback Swap. If everyone has a superpower, mine is the ability to acquire books, so Paperback Swap is a really fantastic way to leverage that. The Neverending Story is my favorite book, but David Gemmell is my favorite author, so I definitely want to have all of his books in my personal library.

That’s pretty much it. Still need to figure out cover work for Edenfall. Still need to assemble my first readers and get stuff figured out for that. All of these are good problems, though. Hopefully, I’ll be trading up for better problems in the very near future.

Trope Tuesday: Future Primitive

From tvtropes:

Evolution isn’t goal-directed. Sometimes …a species (often but not limited to humanity) will sometimes evolve into a more feral, less civilized, sometimes even non-sapient variety, regaining “primitive” characteristics. These “primitive” characteristics can include behaviors and/or physical traits…
Most basic is the scenario common to Post-Apocalyptic settings After the End, where humanity (or another species) is still physiologically more or less the same, but society has collapsed and technological and cultural regression have set in… In more extreme scenarios, the population may have evolved into a new subspecies or another species altogether… Most Scavenger World-type future settings are not far enough removed from the Present Day for natural selection to favor such drastic changes.
May overlap with Was Once a Man. Sometimes, it’s the motivation of an Evilutionary Biologist to try and take control of evolution in order to avert this fate.
Common to After the End settings. Likely to exist in Humanity’s Wake. Contrast Evolutionary Levels, Ultimate Lifeform and The Singularity (all of which tend to assume evolution’s a linear, goal driven process). Has nothing to do with the effects of a Devolution Device.

This trope has been on my mind as I write Edenfall, the sequel to Genesis Earth. In that book, this trope featured prominently, and drove the main character to question his faith in the progression of the natural world from chaos to order, entropy to complexity, and ignorance and barbarity to knowledge and civilization.

Perhaps the most prominent example of this trope is the Morlocks and Eloi from H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. In the far future, the children of the rich elites of society have evolved into dainty, helpless, childlike creatures, while the descendants of the lower classes have evolved into dark and predatory monsters. As different as they are, though, they have both lost the drive and ingenuity that makes us human: the Eloi because it was pamperd out of them, and the Morlocks because they were repressed for so long. Both of them have lost their humanity and devolved into little more than animals.

In the Victorian era, people generally had faith in the slow and steady march of progress: that ignorance and superstition inevitably gave way to the light of science and reason, each successive age tended to be more advanced and scientific that the previous ages, and that humanity represented the pinnacle of evolution, the crowning achievement of the natural world. They rejected the notion that catastrophic and violent upheavals had any significant effect on the development of cilivization or humanity, and believed that the world was in a state of constant, unstoppable improvement.

Well, the two worlds wars pretty much shattered that notion forever. And since that time, we’ve discovered all sorts of evidence that in history and evolution, catastrophic change and violent upheaval are the rule, rather than the exception. From the bronze age collapse and the black death to supernovae and the extinction of the dinosaurs, the Victorian concept of the slow, steady, and inevitable march of progress looks very quaint indeed.

That was what I wanted to deconstruct in Genesis Earth. But now that I’m writing the sequels, I plan to subvert this trope. I can’t say how without giving spoilers, but it’s going to be a major plot point, especially in the third book.

What happens when humans meddle in evolution? When we hack into our genetic code and rewrite our place in the natural order? Can time heal the scars of our broken world, or will it take something else to fix us? Something more than human, or something so fundamental to our humanity that it lies in every heart?

Anyways, those are the things on my mind as I finish up Edenfall and get ready to write The Stars of Redemption. With luck, they will both be out by the end of this year!

WIP excerpt: Edenfall

I’m a little less than halfway done with Edenfall, so I figure it would be good to share a couple of excerpts with you. If all goes well, it should be out by September.

As a reminder, this is the sequel to my first novel, Genesis Earth, so you may see a couple of familiar characters in this excerpt, which is taken from the first chapter. I’ve already got plans for the third book, and will hopefully complete the trilogy by the end of the year.

Enjoy!

The boulder felt rough and warm under Estee’s bare feet, the hot air dusty and dry. She scrambled up its face, laughing as her little sister struggled to keep up.

“Slow down!” Celeste cried. She lost her footing and began to slip. “Help!”

Estee turned around and dropped to her stomach. A warm breeze tousled her hair as sweat ran down the side of her face. With the grainy sandstone hot against her skin, she caught Celeste and pulled her up.

“You’re okay. Come on!”

Celeste’s face was pale, but she recovered quickly. Together, they stood atop the massive boulder, panting to catch their breath.

“Race you to the next one!”

In an instant, Estee was off, laughing at her sister’s cry of dismay. Thankfully, the next boulder wasn’t so hard. She panted for breath as she scrambled up it with Celeste following closely behind, her terror forgotten as she struggled to keep up. In less than a minute, they had both conquered the rock.

From the top, they had a majestic view of the wide, golden-green savannah and the tabletop mountains all along the horizon.

“It’s hot,” Celeste complained.

“Here,” said Estee, leading her to the northward facing side. “It’s not so bad over here.”

They both laid down with their backs against the slickrock. Estee closed her eyes and breathed deeply, the sun warming her dust-caked skin and drying the beads of sweat on her forehead. It was wonderful.

“Hey, look!”

She opened her eyes and looked where Celeste was pointing, in the direction of the beanstalk. A thin, familiar line rose from the ruins of the ancient ones into the blue sky, disappearing high above the clouds. But the thing that caught Estee’s attention was a point of light, shining like a star where the beanstalk disappeared from view.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Celeste. “Look, it’s moving.”

Indeed it was. A light breeze whistled around the boulders as the star drifted soundlessly toward the south. Estee rose to her feet, shielding her eyes with her hand as she traced its curious progress across the sky. Beside her, Celeste stood up as well.

“Is it a falling star?” Celeste asked.

Estee didn’t think so. Falling stars only happened at night, and they usually flickered out in the blink of an eye. Mama liked to study them. She always knew when the best times were to look for them, and sometimes took Estee out with her to see. Mama and Papa both knew a lot about stars, because that was where they’d come from. But Estee had never seen anything like this.

“Is it?” Celeste repeated.

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“Where is going?”

The star grew brighter as it moved closer to the horizon, leaving a bright yellow streak. It was falling to the east, past the village of the little people. Estee thought it would pass out of view beyond the tabletop mountains, but then it turned abruptly north. Falling stars never did that.

“Look!” said Celeste. “It’s making a cloud!”

Sure enough, a thin whispy cloud cut a line in the star’s wake. It reminded Estee of the smoke from a candle. As the star dipped lower, it passed in front of the tabletop mountains and alighted in the nearby foothills. A shiver of excitement ran down Estee’s spine.

“Come on—let’s go!”

“No,” Celeste protested. “It’s too far away.”

“Don’t you want to find it, though?”

“The daylight is fading. We’ll get in trouble.”

Estee groaned, but her sister was right. Besides, Mama wanted them back before dark, and the sun was already starting to get low.

“Race you home. Last one back is a lazy sun-dragon!”

“Hey!” Celeste cried as Estee scampered down the boulder. “Wait for me!”

The high grass tickled Estee’s legs as she ran across the plains. Fine, red dust caked her sweaty skin, but she ran until her lungs burned and her heart pounded, simply for the joy of it. She startled a swarm of leaping locusts grazing nearby, and shrieked in surprise as they leaped high above her, rattling their wings as they sought somewhere more peaceful to graze.

“Celeste! Where are you?”

“Back here!” her sister called.

“Well hurry up!”

By the time they made it back, the beanstalk was already beginning to shimmer in the light of the setting sun. Smoke had started to rise from the adobe oven—that meant Mama was cooking, which meant that they were late.

“Oh, dungheaps,” Estee swore.

Celeste ran up beside her, still out of breath. “What?” she asked—then, noticing the smoke, “Oh.”

“Come on,” said Estee, “let’s go to Papa’s workshop.” If they came in with Papa, then maybe Mama would think they’d been with him the whole time. Papa was always late.

They snuck as quietly as they could out through the hedgerow gate, making a wide circle until they reached Papa’s workshop about fifty yards away. The thatchwork patches in the plasteel dome roof waved in the afternoon breeze.

Five of the little people rose to their feet as Estee and Celeste rounded the corner. Two of them rose swiftly to their feet, brandishing spears, but their leader scolded them and they stepped aside.

“That’s right,” said Estee, holding her palms outstretched. “It’s just us. No need to fear.”

The leader was one of the chiefs of the little people, his rich orange mane bearing jewelry carved from bone. Estee squatted so as not to seem taller than him. In just the last year, she’d grown so much that all but the strongest hunters were shorter than her. She still hadn’t gotten used to that.

The chief stepped forward and put his hand on Estee’s chest in a gesture of peace. She did the same, leaning forward so that they stood cheek to cheek. His furry skin was hard and tough, his mane so long that it tickled her arm. They both took a deep breath together, and the scent of sweat and musk filled her nostrils. She closed her eyes and let it seep into her, until his heartbeat echoed hers.

Opening her eyes, she stepped back to let Celeste greet the chief in like manner while the others stood back. It wasn’t every day that they met the little people like this, but it happened often enough that they both knew what to do.

Satisfied, the little people bowed and let them pass. Estee knocked once, then parted the heavy rug door and stepped inside.

“Papa?” she called. The workshop was brightly lit. Bottles of various chemicals sat on the counter among baskets of dried leaves and flowers. Papa was on the far side of the room, next to the operating table.

“Shh,” said Papa, gesturing for them to stay quiet.

The two girls crept forward to watch. One of the women of the little people sat on the operating table, trembling with fear. She held an infant child on her chest, limp and unconsious.

Papa rinsed off a bloody pair of tweezers in the sink, then returned to the mother and child. “There, there,” he whispered. “Just one more—got it!” From the baby’s leg, he pulled out a black sliver as long as Estee’s pinky finger and dropped it into a nearby bowl.

“Gauze,” he ordered without looking up from his work. Estee rushed to assist him. After carefully cleaning the wound, he applied an herbal dressing before taking the offered gauze and wrapping it around the baby’s leg. “That should help with the infection,” he muttered, then held up one of the smelling salts to the baby’s nose until it began to whimper and cry. The mother clutched her baby to her chest and jumped off the table, rushing out the door to her waiting companions.

“What was that?” asked Celeste.

“Just a splinter,” said Papa. “But they didn’t come to me until the infection had already set in.” He emptied the wash basin and scrubbed his hands with soap and pumice.

“Why?” Estee asked.

“Because they were afraid. They see us as gods, you know. Because we came from the sky.”

“We didn’t,” Celeste said, pointing to Estee and herself.

“But you are our children,” said Papa. “And in their eyes, that makes you gods like us.”

“But why does that make them afraid of us?” Estee asked.

Papa smiled. “Let’s go see what your mama is cooking, shall we?”

“Yeah,” said Celeste. “Let’s go!”

Estee groaned. She hated it when he ended their conversations without giving her a clear answer. Recently, it seemed he did that more and more often. It was especially bad when she asked if Mama would have another baby. Hermes had already seen his first winter.

They followed Papa outside, squinting in the evening sun. Mama was waiting for them at the door of the hut, arms folded across her chest.

“You were out late,” she said, looking Estee in the eye.

“No we weren’t,” Estee lied. “We were with Papa in the workshop.”

“Were you?”

She fidgeted under Mama’s knowing glare. “No,” she admitted. “But we didn’t stay out that long—and we didn’t go far.”

“Yeah,” said Celeste, backing her up.

Papa gave Mama a kiss. “Evening, dear. You look gorgeous.”

“And you look exhausted,” she answered him back. Still, she smiled and ran her fingers through his hair.

Estee rolled her eyes. “Come on! Are we going to eat or what?”

“Hold on, you ravening locust,” said Mama. “We’ll eat soon enough.”

Getting better, coming back

So last Monday, I woke up with post-nasal drip and a sore throat, which quickly turned into a 101 degree fever. Needless to say, I was out for the rest of the week. I’ve mostly recovered by now, though I’m still coughing up gunk from my chest, and should be back up to 100% in the next couple of days.

Coming back is giving me a chance to re-examine the way I’ve been doing some things, and to make some adjustments that will hopefully yield some positive dividends. This includes reworking my writing goals, writing process, and publishing schedule, updating my business plan, and figuring out what I need to focus on with regards to marketing and publishing.

The biggest thing is that I’ve decided to trunk Queen of the Falconstar, just because it’s not the kind of story I want to write or be known for. I’m still working on Edenfall, but enough time has passed that I’m going to call it a new draft. The current one is a bit of a mess, so I’ll take the next week to clean it up before hopefully going into it full-speed.

More stuff to come, but I’ve got to run so I’ll share it later. With luck, I’ll be back up to blogging weekly again soon.

Quick update

So I missed a couple of blog posts last week, and I don’t currently have any more lined up in the queue. I know I said I’d try to blog daily from now on, and I intend to work up to that, but I’ve got to get other things in order first. Here’s what I’ve got going on:

Wedding stuff
Tax stuff
Writing Edenfall
Revisions for Edenfall
Copy edits for Gunslinger to Earth
Metadata, formatting, and publishing Gunslinger to Earth
Writing a short story for March
Catching up on emails (there’s a lot of them)

It’s not that the workload is overwhelming, it’s just that there’s a lot of moving parts. Also, the daily routine has fallen apart and I need to build it back up again. This tends to happen periodically, so I’m not too worried, but it is frustrating and it does mean that balls are going to get dropped.

First things first: finish the copy edits for Gunslinger to Earth and get that up for preorder, preferably by the end of the week. Taxes also need to be done ASAP. The wedding stuff is mostly being handled by other people, but I need to be available, so that’s an ongoing thing. But if I can tackle those big ones, then the rest should fall into place hopefully.

Also, sleep. Can’t function without it. Caffeine is not a long-term substitute.

I’m not gonna lie, there’s a part of me that wants to shut out everything else and just do family history all day. Then there’s making family history, AKA spending time with Future Mrs. Vasicek. But she’s got school and work, so there’s a hard limit to that.

Then there’s reading. So much reading to do. Books are piling up everywhere.

Anyways, that’s enough for now. I’ll post as often as I can, but it’s going to be touch and go for a while, at least until everything else is in some semblance of order.

Now I have the perfect ending

Guys, I just plotted out the last two books in the Genesis Earth trilogy, and it is going to have the most fantastic ending ever. I can’t tell you anything about it, since that would spoil everything, but it’s going to be amazing.

Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea to wait ten years to write the next book after all. I’m still loosely following the original outline I made for Edenfall, but there are some key changes to it, and all the other background stuff I’m sure I would have done differently. Sometimes, it really does help to put some distance between you and the story, and to let it simmer for a long, long time.

In any case, I know what I need to do now to turn Genesis Earth into a proper trilogy. Also, I’ll probably go through the first book at some point to remove all the swearing. It’s far too jarring and doesn’t really add anything to the story. At the time I wrote it, I was itching to write a grittier book, but that’s not Genesis Earth.

Edenfall is going to be good, but The Stars of Redemption is going to be amazing! The secondary plot with the third timeline is going to blow your mind. I can hardly wait to write it!

January Recap

It’s been a busy, busy month. I finished a major WIP, published a new bundle, started a new job at the local bookstore, and made a bunch of changes and adjustments behind the scenes. And that’s just my writing life!

Nothing Found

First, I published a new Star Wanderers bundle, containing the complete series. This replaces The Jeremiah Chronicles and Tales of the Far Outworlds, the two previous series bundles that have been up for the last several years.

Eventually, I plan to release Star Wanderers: The Complete Series as an audiobook. That’s one of my big projects for the year. I want to narrate it myself, but I also want to do a damn good job of it, which means I have to learn how to properly record and produce a quality audiobook. That’s going to take time.

I will probably release Star Wanderers: The Complete Series in print too, once I’ve gotten set up for that. As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve pulled all my books from KDP Paperback and plan to go with a different print-on-demand publisher in the not too distant future. But again, that’s going to take time to do properly.

Gunslinger to Earth

Phase:1.0 Draft

100%

MyBookProgress by Author Media

Second, I finished Gunslinger to Earth! At this point, I’m just waiting to send it out to my editor. Another few weeks, and it will finally be up for preorder!

There’s a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes, too. I’ve sent out more than 60 short story submissions this month, sold one to The New Accelerator, and hope to sell a lot more in the next few months.

I’ve also been rethinking my email newsletter. Until now, I’ve been using it mostly just to share free and 99¢ stories, and tons of links to giveaways. But now, I think that might not be the best way to provide value.

From what I can tell, there are basically two approaches to newsletters: as a vehicle to convert casual readers into fans, or as something much more personal to keep the existing fanbase active and motivated. Obviously, there is some overlap.

With the way I’ve structured things, I lean a lot more to the first approach. However, I do think there’s a lot more that I can share to add value, even to casual readers. Here are some things I’m thinking about sharing:

More detailed updates about my writing, current WIPs, and what I’ve been up to.
Recommendations of other books that I’ve read and reviewed. To do this properly, I plan to set up a separate book site.
Extended descriptions and background information about my books, kind of like what I’ve got in the author’s notes, but with links and detailed by series.
Stories from my personal life tha readers might find interesting, such as experiences from working in a bookstore.
Better curation of the group promos that I participate in. Until now, my approach has basically been to spam InstaFreebie / Prolific Works, but I think it will be better to participate in a smaller number of group promos that more closely match the kind of books that I write.
I still plan to do free and 99¢ book deals, but not necessarily with every email. A book deal is still more of a take (“read my book!”) than a genuine give.

Those are a few of my current ideas. Do you have any of your own? If so, I would very much like to hear about it!

The other big change to my newsletter is that I’m branching out to other sites, like Story Origin, Book Cave, and Bookfunnel, to build my email list. I’ll probably also add preview editions of my books to Prolific Works and put more emphasis on those. It’s something to experiment with.

Still trying to figure out how this blog fits in to everything else. At this point, I’m just doing my best to keep it updated. I have lots of ideas for blog posts, but not a whole lot of time to write them.

There’s a ton of books that I’m reading or want to read, and at some point I really need to revamp my Goodreads profile and get all of my book reviews up there. Probably after I set up the new book site, which will mostly just be a repository of affiliate links for all of the books that I review. I can’t put them up on this site without commingling them with my own books, and I don’t want to do that.

That’s most of the big stuff, at least for now. The main focus for the next couple of months will be growing my email list and figuring out my newsletter. My girlfriend is a programmer, so this weekend we’ll fix up the newsletter template I’ve been using and hopefully make it cleaner. If you have any other ideas for that, please share!

Good things are happening!

It’s been a while since I posted a general update here on the blog, and while I’ve been sharing regular updates to my mailing list, enough has been happening that I suppose I should let all the rest of you know what’s going on.

First, I decided to pull out a bunch of investment money and put it into my writing, in order to go full-time for the next few months (and hopefully for the forseeable future). I shared more about this on my newsletter. Basically, I rewrote my business plan and decided that my best way forward is to go all-in for the next few months, writing more books and growing my business. I have a plan, and if it works, I’ll be able to go full-time indefinitely.

Second—and this may seem to contradict the first—I got a job at the local used bookstore, Pioneer Book! I’ve been going to this bookstore for years, befriending the manager and several employees, and several months ago (before I decided to reinvest in my writing business) I dropped off a resume in the hopes of getting a job there. When I got the call, I wasn’t going to turn it down.

It’s a part-time, 20 hours per week job that fits in perfectly with my writing. It’s also a job where I get to work with books, and be around bookish people, so I’m sure there will be lots of opportunities to learn interesting things that will help as I build my own writing and publishing career. Basically, it’s the perfect day job for a writer, and I’ve really been enjoying it so far.

Writing-wise, I just finished Gunslinger to Earth, the third book in the Gunslingers trilogy, and I’m finishing up the revisions to send it to my editor hopefully in the next few weeks. My next WIP is Edenfall, and I’m hard at work on it now. The goal is to finish it by March, and publish it over the summer.

Publishing-wise, I’ve revamped the backmatter in my books again, with a new map for how everything connects to everything else. The biggest change is in my short stories, which aren’t mapped out here, but basically I’m going to focus on putting them into bundles, and have the singles point there. Eventually, I want to have only one or two singles for every bundle, with five to six stories per bundle. I have enough stories written to fill out four bundles, but a bunch of them are still out on submission, so it could take a while.

I’ve also been doing a lot more to build my email list, not just through Prolific Works but also through Bookfunnel, Story Origin, and MyBookCave. There is a method to the madness, and all of this fits into the wider plan. I’ve also updated the pricing on some of my books, and experimenting with AMS ads, though there’s not much to report on that front at the moment.

In short, I’ve been pretty busy. Most of my time and effort is going toward writing. I’ve got a very aggressive writing schedule for the next year, and hope to finish all of my trilogies before 2020, including the Genesis Earth trilogy and the Twelfth Sword trilogy. The way I have it planned out, if I can average 1600 words a day, I’ll be able to do that no problem.

As far as my personal life is concerned, I’ve been dating a really fantastic girl for the last few months and things are going very, very well. I’m not sure how much of that I should share, but you’ll probably hear more about it in the future, if not here on the blog, then definitely in my author’s notes and newsletter.

As of right now, 2019 is looking to be a fantastic year! I’m really looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year will bring, and I expect I’ll have lots of good things to share with you in the future. Take care, and thanks for reading!

Finishing up Gunslinger to Earth

I’m finishing up right now with the third and final book in the Gunslingers Trilogy, Gunslinger to Earth. Just one more chapter to wrap everything up, then all the final revisions for the last few chapters. So far, so good.

At 40k words, this is turning out to be one of my shorter novels. I’m really happy with how it’s turned out so far, though. It wraps up a bunch of stuff from the previous books, with a surprisingly hopeful and optimistic look toward the future of the universe.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll post a few excerpts, being careful to avoid any spoilers for the previous books. If all goes well, it should be up for preorder sometime in February, with an April release date.

In case you’re curious, I wrote almost the whole thing while listening to the 2009 A State of Trance year mix. Such a great year for trance.

Next up, Edenfall!

June Update

Greetings, humans! I am alive. I’m actually doing quite well right now. Lots of stuff going on behind the scenes, and it all seems to be coming together quite nicely.

First, Victors in Liberty is now up for preorder, with a release date of July 22nd. This means that the Sons of the Starfarers series is now officially complete! The books have all been written, the plot threads have all been wrapped up (except for one or two, in case I ever decide to write another story), the edits are in, and the final versions have all been uploaded. Four and a half years went into this, and now it’s DONE!

I wrote a lengthy author’s note where I talked about the ups and downs I went through while writing this series. Basically, Sons of the Starfarers was the series that really disciplined me, turning me from a write-when-you-can, publish-when-you-feel-like-it kind of writer to one who makes and keeps deadlines and holds to a consistent release schedule.

Midway through writing this series, I really didn’t know if it was worth it to continue, but I decided to keep with it because I’d made a promise to my readers and I was going to keep it, even if there were only a few dozen of you. As it turns out, there’s quite a few more, for which I am very grateful. If you’ve been waiting since 2014 to read this series, I’m happy to report that your wait will soon be over.

As for my next WIP, I’m about a third of the way through Gunslinger to the Galaxy with a deadline of June 30th. It’s going to be tough to keep that deadline, because I’m moving before the end of the month and don’t yet know where my next place is going to be. Nothing too serious, it’s just that my contract is coming up so it’s time to move on. I’m toying with the idea of buying a National Parks pass and living out of a tent for the next two months, but in all reality I’ll probably just get a summer contract here in the Provo/Orem area. After that, who knows?

My plans are to write Gunslinger to the Galaxy and Gunslinger to Earth over the summer, and publish them both before the end of the year. A couple of years ago, this would have been a tall order, but I’ve reworked my writing process since then to the point where I don’t need multiple drafts to write clean copy. That’s partly the reason why I haven’t been blogging much recently. I’ll do a post on it sometime, if you guys are interested.

Once the Gunslingers trilogy is complete, I plan to finish Edenfall and The Stars of Redemption next. That’s another promise I need to keep to my readers. I don’t feel quite so bad, since Genesis Earth works well as a standalone, but I do need to finish the trilogy and I plan to do that before the end of next year.

On the publishing front, I’m doing a whole bunch of things behind the scenes, but the most visible thing you’ll probably see next is paperback releases for most of my books. It’s been a long time coming, and it will probably be a few months before it happens, but I plan to get those out before the end of the summer.

That’s pretty much it for now. Thanks for reading, and here’s where you can get Victors of Liberty:

Victors in Liberty

$9.99eBook: $2.99Audiobook: $8.99

Author: Joe Vasicek
Series: Sons of the Starfarers, Book 9
Genres: Action & Adventure, Military, Science Fiction, Space Opera
Tag: 2018 Release

As Gulchina's forces bombard Edenia II from orbit, Mara Soladze and the Deltana brothers rush to the planet's aid. Trapped on the surface, Reva finds an unlikely ally—one who proves to be a game changer for them all.

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