Edenfall cover reveal!

Last week in my author newsletter, I revealed the cover art for my next big novel release, Edenfall. This is the sequel to Genesis Earth and the second book in that trilogy.

Without any further ado, here is the cover!

The art is by Lorenz Ruwwe, aka Hideyoshi. I’m really happy with how it turned out. He did the art for Genesis Earth, so I’m really glad I was able to get him for this one too.

Edenfall will be up for preorder soon. To keep up with all of my new releases, as well as writing updates, special offers, book recommendations, and other cool stuff, be sure to sign up for my author newsletter! I’ve scaled back my blogging, so that’s the best way to keep up with me now.

I’m married now!

So last week ~~Future~~ Mrs. Vasicek and I got married! It’s been really amazing so far. Amazing, and surreal. This is the first I’ve been on a computer since the 11th. We honeymooned in a cabin up in the Tetons, about a dozen miles from the edge of civilization, and it feels odd to be back, not the least because I’ve moved into her house now, which is now our house… an actual house. Like, with a yard and stuff. It’s pretty rad.

The reception was amazing, too. I should probably post pictures, seeing as we had a dunk tank in the end. Yes, Mrs. Vasicek got dunked in her actual wedding dress. She didn’t want the guests to get bored during the reception, so we had a dunk tank, and a bounce house, and an ice cream bar, and a live band that was really amazing. I’ve never seen so many people dancing at a wedding reception. The floor was packed.

So we’re married now, which means going through all of our stuff, figuring what to keep and where it should go. That process will probably continue for the next couple of months. I’m also learning a bunch of interesting new things about her, like the fact that she has a pen collection of probably more than 100 pens! Good thing she married a writer.

In any case, it’s going to take a couple of weeks to ease back into writing again. My plan as of now is to spend the rest of June outlining my next WIP, The Stars of Redemption, which will complete the Genesis Earth trilogy. Lots and lots of publishing stuff to do, too, including new print editions of all of my books. Expect to see those in the very near future.

To get back into the swing of things, I will do my best to regularly update this blog. I also plan to send out a newsletter before the end of the week, with a sweet deal for my subscribers.

So much stuff happening. It’s surreal. I’m married to a woman who is perfect for me in every sort of weird, quirky way imaginable. If you’d told me a year ago that this was where I’d be, I wouldn’t have dared believe it. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful. Everything is beautiful. When people cut me off on the road, I don’t even care. My wife gets off work in an hour and ten minutes, and I can hardly wait to see her again. Being a newlywed is the most amazing drug ever.

WIP excerpt: Edenfall

It’s been a while since I did one of these, so I thought I’d share a quick excerpt from my current WIP. This one is from chapter 2, where Khalil Al-Marikh is introduced. He and Estee are the two major viewpoint characters of this book.

This excerpt hasn’t been edited yet, so any typos or other mistakes will be fixed before I publish the book.

Paradise Found

Lieutenant Khalil Ibn Yusef Al-Marikh tapped his earpiece with one hand and held onto his seat with the other as the lightly armored rover bounced on the uneven, rocky ground. His driver, Private Andre Cernovich, seemed to be in a great hurry to arrive without even knowing their destination. That, or Cernovich was simply joyriding.

“Sergeant Peters, this is Khalil. What do you have for me?”

“We’ve found what looks to be the scientists’ expedition compound two klicks out from the space elevator. Our heat sensors show that it’s inhabited. What do you want us to do?”

On the display screen just below the windshield, a green dot blinked to show the sergeant’s. Corporal Cernovich swerved and headed in that direction.

“Are they armed?” Khalil asked.

“Not from what we can tell. Though they may be armed with bows and arrows like those natives who shot at us on the way in.”

Khalil remembered the look on their shuttle pilot’s face as the arrows had clattered against the cockpit window. His men had proceeded through the brush with caution, though thankfully, the natives hadn’t shown up since.

“Hold your ground and wait for us to join you. We’re about five minutes out.”

“Copy, Kali. We’ll establish a perimeter and await your arrival.”

The connection cut out. Khalil focused his attention forward as the roar of the rover’s engines not quite managed to drown out the sound of the native wildlife. The ground, though rocky like his Martian homeworld, was covered in high grass and patches of thick brush. The mountains, which had appeared red from orbit, weren’t yet visible in the pre-dawn twilight.

There was no denying the alienness of this world. From the large double moons and the strange constellations to the thick, musty scent of the air, the inescapable sense of otherness seemed to permeate everything. It set Khalil on edge almost as much as Cernovich’s driving.

The rover hit an unusually large bump, and the resulting bounce nearly flung his gunner, Private Vance, into the air. A chorus of angry profanity was the predictable result.

“Dammit, Andre, you drive worse than my drunk grandma!”

“Stay frosty,” Khalil ordered, scanning the horizon with his heat sensors. The wheels of the rover cut through the grass like a hot knife through butter, and the dry, dusty air blasted Khalil’s face. The landscape was so full of life, it was difficult to tell which targets were harmless and which posed a potential threat.

As they rounded a large rocky outcropping, a swarm of enormous insects took to the air. Vance immediately opened fire. The crack of laser fire mingled with a shout of surprise, which gave way to whoops of victory as dozens of the bugs exploded in a shower of splattered guts.

“Hold your fire,” Khalil ordered. “It’s just the native wildlife.”

“Damn, Kali. Did you see the size of those things?”

“Get used to it, private.”

He glanced up at the trigger-happy teenage marine. Khalil was barely eighteen Terran years himself, which still put him ahead of most of the soldiers under his command. Any older, and the forty years of crysostasis they’d undertook to get here would have significantly reduced his probability of surviving the voyage. Even the main force, which was still on the outskirts of the system, was staffed almost exclusively by teenagers.

Unlike most of them, though, Khalil had never had the luxury of a childhood. His parents were refugees twice over: first from Iraq, and then from Earth. Khalil had never been to his family’s ancestral homeland, but he did have memories of their Syriac Orthodox Church in Los Angelos burning as the Sharia police looked on.

He drew a sharp breath and put such thoughts from his mind, refocusing on the mission.

“There, Cernovich,” he said, pointing to a spot on the map near Sergeant Peters’s current positon. “Drop us off there.”

“Got it.”

A few minutes later, Cernovich brought the rover to a stop behind a small hill. Khalil checked his rifle and dismounted with Vance and Cernovich. Tensions were high, but none of them said a word as they took up positions in the waist-deep grass and prepared to move out. Khalil checked his earpiece.

“Are you there, Lieutenant?”

Sergeant Peters’s voice sounded uncannily loud in Khalil’s ear, now that they’d left the rover. Even the buzzing of the native insects seemed quieter.

“We’re here, Peters. Where are the others?”

“Spread out to the east of the target, with a good overlook position on the right. Hold your position; we’ll come to you.”

“I copy.”

A few moments later, Sergeant Peters materialized from the shadows with Specialists Mikhailov and Martinek. Green and black streaks of face paint covered their faces, making effective camouflage in the high grass. Peters was the taller one.

“What have we got?” Khalil asked quietly.

“It’s the scientists, all right. The dome gives it away. Gilbert and Baier are in position on our right flanks, with Matheson on our left and Ahiga on the far side of the compound.”

“Good work,” Khalil praised his noncom. “Got a vantage point?”

“Right this way.”

He followed his sergeant into the high grass, switching his goggles from infrared to heat signatures. Almost immediately, he could make out the rest of the platoon. They had spread out over a distance of almost a hundred yards, some of them prone, others creeping forward.

Up ahead, on the other side of the rise, he made out structures. Most of them were made of clay and native mud, and still radiated traces of heat from the previous day. A couple of them were dome-shaped, though, and clearly not made from native material.

“How long have you been monitoring this compound?” Khalil asked quietly.

“Only since we arrived. Should we wait until daylight, or move in now?”

Khalil looked skyward, as if to seek out their eyes in orbit. If they’d deployed their probes first instead of sending out the marines, his men might have had advance notice of this compound. Then again, with a mysterious alien structure towering above what appeared to be an otherwise virgin planet, he couldn’t blame his superior officers for wanting to establish a beachhead first. Speed, not stealth, was their chief advantage now.

“Move in,” he said softly. Peters nodded and made a quick cutting motion with his hand. All around them, the marines moved quietly forward as they began to converge on the compound.

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!