Happy 4th of July, everyone! It’s Independence Day here in America, when we celebrate our nation’s birthday by doing all of the most American things possible: fly our flags, eat lots of meat, and blow things up. God bless America!
It’s been a busy month so far, with family visiting from out of town all last week, and lots of kids all over the place. Great for our kids, who got to play with their cousins, but not the best for writing. Oh well. It looks like things are going to settle down for the rest of the month, which is really good, especially for my wife, who is racing to finish her PhD before she starts her new teaching job. So I will definitely be helping her with that.
On the writing and publishing side of things, I am actually going to take advantage of this time to catch up on all of the non-writing things, like publishing tasks, that I’ve fallen behind on. When August rolls around, things are going to get really crazy, with our move back to Orem as my wife starts her new job, so I want things to be set up really well for that.
I will continue writing, though: just at a slower pace. If I plan to do about an hour a day, and make that a consistent thing, I think I can keep that up through the crazy times that are coming. Not only are we moving and starting a new job, but we also have a new baby due to be born very shortly after all of that. So I fully anticipate that it’s going to be a crazy year.
My plan right now is to keep plugging away at The Soulbond and the Sling, slowly but surely, until the AI draft is complete. At the rate that I plan to go, however, it probably won’t be finished until August or September.
I’ll also be working on the human draft of The Road to New Jerusalem, but since my plan is to submit that to the Ark Press contest in October, I’m not too worried about rushing that one. Besides, it’s a much shorter novel, so it shouldn’t be that hard. A part of me wonders if I’ll finish that one before The Soulbond and the Sling.
In the meantime, I plan to publish Bloodfire Legacy in paperback, ebook, and audiobook as soon as I go through the edits and get it formatted! In fact, that’s the next big thing I plan to work on in the next two weeks. With luck, it should be out very soon.
So those are the big things that I’m working on right now. I’m also going to try and finish all the blog posts for Fantasy from A to Z before the end of the month, though they will probably run through the first half of August or so. And once Fantasy from A to Z is done, I will turn that into an ebook exclusive for my newsletter list, and make my current newsletter exclusive, Science Fiction from A to Z, available as a regular ebook (and maybe audiobook and paperback as well).
All of this is part of my plan to pivot toward being more of a fantasy author. Right now, I’m a science fiction author who occasionally writes fantasy. In the future, I want to be known as a fantasy author who occasionally writes science fiction. Most of my science fiction leans heavily into fantasy tropes anyway, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to make the change. Hopefully most of my readers follow me over as I make the transition.
Toward that end, I’m happy to report that Rescuer’s Reward, the first novel in the Sea Mage Cycle, is now available as a permafree book! If you like fun quick fantasy adventures with a touch of romance, I think this will be right up your alley. All of the Sea Mage Cycle books are pretty short, and they all stand alone, though they often have recurring characters. Check it out and give it a read!
