8K to Go

I'm up to 82,000 words in my current novel, Angels & Androids, and I'm closing in on the home stretch. Whenever I write a trilogy, I always try to make the final installment a real hoot and a half. I figure if readers have stuck with me for three books, there should be a major payoff for them at the end. There are few things I hate more as a reader than to get to the last book in a series only to find that the author has lost steam. Or lost interest. Or both. That's why I aim for a grand finale. A satisfying finish. And while it dumps a load of self-imposed pressure onto my shoulders, it's usually worth it in the end.

I had ideas for a couple of novellas in this series, which were going to be Mutants & Madmen and Zombies & Zealots, but I decided to cram everything into one action-packed novel instead. And so far, it's made for a very rewarding (and complicated) drafting experience. It's also been one of my more time-consuming projects to date. Usually, I can crank out a first draft in about four months. By the time I wrap this one up, it'll have been in the works for an entire year.

But I have to give myself some grace here. After four years of subbing, I'm teaching part-time now, which has required a readjustment to lesson-planning, grading, and attending meetings like old times. So my head space is a bit more crowded these days. Meanwhile, things with the in-laws aren't getting any easier. Dementia is a real monster; it takes your loved ones a piece at a time and leaves you feeling like a failure. Because no matter what you do, you can't make things right. You can only bring comfort and care, whether or not your efforts are remembered five minutes later.

Keep on keepin' on. Never give up, never surrender!

Cover Reveal

The second book in my Interdimensionals trilogy isn't scheduled to greet the masses until June 3 (pre-orders are available), but here's a sneak peek at the cover art and current iteration of the blurb:

Anthony Reynolds and Sephora Ashton escaped from Madame Antic's sky city, and now they must navigate a new life in the dangerous ruins of London. Nothing is as it was in the technologically advanced Victorian city with no name. Here tribes of survivors hunt and gather in the dark of night, keeping vigilant watch during daylight hours. Mutant animals with poisonous fangs roam the outskirts, and, according to legend, mole people live underground. But if they exist and have managed to hide from Antic all these years, then they might hold the answers Anthony seeks.

No one can tell him where he came from, or who he was before Madame Antic kidnapped him to play a role in her elaborate stage play. No one even knows what year it is. But when Anthony and Sephora are driven underground by gunmen wearing gruesome masks, they find themselves in a surreal subterranean refuge complete with its own lavish hotel and casino. There they meet the man responsible for it all, a man who claims to have answers, a man with a penchant for gambling with human lives: the enigmatic Monsieur Moule.

I enjoyed exploring the "real world" in this one and giving our heroes room to discover more about themselves, each other, and the harsh truths hidden from them in Madame Antic's. Monsieur Moule was a complicated character to write, straddling the line between villain and something else, and expanding the story required looking at a few characters from the first book in a new light. I hope readers are captivated by this leg of the journey, building up to one heck of a finale in July.

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Re-Release Day is Here

Now Available:

In an alternate Victorian era replete with aerovehicles, automatons, and other electrik wonders, factory worker Anthony Reynolds seeks to improve his station in life for the sake of his young bride-to-be. Against his better judgment, he joins Richard, a gregarious coworker with social connections, for a night on the town after their late shift. Richard leads them deep into the city’s underworld to a brothel of sorts specializing in the illegal art of mutilation where willing victims are skinned, broken, and mangled without lasting damage due to a special drug that returns them to their original state. Horrified, Anthony wants to leave at once—but that's when Constables raid the establishment. 

While attempting to flee the scene, Anthony encounters a giant monstrosity of a man who infects him with an unknown substance. Anthony is instantly disfigured, and when the authorities capture him, he is unable to identify himself, let alone speak. What follows is a mind-bending adventure of mistaken identity, multiple realities, and paranoia as he fights to reclaim a simple life he never truly appreciated but now wants more than anything. When he discovers the shocking truth of his world and Madame Antic's disturbing role in it, nothing will ever be the same again. 

eBook     Paperback

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Thar Be Pirates Afoot, Matey

So, what do you do when you find out that Meta (a hydra-like multinational technology company consisting of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the harvested souls of countless smartphone zombies) has stolen 40 of your books & short stories to train its darling artificially intelligent monster how to think like humans and generate "original" content? That's right. You write about it. 

According to the Authors Guild, 7.5 million pirated books (so far) have been used by Meta to train its AI. Whose works are included in this vast swath of stolen intellectual property? Type the author's name into this handy-dandy search engine, and you'll see that I'm in pretty good company: Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, John Grisham, Orson Scott Card, and JK Rowling, just to name a few.

Authors have no control over what readers do with our books after buying them. (Tear out all the pages to wallpaper the guest bathroom? Have at it.) If Meta wants to use my books, they're welcome to do so. But they need to pay me for my work. According to The Atlantic, it would have taken Meta over four weeks to legally acquire the amount of quality writing needed in order to compete with ChatGPT. And it would have been very expensive. Piracy was much cheaper.

I deleted my social media accounts years ago when our Silicon Valley Overlords started quashing and canceling free speech under the guise of fighting misinformation. So I'm not surprised by this latest dishonest venture. They are the kind of people who design addictive devices and apps for your children, but won't allow their own kids access to them. "Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit" (Matthew 7:17). 

Good news: There's a class action lawsuit currently in the works, and every author of material used by Meta is automatically included in this battle against the forces of evil. We'll see how it goes.

Writing Update

It's been a couple months since my last check-in, so how are things progressing with Angels & Androids, the final installment in my Dome City Investigations trilogy? I'm so glad you asked. The going has been incredibly slow, but I've made it to the 65K mark. A minor victory. I've got about 25K left to draft, but I'm fairly certain where I'm headed at this point, so it should be a breakneck sprint to the finish. Plenty will need to be cleaned up later, but that's okay; this is just the sloppy copy.

Speaking of sloppy, I started writing it longhand a few chapters ago. We lost power for a couple days during a recent storm, and my laptop needed a charge, so I dug out an old spiral notebook and pen and got to work. Doubtful anybody else would be able to read my scrawling penmanship (at times, I struggle with it myself), but I've noticed that it's helped me to get my ideas down without stopping to edit as I go. And it's nice to take a break from the ol' computer screen now and then.

If I can manage between 500 and 1,000 words a day, I should be able to complete this draft by the end of the school year. That's my goal, and I'm sticking to it.

Steampunk Sci-Fi or Gaslamp Fantasy?

As a cross-genre writer, I'm often most comfortable whenever I can mix things up a bit, adding elements of science fiction to fantasy (and vice versa), horror to historical fiction, and comedy to all of the above. The weird western genre is one of my favorites, bringing the uncanny to the American frontier with monsters of all kinds. Overlapping that time period but set mainly in Victorian England are two genres I haven't dabbled in until now: steampunk science fiction and gaslamp fantasy. Trappings of both can be found in my novel Madame Antic's Hotel Grotesque, but what's the difference between these two subgenres?

While both steampunk and gaslamp stories can take place in the same alternate-historical era, steampunk tends to be more scientific with its gadgets, technology, and anachronistic vehicles, whereas gaslamp fantasy includes sorcery, magical creatures, and an acceptance of the supernatural existing alongside its characters. So which direction does Madame Antic's lean? While there is plenty of gadgetry, nothing in the story is steam-powered. The world I've created prefers electrik power instead. And while there are portals and mention of magik, there's no sorcery involved or unnatural beasts (besides the villains). That's why I'm selecting Alternate History, Steampunk, Gaslamp Fantasy, and Horror as the primary categories when I list it for sale. I reckon that just about covers everything leading up to the big reveal at the end. No spoilers!

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Cover Reveal - Take Two

Some of you may remember when my novel Madame Antic's Hotel Grotesque first greeted the world, way back when. At the time, I was pleased that it had finally found a publisher after a long, harrowing search. But I was never impressed with the cover art, among other things, and some experiences are best left in the rearview mirror. 

Fast-forward to 2025: The rights have reverted to me, and I'll be republishing it myself in a couple months. Here's the new cover, in all its brooding glory. Nothing fancy, but it does the job. And it doesn't make me cringe every time I look at it. That's an improvement.

But wait, there's more: I'm planning to rapid-release both sequels this summer as well. So stay tuned for cover reveals and blurbs galore!

The Halfway Point

Passed the 45K mark in my latest work-in-progress: Angels & Androids (Dome City Investigations, Book 3). I'm feeling pretty good about where the story's going; I just wish I had more writing stamina these days. And time. That's it for excuses. I'm averaging a few hundred words a day when I can BICHOK (butt in chair, hands on keyboard). A far cry from the 1K/day regimen I had going for a while, but any movement in the right direction is progress. So I'm celebrating this minor victory.

When will the first draft / sloppy copy be done? No idea. End of the school year would be ideal—then I could spend the summer on revisedits and formatting with an autumn release in mind. At the end of Book 2, I gave myself an easy out and said the third installment wouldn't be available until Spring 2026. Maybe I'll aim for something in between. Split the difference. 

Right now it's all about BICHOK: the discipline to shut out a myriad of distractions and give this novel the attention (I think) it deserves. Having plenty of fun along the way, of course.

15 Years

A decade and a half ago, my first short story was published: "Hero for Hire." To celebrate this quindecennial (a new word for me; thanks, Internet), I'm giving away Suburban Samurai wherever eBooks are sold. It includes the original story as well as its sequel, "League of Suburban Heroes." Chuckles guaranteed.

I'll never forget how excited I was to get that acceptance letter. Holy cow! I remember I was at work, on break checking my email, and I had to scramble to the restroom. Wasn't sure I'd be able to contain myself in public. Later that year, I'd sold enough short fiction to buy the Kindle I named Gizmo, still with me to this day. (Take that, planned obsolescence.)

If I've done the math correctly, I've spent only 1% of my royalties over the years, hoarding the other 99% into a high interest-yielding account. Every now and then, I'll spend the monthly interest on something fun like a new cover for Gizmo or a TV series from way back when. Things I can look at and go, "Hey. My wordsmithing paid for that."

Writing brings in only about 5% of my annual income, so not enough to live on. (Unless I move into a van down by the river. Mrs. Fowler might object.) Even so, that 5% is hard-fought, considering the millions of other authors out there vying for readers' attention. Every time someone buys one of my books, it takes me right back to that day I sold my first story. And that feeling is priceless.

An Ode to the Library

"Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future." - Ray Bradbury

My mom introduced me to the public library when I was an impressionable wee lad, and I remember being amazed by how many books there were, and that we were allowed to take them home with us. As a teen, I'd bike over to the local library every week or so, and while in college, if I wasn't too busy shooting pool, I would spend most of my spare time at the library studying and whatnot.

When my wife and I lived in San Diego, our local library was within walking distance, and walk we did, rain or shine (mostly shine), to peruse the stacks, checking out books, DVDs and CDs. Upon moving to West Michigan, one of our first priorities was to get member cards at the county and city libraries, and we visit both locations on a regular basis. 

As technology continues to advance, so do the library's offerings. I've mentioned Hoopla and Overdrive before, and Gizmo (my 15-year-old Kindle, looking real spiffy these days in his brand-spanking new cover) holds at least half a dozen library eBooks any given week. But there's also a paper-and-glue library book in my backpack as backup, going wherever I go.

Recently, our local library informed us that Freegal Music is available to all patrons. Free streaming music without ads. Tens of thousands of albums, if you can believe. I've been playing instrumental post-rock while I write and, during the work day, introducing my students to the jazz styles of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, the slack key vibes of Leonard Kwan, and some really cool blues guitar compilations. Great background tunes for embarking upon scholarly pursuits.

All this to say, I've always been a big fan of libraries, and they keep giving me reasons to appreciate them for evermore.