Book Cover - Take 5

I've revamped most of my book covers once or twice over the years, but none have gone through more transformations than my time-traveling detective novel BackTracker. Here they are, from the very first to the latest, which just went live this week:

The first one was all about that noir; the second emphasized the hard-boiled detective; the next two focused on the time travel aspect; and the new one places the futuristic setting front and center. Tough to pick a favorite, but I'll stick with the current iteration for a while and see how it does.

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New Release: The Interdimensionals Trilogy Concludes

Now Available

The battle has just begun. To save the future, Anthony Reynolds and Sephora Ashton must change the past by becoming cold-blooded assassins. The interdimensional entities have established a tetrarchy spanning four epochs of Earth, thousands of years apart. Anthony and Sephora will have to travel back through time and eliminate each tetrarch—hiding inside the skulls of unwitting human hosts—in order to destroy their foothold in our reality. Otherwise, the interdimensionals will absorb all that we have and leave us with nothing.

To accomplish their mission, Anthony and Sephora must rely on each other and trust Peter Gideon, a young man brought back from the dead who cannot leave the space-between-space without reverting to a mindless zombie. Traveling aboard his ethereal aeroship, existing outside of time, they will track down each of the tetrarchs' interdimensional signatures. But it won't be smooth sailing. The Moule people, possessed by the Red Queen's acolytes, are hunting them, determined to derail their efforts at every port. And Anthony, overwhelmed by doubts when he discovers who his parents were in the real world, may end up jeopardizing everything he and his friends have fought for.

eBook       Paperback

Edits are Done

Even after working in education for 26 years, summer break has yet to lose its thrill. I didn't get into teaching for the summers, but they're a great motivator to keep me in the field for another twenty years or so. I've worked on a lot of projects around the house the past few summers, but this year I decided to buckle down and pretend I'm a full-time writer. So far, that's meant spending a week wrapping up the first draft of Angels & Androids and devoting the last two weeks to revisediting. I made a habit of tightening up the manuscript as I went along over the past year, so the final round of edits really wasn't too arduous. I cut a couple thousand words and added another thousand, so it ended up being about 91K. A little longer than the other two installments in this trilogy, but not by much. And, as promised, the ending is a satisfying one.

Writing two trilogies in the same world with many of the same characters is something I haven't done before, so it's a mixed bag to say goodbye. On the one hand, I'm relieved I was able to pull it off, I'm pleased with how everything turned out, and I'm ready to move on. But I'd still like to stick around for a while and see what happens next. Probably because I've been invested in these decades-spanning tales for so long, I can't help feeling like they're part of me. What a journey!

Next up: formatting the eBook, the paperback, and the box set. Time to put on my publisher hat.

Novel #24

It took me a while, but I finally managed to cross the finish line: 92K of futuristic action and adventure, mixed with some mystery and mayhem along the way. Readers who enjoyed the first two installments of Dome City Investigations can look forward to more riveting character development, thrills, and chills, while those who've also read Spirits of the Earth will get a kick out of the extended cameos. I did my best to wrap up this trilogy in a satisfying way without sacrificing any of the payoffs, and I'm pleased with how it all turned out. The cover and blurb are good to go, so after a few rounds of edits (130 pages down, 215 remaining), it'll be ready for an August 5 release.

The Interdimensionals Trilogy Continues...

Now Available:

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. 

eBook       Paperback

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.

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

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.