Isn’t the highlighted artwork great? For the last several years, Elias Stern has produced the art for all of my science fiction works. The scene above is from the Xandarj star system where AJ and friends have taken on a giant old ship turned junkyard. And to avoid spoilers, that’s about all I can tell you about it.
Release schedule. Boy, if you want to drive an author/publisher nuts, bring this subject up. In general, I don’t want to release books more than once a month. And since it takes me about four months to prepare a book for release, this shouldn’t present much of a problem, right? Well, mostly. But when you factor into the mix that July and August are terrible release months and should be avoided, it can be a mess.
I’ll save you all the consternation and skip to the end of the page. I’ve come up with the following release schedule for the remainder of 2021:
May 7th (ish) – Junkyard Veterans (#4 Junkyard Pirate)
June 1st – Space Troopers #1 – Rebel’s Call
Sept 7th – Space Troopers #2 – Rebel’s Run
Oct 7th – Drakon Prince – a new fantasy / gamelit
Dec 1st – A Jack Church mystery
OR Dec 1st – The Oldest Starfighter
So really, the most concerning release right now is the May 7th Junkyard Veterans. It’s a long story and editors are racing through it right now. I think we’ll make it, but we’ll have to be at our best to get there.
I feel like I might have buried the headline about the new Space Troopers series I’ve co-written with Rachel Aukes. I’ve received some backlash about co-writing even to the point where someone suggested that authors who co-write are out of ideas. This mostly causes me to chuckle. Working with another creative, especially one as talented as Rachel, is a joy. This isn’t one of those stories where one person writes it and then slaps another person’s name on it. Far from it. Rachel and I have equal parts in each of the Space Troopers stories. I completely understand why people team up now. When it works, it really works. I’ll let you tell me what you think, but I think you’ll really enjoy what we’ve come up with.
What’s this about Drakon Prince you ask? My publishing brand isn’t Fickle Dragon by mistake. If you’ve followed me for very long, you know I’m not a single genre writer. Recently, I’ve been reading a new genre called gamelit. The basic idea is that our heroes are immersed in a world that has some video-game like features. Drakon Prince is a coming of age story, where a young man discovers there’s a whole lot more to the world than he’s ever know before. We’ll talk about this more in future newsletters.
Now for the really controversial stuff. I’m about 20% into two different stories and I don’t know which will take my interest. The first is Jack Church, which is a small town murder mystery. Jack Church is a big city detective who comes home to help his elderly mother after the death of his father. As luck would have it he quickly becomes embroiled in a mystery. This is a big departure for even me. When I move forward with this project, I’ll launch a new pseudonym to help it succeed.
The other possible story for Dec 1st is The Oldest Starfighter. This is more in my wheelhouse and was inspired by Junkyard Pirate. Set in present day, this story about Gordy Jones, a retired Airforce fighter pilot who is recruited to defend a cluster of planets that happen to include Earth. At 65 years old, Gordy would do anything to get back into the pilot’s seat, so there isn’t a lot of convincing that needs doing.
It isn’t really a matter of making a choice between writing one or the other. I’ll end up writing both. The only real question is which one will capture my interest long enough to get to that point of no return where I have to complete it in time for the Dec 1st release date. Feel free to email me and let me know which one of these most grabs your interest.
