Category Archives: News

What’s going on, book schedules, that kind of thing.

The Sojourn

I don’t normally advertise competition, but this looks like it could be an interesting thing, and you can get in on the ground floor! (That was cringeworthy.)

Some of you may know the YouTube channel ‘Spacedock.’ They do analysis videos of science fiction films, TV series, game worlds, etc. I couldn’t say I always agree with those analyses, but the videos are generally entertaining and make some good points about the practicality of the settings and especially the ships from those settings. Spacedock is currently running Kickstarter campaign to fund a planned audio novel series (with 2D/3D artwork to illustrate it), called ‘The Sojourn.’ If you check out the campaign (link above), you can watch the pilot episode and see if you think it’s something you might like. If you’ve got some spare cash, consider backing them. It’s funded to the second stretch goal at time of writing, so it looks like it’s a done deal, and the makers seem pretty motivated to produce what they say they will.

It’s Sunday in Australia!

Well, parts of Australia. Sydney, for example.

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The Hellas Find (aka ‘Fox on Mars’) is now available.

  • Smashwords
  • Amazon, ASIN B07LDC5G9B.
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Coming Sunday…

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50k

Well, I hit 50,000 words and beat NaNoWriMo again. Still got some writing to do to finish the book, but it’s coming along nicely. Of course, now I have to take a quick break to get Fox 9 ready for proofing, but Fox 10 is coming together.

Liberty

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The new Ultrahumans book, Liberty, is on the virtual shelves.

 

In other news, I have a new Fox Meridian book in the works, due out in December. After that, things are a little up-in-the-air. I’ve had an idea for something which happens to have come out rather close to November, so I’m going to do that for NaNoWriMo and see what comes of it. If that works, it’ll be the next book, likely in January or February. If not, I’ve got a new Sondra Drake story planned out; probably January to March, depending on that NaNoWriMo working or not.

Content Fatigue

Okay, so, if you watch the ‘What I’m Working On’ page, you may have noticed that Liberty is into the editing cycle and I’m now onto the ninth Fox Meridian book. It’s going to be ‘Fox 9’ for a while, I think, though it may end up being The Hellas Find. We’ll see.

Anyway, when Liberty hits the virtual shelves I’ll have done three Ultrahumans books in a row. Two of those were intended to be back-to-back since Guardian and True Dark are heavily linked together. Then I had no ideas for anything else, so I went ahead with Liberty. I’m happy with the outcome (or as happy as an English author can get), but I am really happy to be moving on to a different series. Ultra fatigue has set in. Three consecutive books in the same world is, I think, too much.

I’m used to this with reading. Generally, if I read the same author for a long time, I start to suffer from ‘content fatigue.’ I first noticed it with Anne McCaffrey when I was in my twenties (I think). I had collected the then extant Pern books (this was before they proliferated into the billions) and decided I would read them in chronological order (or as best as possible since some overlap). I was doing pretty well, but by the time I was reading The White Dragon it was getting really hard to keep going. I think Moreta came out not long after and I just couldn’t finish it. Too much of the same world/characters, and the same author’s style.

Writing is the same, but worse. There were seven Pern books to read, IIRC, but it takes a lot longer to write a book than to read one. (With you lot, that seems to be quite an extreme understatement.) Two books should be my limit, I think. After two books in the same setting, I’m starting to get tired of the same universe.

And now, back to researching Mars and living in Fox’s head for a while.

True Dark

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True Dark is now available.

True Dark Artwork

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I’ve put some of the character concept artwork for True Dark up on ArtStation (click on the image to go there. Pictured above is one of the Twilight redesigns which didn’t make the cut (though I do rather like it – the fishnets worked really well in this one).

The book will definitely be out on Saturday (the 4th of August) unless I have a sudden burst of energy and get it out a little sooner. This is your chance to find out what I thought the characters looked like before you read about them. Note: I’ve upgraded a bunch of models to Genesis 8, so they may look different to previous versions.

Update

Quickie. I was reading through Guardian and spotted some errors I decided to fix. I’ve updated the manuscript on Amazon and Smashwords. Smashwords readers can definitely download an updated copy as they wish. Amazon… has a weird system for handling updates. If you check your account, you may find that you can download a new copy. Anyone buying after this point should get the updated version anyway.

Pricing

This is the bit where I give you the bad news first and the good news later. If you haven’t already guessed, I’m going to be charging more for some of my books. Basically, I’ve been charging $2.99 (or the equivalent in other currencies) since I started publishing my books. I think it’s a good price for a typical ebook, though I don’t usually argue with slightly higher prices when I’m buying. Anyway… Costs have gone up, cost of living has gone up, and I need to face the fact that I need to charge a little more.

For now, I’m sticking with $2.99 for the shorter books. Most of my recent ones have come in between 70k and 80k words. That’s likely to remain the average, so most of my books will stay at $2.99. The longer ones are going to go up to $3.99. I haven’t entirely decided where the threshold is, but over 100k is definitely over that threshold. Which means that I’ll be charging $3.99 for True Dark, but on the plus side, there’s more story to read.

In other news, I’ve started writing Liberty, which will be Ultrahumans 7. I seem to be in a super-human mode at the moment and I have no idea why. True Dark might not be called that by the time it’s released, though the darkness theme is likely to be maintained.

Hope you’re all having a good summer. I’m going to go back to melting now.