Summer has been kinda awesome. For those of you keeping score at home, I published two novels, a novella, and two short stories, plus a couple of audio books. I also finished building a new house and am about to move in, and got married to Fabulous Publisher Babe™.

Yesterday, I published the summer newsletter, for those of you who are on the mailing list. (This is also your chance to sign up. The next one is due around November 1, as I only send them quarterly. More frequent news comes out with this blog.) Which brings us to the future tense, more or less.

Sometime in the next week or two, Moonshot will be coming out. That’s the next Hive story after Myrmidons, although this one is not (to the best of my current knowledge) based on actual events, like Myrmidons was. (Don’t ask. You wouldn’t believe me.)

I’ve also been looking at the proof of the next Jessica Keller novel, Queen of the Pirates. It’s really amazing looking. It is now also available for pre-order on most sites. Sometime soon, it will be available as a paper edition, as well, because I will need to approve it ahead of time so I can order a backpack full of copies for myself so I can take them to World Con, XXX for anyone who will be there and wants to get one signed by the author.

Unlike for Auberon, I don’t plan on doing a book release party for Queen of the Pirates or Last of the Immortals, since both books are coming out for major cons (World Con and Orycon, respectively). Maybe sometime next year I’ll have another party.

I am also on the home stretch for Last of the Immortals. It will mark Suvi’s (possibly) only appearance in Jessica’s time frame. Once you’ve read Queen of the Pirates, you will better understand why she’s here. Once I finish Immortals, you’ll understand how strange the future is going to get.

Queen of the Pirates comes in at a little over ninety thousand words. For scale, The Science Officer and The Mind Field are both around twenty-four thousand, Imposters is around forty-five thousand, and Auberon is a little over sixty thousand. Queen is a third longer than I originally expected, because I got into it and realized I had too much story to tell, but no place to cut because the story flows right into Last of the Immortals with barely time to breathe.

When I’m done with Immortals in another month or so, I will turn back to shorter work. I owe the next CampCon anthology a short story by winter. Last year’s anthology XXX is where I first envisioned The Shipwrecked Mermaid.

Not sure what’s next, but leaning towards revisiting some of my fantasy characters, given the theme of the next anthology (Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and Magic. Sub-title Where Close Counts.) The usual suspects will be involved again. Knotted Road Press is publishing, and the volume is due out in Spring 2016, right before Norwescon, so people can take copies to show off. I might do a BarCon, like I did this last time. (That’s where you show up for a while and hang out at the bar with folks actually at the con, but not spending any time doing the con itself. I get grumpy around that many people for long periods of time. If you don’t understand what that means, you should do a search on “Introvert Hamster Ball” and read the comic for a better description of me and most writers.)

After that, I have plans for the next Javier Aritza story. I have known what it would be for a while, but I committed to Jessica Keller a while back and needed to get her done so I could move forward. It also forces me to live in Javier’s distant future, which forces me to think about what the distant past was like when he was live, from the point of view of folks like Doyle Iwakuma and Jessica Keller.

Past that, who know? I am trapped in a place where I am not selling enough books to walk away from the day job and commit to writing full-time, like my sweetie and a few others I know. (Tell more of your friends. I could very much take advantage of the extra time to get more books done. I’m working 50 hours a week right now as a database nerd, and it’s fun, but still…)

I have given thought to Patreon. There is actually an artist I support myself, providing cash to on a monthly bases because what she’s doing is so different from everything else I have seen and entertains me so much. Fabulous Publisher Babe and I have talked about doing a Patreon, but I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other. On the one hand, it would be another revenue stream towards not having to have a day job. On the other hand, I’m not sure how I would reward folks.

If I didn’t day job, I’d have a lot more time to write. I know writers who do Patreon, and they reward supporters in various ways. For me, I would probably do more short stories and snippets of longer pieces (character sketches, chapters, etc.) then post them for folks to enjoy before anyone else did, or without having to buy them individually when they did come out at a later date. For those of you who have made it this far, I welcome your suggestions, ideas, or (extremely polite, mind you) abuse on the topic.

I enjoy publishing again. And won’t stop until I can’t communicate the ideas in my head to other people (typing, dictation, direct brain interface, whatever). This is the brave new future before us. It gives me the author a chance to interact directly and personally with you the reader.

I’m not a graphic artist, producing pretty things to look at. I’m not a musician, like many of my friends, where I can sell CD’s at the same time I have regular concerts.

What would you (yes, you laddie) want if I was to get serious with the idea of a Patreon?

I can promise you I have LOTS of things that have never yet been published in any format. I’ve been writing compulsively for thirty plus years. That works out to six volumes of poetry (all of The Forestal, combined, is a little less than one volume, by length and mass, scattered across three of those volumes, for comparison sake); several screenplays we have been shopping around trying to find financing for; several short stage plays; odds, ends, and sundries that need a home.

You could be the first to EVER read some of these pieces. Let me know.

Hopefully, I haven’t bored you yet. I look forward to emails and comments. There are a few people who actually write to tell me what they think. I also could use more (good) reviews of things on Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, and Goodreads. Tell all your friends. Make them sit down and read some of the things you’ve read. (You’ll note: I don’t DRM things. The first person I decided to support on Patreon came about because someone had pirated her stuff and I liked it so much I had to go buy things to keep her in business. I hope all people are that kind and thoughtful. Starving artist and all that.)

And again, thank you. Supportive fans mean the world to me.

shade and sweet water

blaze