She is God’s eleven pound, perfect killing machine, and she would appreciate it if you stopped kissing her on the head.

</long story chopped to manageable size>

My wife (Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I don’t live in the same house. I have the main house, She has a “tiny house” across the front yard. She sleeps there Monday-Thursday night, and then (usually) joins me Friday-Sunday. (If you don’t know the details, expect to buy the beer.)

The kittie o’doom (Kyara) comes over Thursday afternoons, because Thursday is generally Girl’s Night Out, so I feed and entertain the kittie. I joke that I see the cat more than I see the wife.

Thursday night, kittie was semi-fixated on the pantry, which is open for her roam, and had the water heater tank and furnace through it behind a second door. Has been paying attention, the last few weeks, but I didn’t realize why.

Turns out that I had rodents under the house, in the crawl space. In past years, I’ve left poison bon-bons everywhere around the outside of the buildings to keep the critters at bay, but this year we’ve moved to bait stations so that I don’t kill the rabbits or all the birds that the various seed feeders have finally attracted.

Friday morning, came out only half awake. My job is to feed the kittie before I feed myself, so I got that taken care of. Then I notice that she’s thrown up on her towel. (Fourteen year old cat. She does that, and has been a little sick earlier in the week.)

So I pick up her blanket, dump all the toys off of it, and throw it into the wash. Bring out a spare and am laying it out when I see a new chew toy I don’t recognize. Really life-like.

Kittie of Doom has killed a mouse. God’s eleven pound perfect killing machine. She had heard them gnawing on the wood where a furnace electrical line comes up from below and waited. Been waiting. They have been in there for a bit and gotten it open enough to slip inside. (Sealed it up with spray foam this afternoon and chucked a mess of poison baits under the house again, just to give everyone something else to gnaw on.)

Several years ago, God’s perfect killing machine had been sitting on the floor at  Fabulous Publisher Babe’s house when a mouse popped out of nowhere, made it three feet, and got pounced.

Cat knows her business.

There were extra treats today, because Kittie o’Doom successfully defended her castle.

She just doesn’t appreciate being kissed on the head.

Gotten a couple of questions recently, so I figured I would just post the complete Jessica Keller books list in one place again, for everyone to find it easily. While I was at it, I decided to add all of Alexandria Station universe in one place. For now. Things will change.

Jessica Keller

• Auberon
• Queen of the Pirates
• Last of the Immortals
  • Siren (Vo Arlo)
• Goddess of War
• Flight of the Blackbird
• The Red Admiral
• Legier
  • Two Bottles of Wine With a War God
  • Queen Anne’s Revenge
  • Packmule
  • Persephone
• Winterhome
• Petron (Coming December 2019, already written)

Also

Javier Aritza

• The Science Officer
• The Mind Field
• The Gilded Cage
• The Pleasure Dome
• The Doomsday Vault
• The Last Flagship
• The Hammerfield Gambit
• The Hammerfield Payoff

Doyle Iwakuma

• The Librarian
• Demigod
• Greater Than The Gods Intended

Henri Baudin

• The Story Road

Handsome Rob

• Can’t Shoot Straight Gang
• Can’t Shoot Straight Gang Returns

Lansdowne

• Last Leaf Falling

Got more coming, one of these days. But at least you have all the links now, if you want to catch up.

🙂

When I set out to do the Star Dragon series, I wanted a really 1950’s pulp feel to it. Old school sensibilities, like a boy scout would bring to the table, rather than the ironically-anti-hip bad-boy hero of the modern age.

Personally, I think we’ve overdone that shtick to the point of tragic comedy. I miss heroes. People who stand for something that they know is right, and are willing to fight for it. And by right, I’m leaving out all the folks on the wrong side of history, claiming that “right” as they see it is the permission to oppress someone else based on any of a long list of characteristics.

Are you making the world a better place for everyone, or just people who look like you?

Just went back and watched Avengers: Endgame for a second time this week. Picked up a lot of things you always miss with a movie that has that many moving parts.

But the thing that struck me was the arc of Steve Rogers. Captain America. He’s always been my favorite, going back to my youth. (I had a shirt custom made with the shield on the chest in 1997, long before anyone else. Wore it yesterday.)

Two scenes in the movie nailed it for me, and if you haven’t seen the movie yet (what the hell is wrong with you, btw?) then these are sort of spoilers, but its been several weeks, so deal with it.

Thanos about to kill Thor with Stormbreaker, and Mjolnir bounces off his head, tumbling our villain ass over teakettle.

And then Mjolnir returns to Cap’s hand. Remember Odin’s enchantment, that only the worthy may wield such a weapon.

Worthy. Cap. But we always knew Steve and Fred Rogers were the two best role models of masculinity in the 20th Century and beyond.

And then it’s him against all of Thanos’s hordes, by himself. Captain America with shield and hammer, engaging everything. It’s almost anti-climactic when the portals begin to open and all the armies of Wakanda and the Sorcerer Supreme’s students step through, leading to one of the most famous lines from my childhood: “Avengers Assemble!”

Heroic. Others have their arcs, and many of them find some level of resolution across the movie, while others will move forward into Phase IV.

Which brings me back to the Star Dragon.

Gareth St. John Dankworth and Steve Rogers could sit down over a pitcher of lemonade and be friends. Both share that vision of making the world a better place for everyone, and not just some narrow caste based on color, religion, or creed.

Everyone.

All Gareth ever wanted to do was be a cop. To make the world better. When he gets pulled out of his own life, sent to a place from which he can never return, he has the occasional moment of sorrow, but then he moves on, because he’s the only person he knows who can save the broader galaxy from an evil most beings can’t even fathom.

Even knowing he can never go back to what he lost. Just like Steve Rogers, frozen in the ice since 1945. I won’t spoil the ending of either the movie or the series, but I always want a hero who strives, even against the impossible or inevitable.

The man who plants himself alongside the river of truth and says “No. You move.”

The Star Dragon series is big. Pulpy in the best ways. I always tried to imagine I was standing in the year 1950 and pretending like this was a sci fi serial of the sort you’d see at the movie theater on Saturday morning. Weirdly scientific. but with certain things that they would take for granted and we’ve already grown past, like people smoking cigarettes on a spaceship, or Gareth trying to figure out how a hands-free faucet works in an alien rest room.

I wanted that sense of wonder. To go back to where we were before we lost that in the early 1970’s and everyone turned dark and broody. Whatever. Gimme heroes. Superman’s hope rather than Batman’s rage. Captain America’s optimism rather than Iron Man’s cynicism.

Fred Rogers’ neighborhood, where we’re all friends together, striving to make the world a better place.

I hop you will enjoy the Star Dragon books. #1 is out. #2-4 are up for pre-order. #5 will join them soon. That will wrap this phase of the Star Dragon stories, but I’ve left the door open.

Boundary Shock Quarterly 006 has a Gareth story, send in his past from the Star Dragon tales. And Issue 008, coming in the fall of 2019, will have a second one from the Sky Patrol days.

Let’s get pulpy.

In the modern age of Indie Press, there are a number of experts who can tell you all the ways to get rich by expanding your market.

I am not one of those people, btw.

However, at the NINC (Novelists, Inc.) conference last fall, one of the things that came up was the power of translations as a force multiplier. You can write the book once, and then spend what one hopes is a reasonable amount of money to have a professional translate it, expanding your market. You just need to figure out which markets like what genres.

For me, the obvious choice was The Science Officer books. They tend to run shorter than novels (24-32,000 words, rather than 50-150,000) so it would be a cheaper experiment, as you are paying a rate by the word for the completed manuscript. In the case of book one, I think it ran about $2,500 US for the translation into German.

I picked German because of the Perry Rhodan books. If you aren’t familiar with them, they started off as a weekly novella series (15-30,000 words) in September 1961 and have continued on a weekly basis for fifty-eight years. You read that right. 58 years.

According to wikipedia:  (emph mine) “As of February 2019, 3000 booklet novels of the original series plus 850 spinoff novels of the sister series Atlan plus over 400 paperbacks and 200 hardcovers have been published, totalling over 300,000 pages.” (Holy shit, batman!)

Also: “Having sold approximately two billion copies (in novella format) worldwide alone, (including over one billion in Germany), it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written.”

So Germans are happy with Space Opera in German. Accustomed to it, even. And they like long arcs of the stuff.

We found a good translator and paid the money. The book went live about two weeks ago, but I’ve been out of town at a writing retreat all of this week, and in the middle of a bunch of other hecticness before that, so this is the first chance I have had to talk about it. I figured I’d get back and say something, but something went weird in Germany. The book just started selling. Ten to twenty copies per day on the German Amazon page all week. WOW!

More interestingly, I’ve already gotten reviews from folks who mostly complained about the translation, rather than the text. Mind you, The Science Officer is one of the first things I wrote commercially, and I’m a MUCH better writer now than I was five years ago. If they were noticing the translation choices (made by someone who is bilingual, so I can’t help you there) then they had flipped over, bought the english language version ($0.99 US is not much money) and compared the versions.

So now I’m dealing with really smart folks who can read the English language versions of things as well (Howdy, y’all) and liked it enough to do the work. I also saw an enormous spike in sales of Auberon (again $0.99 US, so easy choice) this week. Hopefully, they will tell their friends, because my goal, knowing now that maybe this wasn’t the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, is to do the rest of the seven. And then maybe some other stuff after that.

One review asked why I didn’t just do the entire omnibus, but they missed the point. I’m not rolling in money here and had no idea if it would work. Plus, it cost $2,500 US for book one. All eight at once would have probably cost us about $15,000 US, up front. At least this way, I can afford to roll them all out slowly as they sell. If I average 10 sales per day, then we’re looking at about a four month payoff cycle for book one, multiplied by all eight.

Mind you, we’re also paying for audio up front right now do, for the Star Dragon books, to be followed by Longshot when we get there, so I’m having a kinda spendy year. Making good sales in 2019, better than 2018, but with any luck, access to the German market, and German mindshare, will bring some of those readers over into my English-language stuff.

But it still totally, freaking awesome that I have German language fans. That I can look at a book by copy/pasting the title “Der Wissenschaftoffizier” into Amazon.de and see folks liked it enough to leave me reviews. (And yes, I used Google Translate to get the them into English again. 30 years ago, I probably could have read them pretty well, but that was thirty years ago.)

The German Edition of The Science Officer is now available. And there will be a print version available on Amazon soon. (It is in the Ingram catalog, so you could order a personal copy from your independent bookstore if you were feeling really weird.)

And if you want to hire translations into other languages, let me know. I would recommend the folks I worked with: http://www.literarytranslations.us Really nice and good rates.

I’m also in the process of bribing some friends to do me something into Arabic, just because.

But this is totally, freaking awesome.

Hope y’all enjoy it, and it you’re one of my new German friends: Willkommen!!

🙂

Also, for more news, don’t miss my monthly newsletter, filled with other stuff that doesn’t go into the blog.

www.blazeward.com/newsletter

YAY!!!

Winterhome is now available everywhere. (Kinda surprised that there haven’t been any reviews yet. Y’all have had it for at least twelve hours now… heh.). Petron is due back from my first reader in the next week or so, and then I’ll fix everything she finds before it goes off to the Canadian Copyeditor Babe(tm) for her touch.

Due date: December 10. There will be other reminders and other side projects related to it as we get closer, so keep an ear open.

Now a side jaunt is upon us for the summer: The Star Dragon.

I wrote the first book, Awaken the Star Dragon, exactly a year ago at a writing retreat (One week, one novel.) It got hurriedly published as part of a storybundle last summer, but we never did paper or pushed all that hard, as I was in the process originally of writing a whole series to drop month over month.

That is what’s coming next. Awaken is being renamed Birth, and the series will look like this:

• Birth of the Star Dragon (available now)
• Flight of the Star Dragon (Jun 10)
• Call of the Star Dragon (Jul 10)
• Shadow of the Star Dragon (Aug 10)
• Trial of the Star Dragon (Sep 10)

For all of them, ebook, paper, and audio will go live on the same date, which is another layer of awesomeness that I didn’t have as an option before.

Additionally, these are part of an extended universe, so you can get a head start on Gareth and read his first adventure: Patrol Cutter: Bellerophon! in Issue 006 of Boundary Shock Quarterly. This takes place several years before Birth of the Star Dragon, and let me set things up. Another Gareth/Sky Patrol story will come out in Issue 008 of Boundary Shock, so mark your calendars for Tin Can Pirates in the fall.

When setting out to do a story for Ray Guns & Space Babes, I wanted pulp. And not just any pulp, but that specific 1950’s American Science Fiction that you got in bad B movies and shorts. Noble/Bright and a touch innocent. Manly men with lantern jaws taking on criminals and throwing them in jail. Horrendous monsters from outerspace intent on kidnapping teenage girls for whatever it was they did. “Ray Guns & Space Babes”

It was a fun challenge to write Gareth St. John Dankworth as a 50’s pulp SF hero. And to introduce other characters like Eveth Baker and Jackeith Grodray, who were cops with a more 70’s/80’s bent to them. Worn and tired and grumpy.

I even got a fantastic review the other day on Amazon for Birth of the Star Dragon. 5 stars and all.

“5 stars5 Stars as a “Tongue in Cheek” Complement to the Young Adult SF of the 50’s and 60’s

May 4, 2019

He gets it. And I’m glad he enjoyed it.

Noble/Bright is the exact opposite of the Grim/Dark that everyone in YA circles seems deeply committed to. Bad things and bad people. Gareth is really Vo Arlo without any of the anger issues, when you get down to it. And I had so much fun with Birth that I had to write the rest of the series.

And, in keeping with the campy, pulpy feel to things, I got to introduce gods, aliens, technology, and a career criminal names Morty who really was my favorite voice. He’s the one I’d just sit around with and enjoy a beer or six. When they cast him in the video, I’ll demand a Queens or maybe soft Jersey accent for the guy, because that’s how I hear him in my head.

And it concludes nicely at five novels, although I left myself two openings. One, I can tell more of the Pulp SF stories of a younger Gareth (Patrol Cutter: Bellerophon! and Tin Can Pirates). Two, I left a nice segue at the end, for how a Star Dragon and his friends could fight crime and explore the solar system after the crazy events of the ending of Trial Of The Star Dragon (!!!).

There will be more dark and ugly things written later, but I wanted to write something happy. Too much of the world is one stream of unrelenting ugliness right now. Once upon a time, science fiction was supposed to be fun. At least if you’re an old fart like me.

It’s time people remembered that.

So we’re getting close to the end, and I wanted to thank those of you who have already gone ahead and bought it. Hopefully, you’ve all started reading it and learning all sorts of useful things about the new world of Indie Publishing and how you really can make a nice living at it.

A side note: I’ve had the conversation more than once recently with folks who were some flavor of Traditionally Published at one time or another. Those folks have, unfortunately, watched all their income potential evaporate over the last decade or so. Median incomes keep declining. Royalty statements are down to three digits per month.

“You can’t make a living as a writer anymore.”

But that’s a load of horseshit. I retired from the day job in February 2018, and completely support myself at a nice living from my writing. Not editing. Not design work. Nothing else.

Just my monthly residuals from my writing work. And while I’m not back up to the income I had as a Database Architect/BI Designer in Seattle, I’m aiming to get there in 2020.

You can make a very nice living as a writer these day, just not in TradPub.

All of the folks in this bundle can tell you that.

The world has changed. It will continue to change. You, as a writer, a creative, an artist will need to learn to adapt with it. Become a new person every few years as the market, the technology, and the industry changes.

The old world is never coming back. I’m sorry, but Indie will eventually replace most of it. We will all become pocket publishing empires, but that’s one of the best ways to make money right now, and I’d rather be rich than famous. (See Taupin, Bernie)

So go look at these books and buy them. Or buy them for the artist in your life as an early birthday present. Writing with Chronic Illness. Writing Non-fiction for money. Understanding Kobo as an alternative to Amazon. Ways to make money as a writer and creative.

The future is now. But time is running out, both to get all these books cheap and to hug your favorite artist.

Don’t delay. You might come to regret it.

The world has changed.

We’ve got just under two weeks until the 8th Jessica Keller novel is available in ebook. (I think you can order the paper right now.)

Winterhome

By now, hopefully most of you have read the CS-405 trilogy that takes place right after the end of St. Legier, when CS-405 has a jumpsail failure. Those three novels run parallel to the first half of Winterhome and then drop you in as Admiral Tom Provst is getting ready to step into the war at Jessica’s right hand.

• Queen Anne’s Revenge
• Packmule
• Persephone

Additionally, the ninth and final Jessica Keller novel is in the hands of Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) being read for the December release where I get to wrap up Jessica’s story. (At least for now. I left it wide open at the end on purpose, in case I get the bug to come back and add more, but this ends on a good note IMHO.)

Petron is the ninth title. At least until someone tells me they have a better idea. Coming December 10, 2019 everywhere you buy books.

I’ll probably also hold a lottery or raffle for folks in my newsletter list to get themselves a copy early enough that they can lord it over everyone else, like Dorn’s already been doing. (He read it before anyone, due to the nature of scheduling conflicts. His Shire was thoroughly harrowed as a result. Heh)

With the above in mind, make sure you’re signed up for my newsletter so you see the invite to participate when it comes. I won’t post it here or anywhere else on social media, as a way of thanking my loyal fans for all the support over the last couple of years as I told Jessica’s story. And everyone else’s.

It’s always an interesting feeling to bring something this huge to a resting point. I have more Science Officer stories in the can, beyond #8, but I had that same moment of relief when I finished Hammerfield Payoff. And Javier will return for more adventures, once I finish off some of the current projects and can circle back.

But with Jessica, I’m not sure where I’d go that would be interesting. Her story covered more than thirteen years of her life, as she went from amazing to legendary. At the same time, all the Epilogues set me up to spin off several other series if I wanted to, following folks that will surprise some of you and entice others.

But I need a break from Jessica. And her team. Handsome Rob doesn’t count, even though his timeline is roughly equivalent to Flight of the Blackbird and The Red Admiral. Javier and Henri are two that I need to get back to, but I’ve been finishing off the Star Dragon novels (June – September, with audio on drop), followed by the Longshot novels. (Oct – April, with a break for Petron in the middle).

I also have three, completely independent Novel Ones in three new universes, that I’ve been writing in between the major projects, mostly as a palette cleanser. Pretty soon, I’ll look at them and start writing Books Two for various things. Those are likely to just start coming out as supplements to regular titles on the tenths of various months, because I’m still writing around two novels per month, plus short fiction and other projects.

There’s also a patreon out there, where you can get exclusive, early peeks at some of the short fiction that I’ve been writing in my spare time. Did the math yesterday and I have nearly twenty of those that none of you have read, in about five new short story universes and various genres, beyond simple Science Fiction. They won’t be on the publishing calendar until sometime in 2020. If you would like to support me as I experiment with new forms and formats, that’s the place.

For Example: my long-suffering assistant Ollie was complaining that he doesn’t get nearly enough love, so I started a new space adventure series, putting him in command of an old Cargo Carrier named Boundary Shock. (He giggles every time I bring that joke up.) One of my projects soon is to teach myself how to write comic book scripts, and then take the Ollie & Rufus stories and transform them, with an eye to eventually hiring a team of lunatics to make me some comic books I could sell with his face on them.

We’re also shortly available in GERMAN! The Science Officer books will slowly be translated into German over the next few years so I can expand my audience base that way. (Also working with some friends on getting a few shorts into Arabic, just because this is the future and I can.) Links when I know for sure what they are.

AUDIO!!! heh. We are relaunching Awaken the Star Dragon as Birth of the Star Dragon (#1) in June, as well as dropping #2: Flight of the Star Dragon at the same time. Both will have audio on day one, as will each of the rest when they come out: Call of the Star Dragon (#3, July), Shadow of the Star Dragon (#4, August), and Trial of the Star Dragon (#5, September).

Tell all your audiobook friends. (Or fiends, whatever typo works)

Going to be a busy summer. Hope all of you are staying well hydrated and tanned.

Let me know what news you’d like to hear in the future, beyond just my regular rambling.

b

West of the Mountains, WA

Blog post for the creatives out there. Not just writers, but all the folks with art in their soul and a willingness to put mind to reality and put it out there. You’ve recovered from the candy high (we hope.)

Just a reminder: you rock. Most folks never commit art. You’re already in some pretty awesome company.

With that in mind, I want to remind y’all about the 2019 Write Stuff Bundle, currently live over at StoryBundle.

Here’s what you get for the base price:

• Practical Meerkat’s 52 Bits of Useful Info for Young (and Old) Writers
• Business For Breakfast – Vol. 10: Growing As a Professional Artist
• How to Write Non-Fiction
• The Rational Writer: A to Z

Laura Anne, Leah, Joanna, and Mindy. All top notch writers and really awesome ladies on top of it. For the Bonus round, they’ll include these titles as well:

• Writing With Chronic Illness
• WMG Publishing Presents: Carving Out Time for Your Writing
• Money-Making Business Models for Writers
• The Million Dollar Writing Series Boxed Set
• Killing it on Kobo
• Business For Breakfast – Vol. 11: Beginning Marketing for the Professional Publisher

You’re a creative. There’s something here for you, from the beginner to the expert. Artists, photographers, writers, sculptors, you name it. Artists.

Names like Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kevin J. Anderson, Dean Wesley Smith, Leah Cutter, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, Laura Anne Gilman, Mindy Klasky, Joanna Penn, Tonya Price, and yours truly.

Leah’s book is how to take your inner artist and nurture it. Kris writes about all her health issues over the last few years and how that didn’t stop her. Mine talks about putting yourself out there and looking like a professional.

Not just writers, either. All of these are books for anyone who makes some kind of art and wants to be taken serious as a professional. “How do I market myself?” “How do I make money doing this?” “What do I need to do to take advantage of the future as the world continues to evolve?”

This bundle, like all of them, won’t last forever. You’ll have to suddenly pay way more for these books if you don’t get them now.

And think about the artist in your life, if it’s not you. We all have a child, a niece or nephew, a cousin, or a friend who has an artist’s soul. Maybe you should get this for them as an early birthday present or graduation. Or just because you want them to succeed and don’t know a better way to encourage them.

All an artist really needs it love. Show them you love them. And maybe buy some books, too, but a hug works wonders first.

When was the last time you hugged your artist and told them you were proud of their work?

Start now. Seriously. Do something good for them, just so they know that somebody out there takes them seriously. It takes a lot of effort and depression to actually share your work with an uncaring and maybe hostile world.

But a smile goes a long way.

Hey Gang,
It’s that time of year again. Kris is doing her annual Write Stuff bundle and I was lucky enough to be invited in this time around.

How it works: You pay a single amount and get the four books on the top row over on the website (Laura Anne, Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm), Joanna, and Mindy, all lovely, wonderful ladies). For a little more, you also get Kris, Dean, Kevin (and Rebecca), Mark, Tonya, and me. If you look close, that’s twelve books and a lecture from Dean. Folks, some of these people are the biggest names in writing. There’s a lot to learn from them. I know I have. And they are all really neat people, too.

For you writers, this is a goldmine of information about how to improve your craft, your life, and your business.

I’m going to talk about my book, because it just came out for this bundle: Beginning Marketing for the Professional Publisher.

We’re Indies, most of us. The world has changed, and what you used to do as a writer doesn’t work any more. There are pitifully few contracts. Agents won’t return your message. You think you’ll never get into print. Or if you were once, you’ll never get it back.

I would like to tell you that while Traditional Publishing (New York style) is floundering, the Indie world is thriving. I quit my job Feb 23, 2018 (14 months ago, give or take) to write full time. And I’m making a rather nice living. Well better than minimum wage, let’s just say that.

I’m not afraid to slay sacred cows, to use Dean’s favorite saying, and it has worked for me. But at the same time, my incorporation documents include this important mission: “Build a longer table, instead of a higher fence.”

That means helping people. Other writers like you. So I sat down and tried to lay out all the basics of Indie Marketing that I have learned over the last few years, what works and what doesn’t, for folks just getting started, or discovering that TradPub doesn’t want them around anymore.

Things like websites, business cards, and little-known information about how Amazon (currently) helps you market your books. There is a wealth of information out there, but most of it is only available word-of-mouth. Sometimes, that’s because people don’t want to share what they know, for fear that others will pass them by.

I just hope we can all be successful, because your career is different than mine. How you get to the top of the mountain will be your own path, but I can help show you some ideas.

So it’s April. I know many of you also look at Kevin’s NaNoWriMo bundle in the fall, but now is when you need to be thinking about your career. If you did NaNo last year, good for you. Hopefully, your book is coming into shape and you’re ready to start the publishing process. If not, now’s the time to read up on things to prepare for next year.

Ant and grasshoppers, my friend. That’s how you are successful in the modern age. Work hard, learn from experts, and then go do your own thing.

I can’t want your success more than you do, so now’s the time to commit to making a career for yourself as a writer. I got lucky in timing and teachers along the way, but I only Indie published my first title in 2014, so just about five years ago. And I don’t have a job anymore.

You can do it, too. These folks can help, because they want you to succeed. Why else would they put all their thoughts on paper?

So go get the bundle right now. Or forward a link to that writer friend you know who’s stuck and unsure how to pull the trigger. We want to help. We want you to be successful, but more importantly, HAPPY.

And you don’t have long. As always, these bundles only go for three weeks, so if you put it off, you’ll never get a chance like this again.

Good luck.

as I’m writing this, Friday morning, you have six and a half days (until wednesday) to go get your copy of the The 2019 Space Opera Bundle, curated by Dean Wesley Smith.

His take on things: “Space, the final frontier.”

A famous quote from the opening of maybe the most popular space opera series ever, Star Trek. And wow did I write a lot of Star Trek books. Over thirty, plus a few comics and also some scripts. I even edited for Star Trek for a time.

But before I fell in love with Star Trek back in the 1960s, I had been reading the space opera of Andre Norton and Robert Heinlein and others.

Covering vast areas of space with flashing spaceships and nifty alien races, space opera in the hands of great authors helped me time after time to get off this planet and live among the stars where life was a lot more fun than my real life.

So for me, great, classic space opera is always my favorite kind of reading still to this day.

You and I both know you’re going to be bored this weekend, looking for something to read. do yourself a favor and get this bundle. Seven novels. Two trilogy novel collections. And a Fiction River anthology. All for a low price that will be gone on Wednesday.

Plus, once you’ve read my novel in there: Queen Anne’s Revenge you can move on to Packmule, and conclude the trilogy with Persephone. They stand on their own as a trilogy, and also expand the Jessica Keller universe, sitting between books Seven (St. Legier) and Eight (Winterhome).

If you forward this or tag a friend who doesn’t know Jessica Keller, they can start with Auberon and work their way forward before exploring all of the Alexandria Station Universe, including Javier Aritza, Doyle Iwakuma, and Henri Baudin. There is a lot of material here to keep any science fiction/space opera fan happy.

So don’t miss out. You have six days, and then it is gone forever