News, News, and More News

First: The lAdventures of Pigg & Woolfe: Episode 38 Laying Low went live this past weekend on KDP.

Episode 37 Aftermath went live in February, but I forgot to post it here.

Second: The Daedalus Enigma: Waves of Darkness Book 6 has been uploaded to Ingram and all my eBook distributors. Publication date is May 14th, but the eBook is available to pre-order on Amazon, Google Books, Smashwords, and Draft2Digital.

Third: The D2D purchase links have been added to all the Waves of Darkness books.

Fourth: I am removing The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe Season 1 from Kindle Unlimited. They will all be cycled out by mid-July. They will still be available on KDP.

In August, I will start adding the serial to my D2D catalog.

Fifth: I am progressing nicely on the revisions to Maelstrom of Fate: Waves of Darkness Book 7 and plan to release it in October rather than November. The reason for this is so I can have copies available at HallowCon.

Guess It’s Time for an Update

Yeah, yeah, I’m a slug about updating the site; I’ve just been… busy.

Revisions and edits are pretty much complete on The Daedalus Enigma: Waves of Darkness Book 6. Any remaining typos will hopefully be caught in the formatting stage. I’m still pushing for a May release.

I have every intention of getting the cover art done this weekend for the first season 4 episode of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe: Episode 37 Aftermath. The editing is already done.

If I ever release a hardcover version of Waves of Darkness, it’ll probably be an omnibus volume of the entire Sisters of Power story arc. Recently, I’ve had ideas for lovely (hopefully) black & white/greyscale illustrations to use in such a volume. What can I say? I need to learn the newer version of the PenUp app, since they want to overcomplicate brush/tool selections on it now. At least that app is still free and not Apple-centric (I’m still pissed at Adobe for their bias against Android devices).

In more Waves of Darkness news: I am expanding on the original 1st draft of Waves of Darkness Book 8: Hunting the Dragon. When I started looking back at the files, I thought my computer had eaten some of the chapters. I only found 18 chapter files plus the Once Upon a Tide… in my file library. Turns out I told the entire story in only 18 chapters. That is entirely too short.

While I still hope to release book 8 in 2025, I may have to push back the May date to later in the year.

No, I still haven’t started plotting book 9. I also haven’t finished writing season 4.

Convention Season Is Now Open

Chattacon is coming up this weekend!

I only have one panel at 4 pm Saturday. The rest of the time I will either be at my table in the Dealer Room or wandering around the convention.

I’m looking forward to meeting a second cousin I haven’t seen since a family Christmas get-together at her grandmother’s (my great aunt) when we were kids. (I’m talking late elementary to early junior high ages here.) Mary Robinette Kowal is this year’s Literary Guest of Honor.

While I do have them ordered, I will not have copies of Pathway to Downfall: The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe Season 3 available at this convention. I have yet to find a way to get Amazon to expedite delivery service on authors’ copies of books. The best they would tell me is between the 10th and 20th. I ordered them the last Tuesday in December.

I will have a full allotment of the five titles currently available in my Waves of Darkness series. My restock order from Ingram Spark is out for delivery. In fact, the UPS truck is currently at the house across the street from me as I write this.

I also have a new 4-tier book display rack! I’m finally going to look like a professional book seller.

If you’re going to be in the Chattanooga area this weekend, stop by the Doubletree Hilton and join the festivities!

Overwhelmed or Underwhelmed?

I’m not really sure. So much seems in flux at the moment.

The final episode for this season of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe: Episode 36 The Fall of Tunilia is live on KDP. Check the page for Season 3 for the purchase link.

I’ve finished formatting the season 3 omnibus, Pathway to Downfall, but I still have to do the cover design. Needless to say, I seriously doubt I’ll have copies available until Con Nooga in February. Amazon does not do speedy delivery on book orders, and Chattacon comes early this January.

Season 4 is going to be released one episode every other month. I only have half the season drafted, and I still need to type and edit what is written so far. I’m also debating removing the few early episodes from Kindle Unlimited so I can release all the episodes on Smashwords/D2D as well as KDP. At only 99-cents each, that won’t hurt my royalties (nonexistent, mind you) from Amazon.

I need to update my ad images for my annual Take a Pirate Home for Christmas campaign. I’ll also be enrolling in the Smashwords End of Year Sale again. Think I’ll go with the 75% discount this time, which will make all my Waves of Darkness ebooks there available for 99-cents! That sale starts December 15th and runs through the 31st.

Remember, at Smashwords, you can find files to work with just about any type of eReader you use.

Meanwhile, I need to see about getting a new washer. It started leaking while filling this weekend. Not good.

I’m also unsure of what I’ll be doing at my day job for the last 2 weeks before Christmas. That is a bit annoying.

Cover Reveal and Book News

Hell’s Dodo: Waves of Darkness Book 5 2nd edition

This beauty is coming out November 14th! I’ve uploaded it to Ingram Spark for print and to KDP, Smashwords, and Google Books for ebook.

I need to remember to upload it and Demon Bayou: Waves of Darkness Book 4 to GOATreads. I’ve been slack on that because I have yet to see sales through that platform.

Silent Fathoms: Waves of Darkness Book 3 will be temporarily unavailable in print. I will be unpublishing it on Ingram Spark and then republishing it there. They never corrected the ISBN on it, and that’s been bugging me for a year now. I will announce when the print version goes live again. This won’t have any effect on the availability of the ebook.

I will start working on the cover for this month’s episode of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe soon. I hope I can actually finish getting season 4 written in time to edit and maintain a monthly release schedule. I also have to get the omnibus formatted for print.

Meanwhile, I’ve been making notes of plot points and scenes for the Daughters of the Dragon arc, which will conclude Waves of Darkness. It just keeps getting darker and darker.

Getting Back in the Swing

Treasure awaits!

Hell’s Dodo: Waves of Darkness Book 5 is now in the formatting stage. It will be released in early November. I don’t have a clear idea of what I want for the cover yet, but I’m getting there. Once the paperback file is formatted, I can get with my cover designer, Fatima.

Now to start kicking my own butt to get back to maintaining this site. Next up is updating the Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe landing page. There’s a new episode out and another coming soon.

Con Prep Underway

LibertyCon fast approaches. My schedule of obligatory panels and activities is available now on the Appearances page. I still need to look over the programming schedule to see what other panels I want to attend and figure out when to visit the con suite for food. I am also getting my book inventory ready and prepping the other sundries I need to take with me.

Meanwhile, the June episode, The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe: Episode 30 Divided Forces Part I is available on KDP. You can find the link for it on the main page for the series or the page for season 3.

I’m trying to get out of my writing slump and have made some progress on season 4. I’m still in mid-season on episodes, though. Not being allowed to take my MS to work with me anymore to scribble on during down time has really put a knot in it. But, the job pays the mortgage and bills, not the writing. I need to get season 4 fully drafted before the end of the year. Then I can concentrate on plotting and drafting book 9 in the Waves of Darkness series.

Chaos Partially Organized

Here there be treasure!

Interesting thing about this promo pic: it got the attention of several book reviewers on Instagram. Problem is, they’re all wanting to be paid for reviews. Sorry, but that is against my personal ethos. You want to be paid to review books; get a job at a publication that features book reviews. You want to be paid to READ books; become an editor, proofreader, or slush pile reader. Paid-for reviews are viewed as extremely suspicious by most of the authors and publishers I personally know and interact with.

I finally got the Smugglers Cove and Hucksters Haven pages sorted out. I still haven’t added the cards I collected at Con Nooga, but all the links are in the right place now. A lot of vendors got migrated to the new Comics & Collectibles page.

LibertyCon is coming up soon. I will update the Appearances page this weekend with my schedule. For those who have tickets, I look forward to seeing you there. For any wanting to go but without tickets, unfortunately, the convention has been sold out since last summer.

In somewhat unrelated news: I recently watched a pleasantly bittersweet movie on Netflix called Living. It stars Bill Nighy. For those of you who are fans of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern books, his face was chosen by the people who commissioned me to create the face card illustrations for Antiquarian Boardgames’s Dragon Poker companion game to their Pern LARP as representing Masterharper Robinton. By the way, Mr. Nighy has a very pleasant tenor singing voice.

Surfacing

Sorry it took me so long to get around to announcing this here. It took me almost an entire week just to get the prizes disbursed due to limited time on the computer.

Here’s the FULL list of winners for the Black Venom Launch Contest:
Black Venom: Waves of Darkness Book 4 ebook:
Kim Canalli, Jasmine DeGroot, Sandra Cooke, Frank Slayton, Stephanie Boyd, Lucille Sims, John Key, C.B. Bitton, Nathan Mejia, Eric Gibson, Chuck McWhorter, Theresa Earls, Michelle Welch, April Thomas, Samantha Smith, Adam Houston, Jason Garrett, Doug Stanford, Angie Azur, Zach Griffin, Julian W. Thompson, Rt Blake, Hunter Sylvester, and Yvonne Atkins.
Blood Curse: Waves of Darkness Book 1 audio book:
Jasmine DeGroot, Danielle Moses, Mike Young, Stephanie Boyd, Mattie McCroskey, John Key, C.B. Bitton, Nathan Mejia, Eric Gibson, Chuck McWhorter, April Thomas, Samantha Smith, Doug Stanford, Angie Azur, and Zach Griffin.
GRAND PRIZE WINNER of signed copies of all 7 titles in the Waves of Darkness: Sisters of Power story arc:
HUNTER SYLVESTER!
Congratulations to all the winners. All entrants, winner or not, will get a bonus gift of the first 6 episodes of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe, my Steampunk serial fiction.

Meanwhile, I do have some progress to report. I’ve made a little more headway on season 4 of The Adventures of Pigg &Woolfe. I’m still woefully behind on getting the episodes finished in time for publication next year, though.

I have finally started reorganizing the Smugglers Cove and Hucksters Haven pages. This will take a while, and I’ve already found 2 listings that will have to be deleted for lack of viable contact info. I can only assume they went out of business.

I finished revisions and edits on Hell’s Dodo: Waves of Darkness Book 5 this morning. Formatting will probably start next week.

Under “lack of progress” I have not started plotting the 9th book in Waves of Darkness yet.

That wraps things up for now.

Captain’s Log: Con Nooga 14

Always take a picture of your badge. If you lose it, and someone turns it in, you can claim it without having to buy a new one.

Had a great time at Con Nooga this year. I didn’t expect to get table space on Authors’ Alley because of how late my application was. However, our authors are very supportive of each other. They made space for me. I even scored a rotating book rack for cheap to use next con. Only my Waves of Darkness 2nd editions will fit, though. The 1st editions and the Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe omnibi are an inch and a half too tall. I plan to pick up a tiered rack for them.

I did 2 panels on the writers track: Using Folklore and Publishing Horror Stories. We lost over half our audience on the second one. They thought it was about publishing horror fiction. Instead, it was horror stories from our adventures in publishing, both indie and trad.

I will be updating the Smugglers Cove & Hucksters Haven soon. However, it will not include all the new-to-me vendors. I ran out of time in the Dealers Room and didn’t get to collect cards on the last row.

One of the most useful panels I attended as audience was Guerilla Marketing, presented by the author of the Zombie Road series, David A. Simpson. Took LOTS of notes.

I sold 2 copies of Waves of Darkness Book 1: Blood Curse and 1 copy of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe Season Two: Turmoil in Tunilia. By the time this con rolls around again, I’ll have 3 more titles to offer.

I even ran into 3 coworkers. I have a feeling next year will be even better.

Finally, I’ve gotten much closer to getting past my stuck point in season 4 of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe. I’m almost done with the 6th episode of the season. I really need to get s4 wrapped up so I can get back to work on plotting book 9 for Waves of Darkness. There will most likely be a hiatus between seasons 4 and 5. We’ll see.