Updates galore!

Not from me.  From Microsoft and Mozilla.

First came the Fall Creator's Update from Microsoft.  So far, so good.  I got a notice saying some audio-related thing had been disabled since it no longer worked with the new windows, but my speakers still work, so I don't know what that's all about. 

Next came the Mozilla update, the dreaded Firefox 57.  I knew this thing was going to break some non-zero number of my addons, but I didn't know how extensive the damage would be.  Luckily, it's not so bad.  Ghostery, uBlock, and AdBlockPlus still work, and those are the important ones since they keep out a lot of the malware from third-party ads.  Thumbnail Zoom broke, but I've found a suitable replacement.  Same for Flagfox.  I'm still not quite sold on the replacements for Context Search and gtranslate.  All in all, though, this update wasn't nearly as destructive as I feared.

So it looks like I'm still in business.  Yay, me.  Now, back to Mind Games...

The Lattice will be appearing in an anthology

Alasdair Shaw has accepted my short story The Lattice for inclusion in his upcoming science fiction anthology, The Guardian.  It goes live at the end of the month, but one can pre-order it now.

Click here to pre-order The Guardian

Here's the cover:

Pretty cool, huh?  Yeah, I like it, too.

Here's the blurb on the product page, just to give you an idea of the common theme of the stories:

Guardians are defenders, carers and guides. Some look after individual people, others whole planets or universes, but all share a strong belief in their responsibility to protect their charges.

The anthology includes the following stories:

Awakening, by Alasdair Shaw

The Lattice, by Jeff Tanyard

Biting Shadow, by C. Gold

Gate of Dreams, by Rick Partlow

The Following Star, by Elizabeth Baxter

The Renewal, by Zen DiPietro

Stowaway, by Benjamin Douglas

Baptism of Fire, by Cora Buhlert

Sleeping Giant, by Andrew Vaillencourt

We Have the Stars, by J.J. Green

Warning Signs, by Edward M. Grant

Here's the link again:

Click here to pre-order The Guardian

Only $0.99.  Enjoy!

Maybe a diagram would help

I'm still working on the second draft of Mind Games.  I've just sent Lieutenant Gray's Wolf Platoon towards the river.  All hell broke loose, the convoy was scattered, and now I'm trying to keep track of everybody.

This is one of those things that's really easy to screw up.  The "scene" is several different miniature locations, and the platoon's squads have been separated.  I've got a bunch of sergeants and corporals to keep track of, as well as their locations, and I'll have to keep a close eye on things to make sure I don't accidentally use the wrong name.

So I'm thinking about making a diagram in MS Paint.

By the way: the word count of this book is currently just over 89k.  That's about 10k more than the first draft, which I expected, since I always end up adding more material during revision.  I'm hoping to break 100k by the time I'm done with this draft, and I think I should easily accomplish that.

Progress Report

I'm about half-way through the second draft of Mind Games.  It's slow going because I've had to stop and think about some things.  I've decided to beef up the first chapter, and basically re-write it from another character's POV.  This character wasn't planned to be in the book at all--he was scheduled to first appear in book 3--but I figured it wouldn't hurt to introduce him here, even though there's not much for him to actually do.  He'll get the first chapter and then a wrap-up scene at the end, I guess.  Like I said, I'm still working on that.

Struggling with tone.  What seemed the way to go in draft 1 is not looking good in draft 2, so I'm altering the tone a bit.  It's frustrating, because I feel like I'm hanging on to this story by my fingernails.  Hopefully it will all snap together in the end.

I've got a rudimentary outline for an urban fantasy novel.  :o  I have no idea when I'll actually get around to writing it, if ever.  Depends on how sales of the Wheel of Fire go, I guess.  If the series doesn't sell well after I've got three or four books out, then I might abandon it.  But that's looking way too far ahead.  The series might take off after book 3 like Timothy Ellis's series did.  There's simply no telling.  But I'm committed to Wheel of Fire at least through book 3.

The Lunar Gambit - free promotion

Benjamin Douglas's The Lunar Gambit is temporarily free.  Click here to get it.

Here's the blurb:

His ship is wrecked. His missiles are gone. And he's been thrust into command on his first tour. What could go wrong?

Lucas Odin seems like a qualified first officer--on paper. But his only battles so far have been simulations, each one a miserable failure. He just isn't a "take charge" kind of guy. To be honest, he'd rather spend his first tour gaming on the ship's modded sims than dealing with real people. But when the Starship Fairfax is waylaid by pirates, Lucas inherits a mission already doomed to fail. If he wants to keep the ship flying, keep his crew alive, and take back what was stolen, there's only one way:

By taking charge.

I've read both Totaled, the prequel, and The Lunar Gambit, book 1 in the series.  My impressions:

The series is sort of like Star Trek crossed with The Expanse.  The hero is the ship captain--not by rank, but in a de facto sense--and the action takes place in the outer part of the solar system.  There are space pirates, and competing governments, and seedy underworlds full of mafia-style figures. The hero is more of a shy nerdy sort than the bombastic James Kirk from Star Trek, and I think that's a good thing.

Tone: there are no cuss words, nor is there any graphic content.  It's family-friendly.

Cool factor: inhabited asteroids.

The books are short, which means you don't have to invest a lot of time, so give them a try.  The promotion for the first book is only for a few days, so get it while it's free.

Hitler... in 1955?

As part of the recent JFK-related document dump, this little nugget turned up:

I'm not convinced that Hitler was alive in Columbia in 1955, but still... crazier things have turned out to be true.

And once again, I'm reminded of the old saying: The difference between fiction and real life is that fiction has to be believable.

Progress report

I'm currently working on Mind Games, the second book of the Wheel of Fire series.  I'm about a third of the way through the second draft, though I still want to go back and do some major changes to chapter 1.  My hope is to finish this second draft before, say, mid-November, and then put it aside until after Christmas.  Then I'll use the second half of November and all of December to start on the first draft of the third book, Fever Pitch.  Then I'll return to Mind Games in January, try to polish it up, and hopefully publish it that month.  I'm sure something will happen to interrupt this plan.  Life tends to do stuff like that to me.  But I'm attempting it anyway.

I've submitted The Lattice to Alasdair Shaw in the hopes he'll include it in his next anthology.  I hope he does, since it was his call for submissions that inspired the story in the first place.  *fingers crossed*

I'm getting a steady stream of sales of books 2 and 3 of the Free Space trilogy.  Amazon and Apple are both delivering, but Apple is still leading.  Thanks for your support, Apple readers.  :)

For the Wheel of Fire, I've tried to keep the world-building at a minimum.  I simply can't handle a Robert Jordan-esque cast of characters and places and whatnot.  Even so, my lists of characters, ships, and planets is bigger than I thought it would be.  There's a lesson there: aim small, because "scope creep" is a thing.

I've been thinking about what I want to do after the Wheel of Fire is complete.  I'm still undecided.  Options include another SF series, perhaps with aliens this time; an urban fantasy series; or an epic fantasy series.  The epic fantasy is the least likely, since that requires extensive world-building.  I've also got an idea for a standalone SF novel, so I may go with that.  Anyway, nothing's decided.

Now, back to Mind Games...