I’ve had several readers asking about plans for continuing the Collapse series, and I’d like to comment on that. The short answer is, “I hope to, some day.” The long answer is, well…longer.

There is indeed more story to tell, a lot more. “The Collapse” was intended to be the first phase of a much longer series covering multiple story arcs. Arc 1, the first three books, was exactly what it is named, the story of The Collapse of the Empire due to the Pestilence attack. That leg ended with Zion Rising, and the next arcs would focus on the long march toward recovery, the reconquering of key worlds, and more battles with the pestilence and other threats.

When I wrote the first three books, I tried to end with a good resolution for Arc 1, but there was no way to totally wrap what was obviously going to be a years or decades long process of retaking worlds from the Pestilence. I felt the best I could do was to leave folks with the understanding that our heroes had a solid foothold and were up to the task before them and close the curtain there. I had high hopes that the series would continue on to the next arc.

Alas, the publisher didn’t feel the sales were up to snuff and wasn’t interested in further works, so they bundled it into box set and put it in the bargain bin. That’s what happens to series that don’t meet expectations. Sad, but that’s a business reality.

My alternative now is to self-publish, and that’s a possibility, but not in the near future. I just don’t have enough time to write and handle the publishing and marketing too. The publishing side is not my best skill, and audiences are quite demanding these days, expecting indie projects to be up to the same standards as pro publishers. It would take a serious investment of time and money to produce a product that wouldn’t be embarrassing.

It’s not out of the question by any means, but it just isn’t in the cards any time soon. I work 60+ hours a week as a game programmer, a gig that I am in no way ready to give up because that’s how I pay my bills. I also have family and community commitments. All of my writing is a spare time labor of love. I make very little money from it, nowhere near enough to write full time. That’s another business reality.

Mind you, there are still more Business Realities at play here, things that make this writing thing hard on all but the biggest-of-name writers. One of them is that many readers don’t buy a series until it’s ‘finished’. I get it, I really do. The truth is that certain unnamed “Big Authors” have in fact burned their audiences, and people are naturally wary.

This has a cost, though. You see, as I note above, by the time that omnibus discounted ‘full series’ shows up, the publisher has already decided whether the series will continue or not. For some well-known and established authors, this is fine. Their books already have an audience, and they will perform well enough to justify continued investment from the publisher. But for small guys like me and many other semi-indie authors, it’s often a death sentence. If you wait for those ‘complete series’ box sets before you buy, then the reality is that the project may have been cancelled before you ever started reading book 1. Publishers exist to make money, and if the individual books don’t perform, they cut their losses and move on, like any other sensible business.

Finally, while most people who did comment were gracious, a few were outright hateful. I literally have multiple reviews right now where someone bashes me personally and tells everyone not to buy anything I ever write because the ending didn’t neatly wrap what should be a decades long war. These people waited until the books were offered at a discount (remember, the publisher has already made a decision by the time those 99 cent volumes come out), paid very little (or perhaps nothing) for the experience, and obviously enjoyed the books to the point they became wildly emotional over the ending not matching their expectations. And they then proceed to excoriate me (who wanted to write more, recall) and do their best to harm any other series I might consider starting. “Gee, I really liked your books, but I am so disappointed that you were not allowed to write any more that I will lash out at YOU and do my best to see that it happens again on anything else you work on.”

Yeah, not the brightest of bulbs, for sure, but they are out there. So, yet another business reality is that some percentage of readers actively try to harm an author, and again, when you have a small readership to begin with, such things hurt more. Stephen King doesn’t care about the few freaks in the margins. Me and other small fry authors, it makes us question why we bother. It surely does nothing to incentivize the cost and time of self-publishing.

So, the long and short of it is that I do intend to write more books in this world, but I can’t promise when it will happen. This has always been pretty much an ars gratia artis sort of thing, only it’s more so, now, without the support of a publisher handling the biz side. I really wish the books had sold better, and I am thrilled that people really liked them, but again, we’re back to business realities: publishers don’t throw good money after bad.

That’s something for artists to do, as they can find time and heart to do it. Frankly, I’m short on both right now. It’s discouraging to put your heart into something, to really have the sense that it’s special, and watch it faceplant on launch, but it’s reality. I thought it was good, and apparently a lot of you did, too, but it just never got any traction.

And it’s absolutely soul-crushing when people who pay little or nothing for what took me months or even years to create, people who obviously enjoy the work enough to get emotional about how it ends, choose to spit in my face and take a swing at me over decisions the publisher made that I didn’t even agree with.

So, yeah….

Mind you, this could all change if I win the lottery or get a call from Hollywood. I’ll get right on things full time when the check clears. We’d all love to be able to create our art and ignore the business of how we actually feed our family, but let’s be honest: I’m not expecting either of those things to happen. I’m a little guy creating in his spare time.

That, friends, is pretty much the Ultimate Business Reality.

TLDR: there will be more to the story, but it will take me a year or so to get the next ‘trilogy’ done and self-publish it, and honestly, I am pretty low on motivation. I work a demanding day job; I have a family who also needs my time; there is no prospect of money in it compared to work as a game programmer; and crappy people bashing me doesn’t exactly fill me with energy to devote to the project.

I’ll let you guys know once I get the draft of book 4 finished. It’s about halfway done now.

I’m late with this post, but Zion Rising, Book Three of the Collapse Series, is live on Amazon. Even kicking ass and taking names, and more twisted aliens bent on wiping out humanity.

If a place named Zion isn’t the right location for humanity’s last stand, where is? Legendary final battles are not on Captain Bleys’s to-do list, but then, neither was being a hero… Yet here he is, girl and all.

Of course, his girl carries a blaster and has been known to dissolve her enemies with acid.

They have the big guns and the badass attitudes, not to mention an illegal AI-controlled battle cruiser that technically makes them war criminals. This thing should be a cakewalk, but there’s a weasel in the woodpile, a traitor working against them. If Bleys can’t out-weasel The Weasel, he and his friends are in real trouble.

Meanwhile, more alien hybrids, twisted, insidious controllers, spin out their own plans, spiders looking to enmesh their choice prize. And beneath even that lurks an unspeakable doom that could douse the candle of humanity forever.

Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the Collapse Series. It’s perfect for fans of JN Chaney, Andy Peloquin, and the Halo Franchise.

Get it now on Amazon!

“The Collapse Book 1: Tartarus Gate” is live on amazon. This is an action-packed space opera featuring lovable rogues, steely space marines, vicious aliens, and killer AI’s. It’s high speed low drag fun, and it’s on sale for 99 cents. Check it out!

H.L. Mencken famously wrote, “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” That’s a profound observation on human nature, and simplified, it means just this: the occasional urgent need to stab a bitch is endemic to the human condition.

William Patrick knows this better than most. He’s been in denial about his condition for most of his life. Which, by the way, is about to end. But it’s okay. He’ll get better.

Probably.

Welcome Charles Phipps’s latest tale, Psycho Killers in Love, another offering set in his fanciful United States of Monsters. If you’re not familiar with the setting, it’s a place where vampires, sorcerer detectives, werebeasts, and pretty much every other sort of supernatural creature coexist quietly alongside humans. They cross swords and words (usually in the form of devasting, snappy pop-culture comeback references) as they solve murders (or commit them), all just outside the peripheral vision of the normies.

(And yes, werebeasts. There are werewolves, of course, but there are also weredeer, and maybe wereplatypuses and werenutria, too. I would totally read a werenutria story. I can see the R.O.U.S. jokes already!)

In Psycho Killers in Love, we are introduced to a new kind of monster, one we always knew existed. We just didn’t understand they were, well, a race of beings.

William knows he isn’t human. He wishes desperately that he was, but he has a little something extra. On the plus side, he gets back up after dying, though he’s uncertain how many times that can happen. He also heals very quickly, which is important when you fall from a window after being shot repeatedly and need to make a quick getaway while your intended victim is distracted.

On the minus side, it sort of compels him to (yes, you guessed it) stab a bitch.

William is a slasher, a supernatural creature, almost human, but driven by a dark passenger that hungers for blood and brutality. Like other slashers, he is immensely strong, and capable of recovering from death as long as the box office returns justify it.

For William’s father, Billy, stabbing a bitch was a literal thing, as in “dressed up like Santa and stabbed young women to death in killing sprees”. And while William is a bit more discriminating than that, he can’t avoid his fate. The Spirit of the Hunt is part of him, and he dreads the day it will compel him to mayhem and murder.

But he’s a good slasher. Well, at least he only kills bad people. (“Yeah, but they were all bad!”) He’s a little like the Miami Guy, compelled to murder murderers, though he didn’t have so fine a fatherly example as the blood spatter expert did. Hey, you work with what you have, right?

It’s a tough curse to bear, but it’s even tougher when, for the first time in his life, William realizes he’s not asexual as he has always thought. He just hadn’t found the right girl. And it’s just his bad luck that “the right girl” turns out to be Slasher Kryptonite, another supernatural known as an Artemis.

And what does an Artemis do, you might ask? Well, mostly they kill slashers, and they do it in a way slashers don’t come back from.

The pro is that she’s very cute, and she could really use William’s help killing an evil cult. A chance to slash bad guys and impress a hot chick? How can he resist?

The con? She’ll probably kill him once it’s done.  Damn, dating in 2020 is tough. And you thought your worst problem was Covid19 and murder hornets.

Can a guy who counts Chucky, Jason, and Freddie as colleagues actually get the girl? Probably not. But William is willing to die trying.

Loads of fun, and will have you quoting hilarious sections to your SO as you read in bed.

Five of five stars.

Well, folks, I recently wrapped up a second draft on Book 1 of The New Thing, which is a SciFi thriller with lots of aliens what need to be shot in da face! I’m putting together an ARC group for commentary and suggestions as I finish Book 2 and 3, so if you’re interested, click the mail link to the right and drop me a line.

The trilogy finale is now available. It’s been a long journey, but I am pleased with this

For now….

So, I may have mentioned before, I read at a glacial pace, due to any number of environmental issues. (By which I mean day job, writing, children, church, etc.) Worse, when I actually finish reading, getting around to writing a review is another item that I easily procrastinate. I am, at long last, finally putting fingers to keyboard for my review of “A Wizard’s Forge” by A.M. Justice, a work with compelling characters and a very unique setting. In addition to that, the book is well written in general, with plenty of detailed description and world-building.

This tale takes place in a unique fantasy world, one based on a faraway planet inhabited by the descendants of the crew of an ill-fated space ship. The world’s legends and religion still speak of the ‘Elesendar’, and the cultures are shaped by the initial missions their founders undertook after being marooned on the planet. Many treat the old logbooks as scriptures, and our main character, Vic, is an acolyte of such an order.

Vic is, herself, something of odd duck for me, because while I quite enjoyed the book, I found Vic to often be very frustrating, though not in a bad way, more in a ‘I need to throttle this character’ way. Now, in order for that to make sense, I will need to tell you a bit about Vic, I suppose.
She starts as a scholar, one somewhat picky about her men and very focused on her work. Her life is turned upside down when she is sent on a mission for her order and subsequently captured in a slaver raid. Soon after, she finds herself the concubine of a potentate, Lornk Korng, a cruel and hungry tyrant with epicurean tastes in every field, including the sexual. Vic finds herself suddenly thrust into a world she simultaneously hates and is enthralled by. She is both fascinated and repulsed by her captor, who teaches her a variety of hedonistic ways, all in the context of her being his absolute property. He often parades her around as a toy, a sort of decoration to impress others. He is quite open with Vic about his intention to utterly own her, not just physically, but to basically possess her soul as well. He doesn’t just want her to obey out of fear, but to actually crave her position and his company, and he employs a variety of mind control techniques to bend her to his will.

This, as one might expect, does a real number to Vic’s mental state. She realizes what is happening, and wants to escape, but is torn by the knowledge that she does in fact actually desire her captor at times. Faced with impossible choices, Vic takes the only opportunity for escape she can find, one she expects to lead to a quick death.

Only it doesn’t. What it does is set her down a path she never expected, one that will lead her to a career as a ruthless soldier and, eventually, to being a powerful sorceress, but only if she can manage to get out of her own way. It’s a long trip for a skinny, bookish girl, and one with plenty of stumbles along the way.

Vic does a lot of self-sabotage, and her life would be much easier if she just made up her mind about things and charged forward, but then she would be a much less interesting character. Yes, some of that is Lornk’s doing, but Vic is herself a mercurial sort, prone to second guessing anything she can’t actually verify by looking it up in a historical text somewhere. This causes here, in several critical moments, to hesitate when she ought charge forward, and she loses out of some important matters because of this.

If I were dating Vic, I would probably move on fairly quickly. I don’t care for drama in my relationships, but it can be quite compelling in fictional. If you don’t mind the urge to slap the main character at times for being so consistent (which I not only didn’t mind, but thoroughly enjoyed), you’ll dig this book.

5 of 5 stars.

I am pleased to announce I just sent “War God’s Will” final manuscript to the publisher. It’s finally done. It will take a few months to get through the publishing process, but hopefully it will be available in ebook, print, and audible by late summer.

I sent it for a final proofread today. I am not certain when it will be out, as that’s up to Aethon, but I hope within a few months.