Thursday, October 30, 2025

The Year So Far... (and the year coming)

 (excuse the blank space at the top but Google Added a 'tool' that unfortunately obscures that area)

 

For all that I didn't get much work done for a couple of months due to shoulder surgery (and struggled a little at first when I was working due to having to run out to physical therapy twice a week) I still got a lot done. I completed four series: 

Wolfhounds, which ran to six instead of the planned five (book five also came out this year).

Valens Heritage, which I wrote book ten for.

Dan's Inferno, which I finally got to write the originally intended book five.

And Currently, the third and final book in Valley of Fire (book 2 was written earlier this year). 

Then of course there's the on going Ghost Warrior Serial, and I'm trying to also get another Portals of Infinity book in this year as well. I started it, but stalled out, so I'm now writing Valley of Fire #3, so I can still be productive.

So I've been switching between Five different stories in Four different worlds. And I still need to write the next book in Seasons of Change which will be the book following Sometimes In The Fall, for Baen Books. 

That much context shifting has not been easy, or exactly fun at times. It can get quite confusing. POI and SOC (Seasons of Change) are First Person narratives. The others are all Third Person. And part of what made working on POI #12 hard was trying to switch back to 1st, when I hadn't used it in a while. 

I've realized that going forward I'm not going to do that many different series in a year. I'm going to try and keep it to Two or Three different story lines at a time. Right now I'm looking at a new story in the Wolfhounds universe. It may be about Chase and Claire, or it may not. I'm looking at a new Jan Stryvant series (How to Become a Werewolf or maybe a shorter series version of that title). It will probably only be four or five books, yes it'll be men's adventure with a harem theme.

I also want to write the next Seasons of Change book, and I'd like to write another story in that universe as well. (SOC is going to be four books, obviously). The title for that other non-SOC story is Agents of Fortune. (I also still want to write Angel of Mercy in that universe as well). 

So those are the only three major projects I want to be working on. I have a couple of side projects I will continue with, Ghost Warrior which is every other week and I pretty much only work on, on weekends. And another side project that would be a series of 40K length stories written under a pen name for some dear friends of mine. Something I can bang out in a week or two.

Now one of the things I'm considering is writing several, or all, of the books in these projects in a row, then switch to the next one, so I don't end up doing a lot of 'context' switching. Cause that's a bit of a pain at times to do. It's truly easier to just write a series nose to tail with no interruptions. Especially if it's shorter (versus the 28 book monstrosity that Valens Legacy / Heritage became - I still can't believe I wrote all of those!). 

I want to get VOF #3 done 'quickly' as in before Thanksgiving. I still want to get POI 12 done before years end as well. But I'm hoping to spend some time in December trying to put together some sort of Plan. For what I'm going to write, an outline for each of what I'm going to write (if I don't have one already) and then try and execute on it. There was a lot of chaos this year, some of that was due to the surgery, and some of that was due to some major repairs we had to do on the house and property. 

I'm hoping for a less chaotic 2026, and I want to try and get my plans into some sort of organization so I can be a lot more productive than I was this year. So for those of you who are curious as to what's coming, that's what I'm looking at. 

Saturday, October 04, 2025

Valens Heritage, Book 10 : Pay Backs, is now live

 The tenth and final book of the Valens Heritage series (and the 28th Valens Book by me - 31 if we count Peter's three) is now up for sale on Amazon:

Pay Backs - Valens Heritage #10

This will very much be the final Valens book that I will write. The series had an amazing run, seeing as it made it to 28 books (18 first series, 10 follow on, plus some anthologies). But the truth is that sales have gone incredibly soft in the last couple. 

Part of that was my fault, Amazon was pressuring people writing in a 'certain genre' with fears and rumors of being banned. So I slow rolled the last couple of books in the series as I watched to see how things played out. Apparently that pressure was from individuals and not corporate, because the threatened bans never took place. In fact the genre is far larger now than when I first helped to create it.

(I know some folks claim I was the sole person who created it - but I think there's two people who definitely were there with me at the beginning).

I am hoping to write a new series, totally unrelated to this one, once I get caught up on the work my surgery caused to be postponed. I do hope you enjoy this book. I also hope you tell all of your friends to read this series, if they haven't already.