Hi everyone! Just wanted to check in and let you all know what’s been going on. I don’t think I do that often enough.

It’s been a few weeks since Mad Tinker’s Daughter came out, and I haven’t been idle. Actually, even before it came out, I was already well under way with the manuscript for the sequel. Just last week, I finished that manuscript. Rebel Skyforce came in at just a hair under 100k words in the first draft, and I’m hoping to have my own touch-ups done and off to my editor by the end of this weekend.

I keep hearing that it’s best not to dive right into editing when you finish a manuscript, that you should step back and distance yourself from it. I’d never worried too much about that, but this time I made myself a nice excuse for trying it. I’ve had potential side projects boiling over in my head for a while now, more than I could ever catch up with. I had one in particular that had been itching to get out, so I took a few days and pounded out the first chapters of a futuristic space-based fantasy, a total departure from everything in the Twinborn Trilogy and that universe (of which The Mad Tinker Chronicles is a part). I had some fun with it. It’s a totally different feel in world-building, with none of the mythology I’ve built up through my other books. Everything is new and needs context built in around it. I even played around mocking up cover concepts in GIMP. Once I get some placeholder images out of it, I might consider posting a look. For now, I’m calling it Black Ocean.

The Mad Tinker Chronicles is all outlined and ready as a 5-book series. Nothing’s going to change that. I’ll continue working along on that to a schedule that I’ve worked out with my publisher, hopefully having the finished series out by this time next year. However, when I get myself ahead of schedule, I plan to keep plugging away at Black Ocean. I envision it as an open-ended series, more a string of stand-alones with the same cast of characters than a single overarching plot. If it turns out well, it may end up being my next main project.

In publishing news, I’ve released the full Twinborn Trilogy as an ebook “boxed set.” All three volumes in one Kindle file. If any of you readers have a few moments, it could use a few Amazon reviews from people who have already read the series (you don’t have to buy the set to review). It’s also a good place to point people if you want to get them hooked on the Twinborn Trilogy so you have someone to talk with about it. 😉

That’s all for now. I took a quick break from editing Rebel Skyforce to write this up, and now I’m heading back to work.