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Going to be in the Beyond the Black anthology

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Got some exciting news the other day. I’ve been invited to write an original SF short story for Stefan Nardi’s new Beyond the Black Volume 1 anthology. I have a general plot for the story already and I’m working on an outline. Short stories aren’t generally my strongsuit; I’ve done a few, but I’ve actually written more novels than I have short stories. Who knows, maybe this will be enough fun that I’ll get back into short stories!

Recon Book Four and Beyond…

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Just a heads-up for those who follow my books.  The book I’m currently writing, the fourth in the Recon series, will probably be the last one in that series.  I may bring some of the characters back later, but this is a definite finish to that arc. 
The next thing I’m going to be working on is going to start off with a mil-sf story that’s almost stand-alone, which takes place during the War with the Tahni that I’ve written about in Glory Boy and Recon:  A War to the Knife, except this time seen through the perspective of a missile cutter crew in the Fleet Attack Command. 
The series will take up the story as more of a straight space opera taking place after the war with some of the same characters when they’re forced into a life as outlaws and smugglers out in the wild frontier colonies and the Pirate Worlds.
I hope to be finished with Recon Book Four by September and working on the new series, which I am tentatively titling “Tales of the Acheron.”

Some thoughts on finishing my tenth book

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I just published my tenth book on Amazon, the third book in my third series. I was just thinking back to when I gave up on being a writer back in the late 90s. I had two SF books written and I’d secured a reputable agent, which everyone told me was the hardest part. But after two years and change trying to market the books, she couldn’t sell them and our contract lapsed and I said, “the heck with it. This is obviously not what I’m going to be doing with my life.” And I didn’t complete another book for nearly 15 years.
But starting in late 2010, friends started telling me I should look into self-publishing on Amazon for their new Kindle e-readers. I kind of just blew it off: self-publishing back then was akin to vanity publishing, and it was something wannabes and losers did, paying for stacks of copies of your own book that you kept in boxes in your garage and trotted out at conventions or something.
And then I started hearing about people who self-published on Amazon making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Finally, in 2011, I put those two original books on Amazon for 99 cents each with crappy, thrown-together covers and crappy formatting and sold 30,000 copies the first year.
6 years later, almost to the month, I just put my 10th book out on Amazon and it blows my mind. When I think about how many times over those 15 years I started one book after another but just gave up after 30 or 50 or 80 pages because I figured who the heck was ever going to read it? I really never would have imagined that I’d be sitting here in 2017 making enough money to live on doing what I always wanted to do. Yeah, it took a long time, but I still feel lucky because most people never get to say that.

Glory Boy promotional giveaway June 16-20

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If anyone would like a free copy of the e-book version of my military-SF novel Glory Boy, I’m running a giveaway on Amazon starting tomorrow and running through the 20th.

It’s normally $3.99, but starting tonight at 3AM, it’s free for five days. Tell your family, tell your friends, tell that weird guy at work!