Lesson learned, release two books really close to each other, while also running conferences, means something will not get the love it deserves.
In this case, it’s my action/adventure thriller ‘Island of Secrets‘
I decided to branch out a bit from science fiction to write something a little more down to Earth. A team of treasure hunters going where they’re paid to go to find treasures and secrets long lost.
It came out last week, go grab it if you’re a can of Clive Cussler style adventures
The droids have a homeworld now. We’ve seen all kinds of droids throughout the adventures of the crew of the Ghost. Not all of them look like Gabe.
Wil notices that Gabe is pointing to what he thought was a powered down load lifter. It was a load lifter, but not powered down, just sitting motionless. It rumbles to life shifting to turn it’s flat optical sensors toward Gabe and the others, “Hello, Gabe.”
“Interim Governor, Mitch,” Gabe replies.
“Mitch?” Wil whispers to Cynthia who elbows him in the ribs then shrugs.
The load lifter droid rolls toward the group as they arrive at the bottom. “It is an honor to meet friends of Gabe the Liberator.”
Gabe makes a choking sound. His friends all smile.
Zephyr inclines her head, “The honor is ours, you’ve accomplished so much in a short period.”
“It helps that we do not sleep,” Mitch replies. The load lifter is at least three meters tall and two wide. His scuffed and warn body is yellow with black stripes. “We expect to have phase one completed in forty of fifty rotations.” Wil whistles. Mitch continues, “We owe a great debt to Ben-Ari Vulvo. You might find this strange, but his technical skills rival that of many of our technical droid citizens.”
Bennie blushes a deeper green. He rocks on his heels, “My, uh, my pleasure.”
Wil steps closer to the governor, “Listen, uh, Mitch, we actually have a favor to ask you.”
Space Rogues 8: No subtitle yet, is proving to be fun. We get to visit the new droid homeworld for a little, and without giving too much away, there’s a heist.
I love me a good ball cap. I also hate me a flat-billed cap, sorry hipsters. Printify added this awesome cap, which I immediately added to the store!
There are a few color options, but I’m getting this awesome blue on blue version!
And you know, because it’s 2020, you can now get your very own Space Rogues face mask. I won’t lie, back in April I resisted getting masks, thinking, “Surely we’ll beat this, and then I’ll be stuck with all these masks.”
Oh sweet summer child…. Now I’m stocking up on masks and buffs because it looks like we’ll be wearing masks into 2022, because ‘merica!
I’ve also added a few more shirts for women, both fitted and unisex. Take a look and rep your favorite crew of misfits wherever you are!
Lots of down time. FTL is great, but unless your entire story is blink of an eye travel, you gotta deal with getting from one place to another.
An hour or so later Steve walked into the common area, Naomi and Lori were on their second pot of coffee, “Morning all.” He rubbed his dark brown hair then ran his hand down his face. He looked at the two women, their eyes boring holes in
Lori looked up, “Good morning to you too.” Something in the way she said those five words caused Steve to blush. He quickly turned away, reaching into the cupboard to grab first one, then a second coffee cup.
Jax walked in, “Morn—“ Steve shoved a cup of coffee at him.
Both women turned their stares from Steve to a new target. Jax sipped the coffee, then looked at the two women, “What?”
Steve sidled towards the lounge area the long way around. Lori I waggled her eyebrows, but said nothing. She tilted her head towards the other woman on the sofa and winked. Jax groaned but said nothing. He turned and looked at Rudy, still in his charging port, “Rudy.”
Rudy made a mechanical sound, “If the hormone parade is over,” he disengaged from his charger and rolled to stand in front of the wall-mounted entertainment screen. “My understanding is that we need to get things planned.” He turned to Steve, “Your order of cabling should be delivered in thirty minutes, I’ll have Baxter accept it.” Steve nodded dumbly looking from Jax, the droid, and the two women.
Travel time is a great opportunity for a writer. Whether it’s FTL or the brave companions crossing the valley on horseback, it’s your chance to world build, to establish details, and to just let yourself have fun. Maybe it’s movie night, maybe a character is amateur chef, and each meal is an adventure.
I’m having a blast exploring Jax and his friend’s personality and preferences. I can’t wait for you to read this new series.
I’ve been working on the first book in a new series. If you love Wil and the crew of the Ghost, you’ll love Jax and the Osprey!
While Wil has the crew of lean on, Jax has his mechanical friends.
The Osprey is a Valerian Coop scout ship. She’s meant for speed, and running away from fights, but don’t let Jax, or the ship’s AI, Skip hear you say that.
I’m working with the same artist who envisioned the Ghost to bring the Osprey to life. I can’t wait to see more of her!
It’s fun to collaboratively design a starship.
For the first time in twenty-odd years, I don’t own a laptop. This past weekend, I fedex’ed my MacBook Air (With the shitty keyboard. Thanks, Tim Cook) back to apple for trade-in credit on a Mac Mini.
The Mac Mini is great, it’s way more powerful than the MacBook Air, which is a plus, but wasn’t super necessary outside of making video editing and possibly running my upcoming online conferences easier.
I really liked the Air, except for it’s keyboard. I bought it knowing it wasn’t outrageously powerful, which for conference organizing and writing was just fine. Except the keyboard made writing agonizing. keys would repeat, keys would not activate, all randomly and never the same behavior in a row, so my manuscripts would be riddled with repeated words, wrong words that spell check was ok with and outright typos. It was annoying.
I had already started moving to my iPad Pro for travel writing; it went to Egypt and Tanzania and was my only device and was just fine. The addition of the Magic Keyboard was the final nail. For a few weeks I’ve been leaving my laptop in my office, docked at the end of the day and just using my iPad around the house (Living room, kitchen island, etc). During the day writing on the Mini vs. the MacBook Air isn’t any different as the Air was docked behind monitors. The Mini is under them.
It’s definitely a little weird, and there are some things that require me getting up and going to the office (Designing book covers, for one) but I think as I get more used to using the Affinity tools on my iPad that might change. Otherwise walking away from my office at the end of the day, leaving the computer there, is kind of nice.
This will be the first full week so we’ll see how I feel (not that there’s takebacks, the laptop is enroute to Apple). Right now I’m pretty happy. I think when I get closer to conference time it’ll be a great help running Zoom, and other tools for live streaming.
As I’ve been exploring online conference options I realized that since my MacBook Air would struggle with being a zoom participant (fans roaring, etc) that being host, plus running other tools like Ecamm Live, etc would tax the power little laptop.
Once the world gets back to allowing in-person events, I’ll face the final test of my set up. During the conferences, I do a lot of work at the registration table, or anywhere else, plus at least two times during the event, I am presenting on screen. Thankfully some of my speakers have already blazed the trail on presenting from an iPad.
