The Schedule

I plan on releasing two more books in the next year and depending on how well those releases go I have two more books that I could release after those. How do I have so many books ready to go in such a short amount of time? Let me tell you.

In December of 2000, while driving home from a Christmas party, my oldest daughter was asleep in her car seat and my wife was asleep in the passenger seat, the idea for Rippling Darkness came to me. I started writing it soon afterward. It took several years for me to write that book since I was learning how to write a novel as I worked on it. Once I finished it, I sent out query letters looking for an agent. Back then most queries were done via snail mail. So, as I waited for responses I started the next book in the series (at this time it is called Rival Tide but back then it was called Nemesis Rising). I was about half-way through the book when I realized I was not going to get an agent for Rippling Darkness. No one would be interested in a book that is a sequel to a book that had not been published. I had to do something different. It was a busy time in my life and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to start a whole new series from scratch (plus I had a bunch of stories built off of Rippling Darkness).

I decided to write a prequel to Rippling Darkness. How hard could it be? Very hard as it turned out. I have quite a bit of sympathy for George Lucas and what he accomplished with his prequel trilogy after doing this. It took nearly a decade to finish what would eventually become The Night-Pierced Bones of the Realm. I went through the query process again and then started writing Cthoma’s Fated. I started the query process again after I finished writing Cthoma’s Fated. Not being finished with the stories of the world I’d developed for Rippling Darkness, Rival Tide, and The Night-Pierced Bones of the Realm, I began writing another prequel, Shroud of Whispers.

I was about halfway through Shroud of Whispers when a friend talked me into self-publishing. As I’ve been going through the journey of self-publishing, I finished Shroud of Whispers (which is the fastest I’ve ever written a book). This means as of today, August 4, 2024, I have four books almost ready to go to an editor (Shroud of Whispers is already with my editor).

Will I release all four? I don’t know. Currently, sales are not all that great and I’m not so vain that I have to have my books released to feel accomplished. I’ll keep writing whether or not I’m successful. To be clear, success to me is defined by this whole process paying for itself. This love of writing only became expensive when I self-published, before Cthoma’s Fated came out my only expense had been stamps to mail queries (which was erased when everything went digital) and paper when I used to edit on hard copy.

I hope to get to the point where I release all the books I’ve written and go beyond and write the other stories that have been living in my head for a very long time.