After being mired down in the lousy Afghanistan nightmare, it’s time to return to this site’s roots. Science fiction and writing!

The above image is the rough-draft cover of my upcoming novel “The Storyteller’s Heaven” in my latest trilogy, “The Promised Land.” The premise is that we ride along during the birth of interstellar travel, and our voyagers are… unconventional humans. The first book is available right now in serial form on my Patreon site, and now that the dust has somewhat settled I can tentatively say that I’d like a pre-holiday release in December. Of course, I don’t know if that is feasible, and here’s why.

First, this is my first truly indie release, and my first independent title release since 2017. Yes, it has been that long. By first real indie release I mean I do all the work more or less myself. In the past I relied on Amazon’s CreateSpace service, and that hurt me in a couple of ways. First, when they went belly up I lost access to my master files, but at least I still had the originals as edited Word docs. Second, my original trilogy has their ISBNs. Finally, their service was ruinously expensive and I will probably never make my money back. So, this time I’m doing something else.

Alright, a major obstacle is getting this release edited, but I think this is under control. To everyone out there who is considering writing a book, make sure you have a good editor! Nothing guarantees one-star reviews like bad editing. So you must get your baby edited properly. There are no shortcuts, there is simply the question of how much you are willing to pay.

There are also some administrative issues that I need to make myself smart on, for example getting my own ISBNs and copyrights. Pretty sure this won’t take too long to figure out, but these are details that must not be forgotten. Another important task is getting a cover design finalized. Once again, be prepared to spend a little bit of money for a quality product. I have the good luck to know my cover designer, and so far I have been happy with her work. But it will cost you a bit. However, a good cover is worth every cent! People do judge a book by its cover. Seriously. So what you see above still needs a bit of tweaking, and I won’t let up until I have what I want, and my artist knows that.

Finally, let me say that I released this cover behind my paywall some six weeks ago, and I thought the time was right to spread the word on the free internet as well. After all, I think we’re well within the ninety day window, so it’s time to drum up a little interest.

Personally, I’m pretty excited about this, and I can’t wait to try out the software I’m using to produce this book, Vellum. It’s a pain, but it is nice to control the process. If you control the process, then you can get some stuff done.

Well, I intend to get this done.

December timeframe, hopefully in time for the holiday reading season. I’ll keep you posted.

J