Good morning, all.

This morning I crossed a threshold, as you can see. Over a half a million pages of my books read on Amazon’s book lending service, the equivalent to 1200 books sold. I never thought I’d get this far, and as you can see 2022-23 have been pretty good years so far.

Twelve hundred books you say, not exactly best-selling craziness. Who f’n cares, I reply. Guys, I never figured I’d sell more than a hundred, way back in 2014. As it is, between print, ebook and the Kindle lending thing it’s been about 6k copies total, worldwide.

Not bad for a venture that started as an exercise to stave off insanity while trapped in the US Army medical boarding process, a three year psychological and physical torture session as I recovered from bad stuff in Afghanistan. In my book, this has been a real success, between producing novels and maintaining two websites, this one and my paywall site.

It hasn’t been the money, although that is nice. The take-home for me has been the cool people I’ve met, friends I’ve never seen, and may never see. It doesn’t matter. One of the blessings, and at times a curse of this age, is the ability to instantaneously connect with people worldwide at random moments. This has livened up an otherwise drab retirement that could have taken a turn toward the grim.

But as it is, I’ve had a chance to tell my tales. To entertain, perhaps to inform. To give my view on possible developments in future tech and warfare, to look at things that may have happened in the past if we had chosen other paths. This is the fascination.

I’m not done for this year, although I’ve published two titles so far. The next book to be released, hopefully within thirty days or so, is the second in the Promised Land series, it’s called “The Storyteller’s World.” The manuscript is written, I need to polish it and shoot it off the my editor, LeAnna.

The next book, hopefully released by Christmas 2023, will be the kickoff novel in a new trilogy concerning an alien invasion. Yes, this is a tired trope in sci-fi, but I’m taking my twist on the subject. I’m in the process of writing it for my fans in serial fashion over on Patreon, and it’s going pretty well, although as usual the book is taking on a life of its own.

So. Four published titles this year, and probably three next year. Along with joint ventures elsewhere, I’m staying busy. And this doesn’t take into account what’s happening with my other hobbies and pastimes.

Stay tuned. -J.