March 2015

I just finished doing the cover and all the other graphics for Transition.  I also got the book file all set up, so I’ll probably start writing it either today or tomorrow.

I got really sentimental doing the graphics.  Unless something in this book leads to events that will have to be handled in another book, then this will be the penultimate book of the series, with Travelers, which I’ve already written, being the final book.  Transition will, at least at some point in the book, jump forward in time to the point where they finally make the decision to pack up everything and move to the Nathalis dimension.  They’ve mentioned many times that the day would eventually come when they’d leave the human dimension for good, and as of Travelers, that’s long since happened.

The cover has the four main characters spending one last night on the beach together before they leave.  Even thinking about it gets me sort of teary.  It’s been such a long ride, and now things are coming to an end…sort of.

Why sort of?  Well, the main storyline for the series will (probably) end with Transition, and then Travelers is like an end cap to the series.  There are still more stories that can be written however that take place in the Unseen Things universe.  What form they’ll take I have no idea.  It could be full books that continue on with the series if I happen to come up with some ideas for where to go with it after Travelers, or it could be a book of short stories.  I honestly don’t know, nor do I really want to call Travelers the “last book” because I honestly don’t know if it will be or not.

Is that vague enough for you?  Good, it is for me too.  The great thing about a series and about having characters that you know better than members of your own family is that there are always more stories to tell with them.  Just because I’ve kinda hit the end of the road for now doesn’t mean I haven’t had thoughts about where things could go in the future.  We’ll just have to see how it goes.  Once I get transition and Travelers published, which I’ll be doing together, then I’ll start thinking about what the future holds.

I’ve just finished publishing book 15 of the series, Infestation on all the usual sites.  It’s currently available on Smashwords, Google Play and Omnilit.  It will be available on Amazon in a few hours as well, once their system finishes reviewing it.

Synopsis: When someone steals the Zethichtalarin portal generator from a secure Nathalis storage facility, Karth and Commander Arthwal put their best men on the case.  Neither of them could have imagined however that the portal generator would be used in a plot that would lead to an invasion that would span across all four of the Nathalis’ dimensions.  An invasion that would force the humans, blue fins and all the others to put boots on the ground, standing side by side with their Nathalis friends to fend off an infestation that threatens to destroy everything.

Back in the human dimension, when Derek, Jarrod and Logan pry Charles and Richard out of the lab to go on a little trip to the planet Gilese 667C c, they end up finding a crashed ship and a dead bridge crew from a parallel dimension that leads them to uncover a tale of revenge against a massive and corrupt corporation.

And finally, now that Logan and Darla’s relationship has gotten serious, he makes the decision to bring her in on everything.  However, Tina, Sarah, Stephanie and Alarwyn have a little test for her before he does so, just to make sure she’s suitable to join the team.  Also, when Logan asks Derek to see if he can find her father that had disappeared years earlier and was presumed to be dead, what he finds in his search leads to yet another mystery that begs to be solved.

You write a full length novel.  You put your heart and soul into it, and then while you’re editing it, you suddenly realize there’s a seriously major plot hole that pretty much invalidates the last four chapters of your book.

Is there anything more devastating to an author than that?  No, not really.  How do I know?  Because it just happened to me with Infestation.  Honestly, when I realized what I’d done, I was ready to hang myself in the closet.  This plot hole would have invalidated everything I wrote and left me with nothing.  I sat here racking my brain trying to figure out a way around it that would save the story, and I was getting more and more desperate as each idea I came up with to fix the problem had holes of their own.  Fortunately, I’ve come up with a way to work around it that’ll only take a small bit of rewriting, which was about the biggest relief you could possibly imagine.

Basically, I had two choices.  Find a way to explain the plot hole and make it work, or just go ahead with the story as is and hope that no one would notice it.  Unfortunately, there are people out there that can spot the most miniscule of plot holes, and then they bitch about them endlessly to anyone who’ll listen, so this was something I absolutely had to fix.  Yes it’s setting me back a bit in my editing, but honestly, I’d rather have it right than to put out something ill conceived that would eat at the reader every time they read the book.

So that’s where I am as of now.  I’ve got 13 chapters edited so far, and after I fix this plot hole, I’ll go ahead and finish up the final three.

Phew!  I seriously can’t tell you how relieved I am that I figured out a way to explain this and make it work.  I would have had to have dropped the whole part of the book that involved the infestation if I hadn’t have, which would have absolutely destroyed the story.

Anyway, I’m going to take the rest of the evening off to get myself past the stress of this whole thing before I go back to editing again.  I’m going to smoke my pipe with some Evening Stroll tobacco from Milan Tobacconists and maybe watch a movie or something.  I’m not sure yet.  Whatever I do though, it’ll be away from the computer, which is exactly what I need right now.

I just finished writing the first draft of Infestation.  Pre-editing it came in at around 105K words.  I usually add several thousand more during the editing process, and in the case of this particular book, I may be adding more than usual due to some rather intense events in the last four chapters.

I’ll start work on the editing either tonight or tomorrow, and then I’ll be publishing it once it’s finished.

I have two more chapters to write in Infestation before I’m finished with it.  I wasn’t really sure if there’d be any more books between this one and Travelers, but there will definitely be at least one more.  I’ve got a few loose ends from this one I’ll need to tie up in the next one, and then when I reach the end of that one I’ll figure out how things are going to go from there.

I’ve been having a great time writing the big battle in Infestation.  I just finished chapter 14, which is the big lead up to the battle.  15 will be the ground battle and 16 will be the aftermath and conclusion.  The next book will be dealing with things that will be left open in this one, and then, like I said, we’ll see where it goes from there.

The About the Author page up to this point has simply contained the same text that was in the books.  I’ve now updated it with a far more detailed and personal write up about myself.  So for anyone who’s interested in learning more about me, there ya go. 🙂