Monthly Archives: September 2018

Heroes of Normandy

At some point late last year I’m sure I mentioned another secret project I was working on. At long last I can unveil it.

Regular visitors are no doubt aware that the Lock ‘n Load Tactical series of games is among my favorites. Well, I was contacted by Lock ‘n Load Director of Operations David Heath early last year about the feasibility of writing some stories utilizing some of the characters from the game.

I had never, ever, contemplated writing stories set in World War II, but David was persistent, and a super nice guy, and the publisher of one of my absolute favorite games, so I decided to try. And I had a blast. Things were made a little simpler for me, research wise, because I’d been on a huge WWII reading kick. The timing couldn’t have been better because scores of facts were still fresh in my mind. Who knew that by reading for pleasure I’d actually been laying a lot of ground work for future fiction?

For the Killing of Kings

Look what turned up on my porch the other day!

I now have 20, count them, 20, Advanced Reader Copies of my new book, coming to stores near you in February of 2019!

Advanced Reader Copies are a finite resource I use to seek out blurbs and reviews. If you are a reviewer, or know anyone with powerful review mojo, please drop me a line, because I need to start spreading word about the new book!

For the Killing of Kings Preorder

I’d like to thank Jennifer Donovan at St. Martin’s for clearing up the issue at Amazon with the pre-order button on my upcoming novel, For the Killing of Kings, and Mick and Troy and others for keeping me informed about that button’s disappearance. You can find both the book and its pre-order button here.

By a curious coincidence, this week I am reading final page proofs of the very same book. Next to me is a huge stack of paper, and a pen, and a little notebook. The stack of paper is the near final version of the text. The pen isn’t red, but maybe it should be. And the little notebook is to make notes of items I probably should have been tracking all along. The color of a character’s horse, for instance, or the character’s age — sorts of things I’ll really need to know going forward.

A few years ago I went so far as to purchase a program named Scrivener that is really supposed to help you track these kinds of details, but I was already working on the book in Word and didn’t switch. Probably I should have used Scrivener when I started work on book 2… but I’m pretty used to Word at this point. Maybe I’ll use it for book 3…

Speaking of book 2, I’ve tentatively titled it Upon the Flight of the Queen, and I’ve just sent it off to my agent. It will be heading out to my editor early next week.

I actually have some really neat things to blog about, and some more interviews from authors I’ve conducted. I’m just so busy with writing and editing that I may not update the site here as often as I like. I’ll still try to post updates a few times a week. I won’t leave it to the tumbleweeds…