I hope everyone has enjoyed their holiday season, and their entire year for that matter. As many of you know, after 31 years of life I finally got to Disney World. It was, as should be expected, magical. Now that I’ve been jarringly thrust back into the real world, I’ve decided it is time to give you good folks a long overdue update on various things on the various burners of my proverbial stove.
Book of Deacon Stuff
First, the stuff you’re probably here for. Book of Deacon has been heating up here in the Lallo compound. First of all, I got some really cool art, both of the commissioned and fan variety. Let’s start with the first ever BoD full animation.
Art by the brilliant ProjectEndo
I sincerely didn’t expect I’d ever be able to see one of my characters animated, but there’s Lain, tossing daggers, courtesy of ProjectEndo. If you don’t follow him, you should. Seriously pro, very talented, and many other complementary things. I’m beyond pleased. This was a commission, but commissioned art isn’t the only art I got recently. A long time fan, Mexe Robinson Garachena, sent me these cute little figurines of Myn and Ivy!
Cute!!!!
So cool. It came with candy and cookies and stuff, and now resides with pride upon my shelf of awesome things.
But art is not the only motion in the BoD front. I have been soldiering away on the story with the working title “BoD 4”. The going has been slow, because vacation and holidays interposed themselves, but I’ll be firing up the engines on it again soon. The only other thing which might sideline it is a new, currently secret, BoD novella that I may have agreed to write in the next few months. It’s got to be a standalone story in the 30k word range. Still hammering out the details, but that’s a pretty short story, so I might be able to make short work of it.
Other things involve the potential creation of an “Anthology of Deacon” featuring all of the currently available Book of Deacon stories, and by extension my first release on Google Play. Many good things on the horizon!
Free-Wrench 2: Skykeep
The NaNoWriMo project I was working on, a sequel to Free-Wrench, is now complete and in Beta. It was originally going to be called The Phylactery, but after I realized that choosing that name would be a marketing disaster (try spelling that or telling people about it) I did a little massaging and came up with Skykeep. You’ll all be getting a look at it soon (in relative terms), since I’ve been asked to get this one out on a really short turn around. I might actually put it up for pre-order in a few days. Hopefully the Beta’s are enjoying it.
When next Nick has an opening, I’ll have to get a cover made, and there’s still the matter of writing the blurbs and what not, but the hard part is done… Unless the Beta’s universally hate it, then the hard part is just beginning.
Paperbacks
After far too long, I took a day to format ALL of my books for paperback release. That means everything from Jade to Artificial Evolution is going to be available for autographs and such. It’ll be a little while. I need to get cover art done, and that means finding more time in Nick’s schedule, but it’ll happen!
Etc.
Since I’m pro now, I’m trying to split my time in more productive directions even when not writing. Right now I’ve got a few maybes. Perhaps you would like to weigh in? Which of the following would you most like to see me work on in my spare time?
- Audio Books for the rest of my catalog (including the sci-fi)
- Non-Plush merch like posters and bookmarks
- ???
That question mark is there for people with suggestions. Let me know what you think!
Thanks for reading.