Nov 17, 2015

Good friends,

There is nothing I love more than to tell stories. Writing books has been such a source of enjoyment in my life for the past few years that I keep hunting for new ways to make novels and get them in front of people. Between improving my craft and learning how this complex and evolving industry, I try to find as many opportunities to create as possible. But sometimes, it’s the opportunity that finds you.

This is a bit of news I’ve been holding on for a few months now and I’m elated to finally be able to talk about it to some degree. It’s my pleasure to announce that apart from The Life Engineered and (hopefully) A God in the Shed, I will be publishing at least two more books in the next few years.

The two books will be written for The Ed Greenwood Group; an ambitious enterprise set up by none other than Ed Greenwood himself, involving dozens of writers and other creatives, spanning over fifteen different settings and reaching far into the next few years. I was recruited by my friend Eric Belisle who did the cover for The Life Engineered and has been working with Mr. Greenwood on this project.

The first book and setting for this undertaking were announced on Halloween. Your World is Doomed is the first book of the Hellmaw setting and you can already order and read it.

The books I will be working on are Still Waters of Tarkania, which is set in the For Wolf & Empire setting, a swashbuckling, steampunk historical fiction with werewolves. Because everything is more fun with werewolves. Still Waters of Tarkania will be released in June of 2017.

The second book is Alsecia’s Sun, set in the Under Deadly Stars setting, a far-future hard sci-fi world where stars are being destroyed by an unknown force. This one will see release in June of 2020.

My plans

While I am loathe to over-commit, these two books are now part of my ongoing calendar of works I hope to create in the coming years. Assuming I can find publication for all or most of these, I will be able to keep telling the stories I want to tell.

It’s ambitious to think I can write and publish two books a year while holding onto a full time job, but I’ve always known that if I wanted to be a writer it meant essentially having a second job. My hopes are to be able to write three or four books a year for as long as I have ideas for stories to tell. Obviously that dream depends on being able to write as my only occupation.

While the books published with The Ed Greenwood Group are not going to be funded on Inkshares or under their imprint, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep a close relationship with Inkshares. I plan on funding the sequels to The Life Engineered along with the other two books in the God in the Shed trilogy on this platform, along with other ideas that are bubbling inside my brain. In fact, I’m so involved in this platform that I record a weekly podcast with fellow Inkshares writer Paul Inman on the subject of writing and crowdfunded publishing. You can check out the WriteBrain podcast on iTunes or on this website.

Thank you so much for your support, friends. Consider pointing others to both The Life Engineered and A God in the Shed. The bigger these two first steps are, the faster I can get underway on this journey of story telling.

JF