Well friends, it’s been about two months since my last book event in December, and I have to admit, it’s been a nice vacation. I love going to conventions and book fairs, but the high-octane event extravaganza that was 2023 definitely took a toll. 20 events in one year is a lot, and I promised myself for the sake of my own sanity and productivity I would cut back this year.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t still have a LOT planned, and I am super excited to finally announce my 2024 touring schedule!

As of now, I have eight events lined up for the year, in a healthy mix of returning favorites and exciting new venues. This schedule is by no means final; there are a couple of events I have my eye on that haven’t been finalized yet, so expect to see one or two late additions to the list. For now, though, get hyped for these ones, because I sure am!

You may notice at a glance that fully half the events for the entire year take place in March. For whatever reason, a lot of the best author events in Ohio just kinda landed there this year. I’m starting my tour in a running start with the much anticipated 2nd annual Indie Author Bash at Pretty Good Books in Ashtabula this Saturday. It’s going to be huge, with people flying in from all over the country to participate. There is simply nowhere else in Ohio any book fans will want to be this weekend. Make your way on over, or miss out on a truly epic experience.

The very next weekend, things are going to get absolutely insane. I am double-booked at BOTH the Akron Book Fest and Cleveland Concoction. Both events were amazing last year, and I wasn’t going to let a silly thing like them happening on the same weekend keep me from coming back for both of them this year. Here’s how this one’s going to work: I’ll be at ConCoction all day on Friday and Sunday, and on Saturday I’ll be at Akron Book Fest, possibly stopping back in at ConCoction in the evening, if there’s time. I will also be participating in several TBA panels at ConCoction, so keep an eye out for that! It’s going to be a whirlwind weekend, but I’m getting really pumped already.

Then, the weekend after that, I’m revisiting an old favorite. That’s right: Pan Yan. My favorite bookstore in Ohio is bringing me back for Otherworldly: a multi-author book signing that might as well have been tailor-made for me. It’s a sci-fi event! Believe it or not, it’s my first time at a book event specifically intended for my primary genre, so I can’t wait to see how that turns out.

There’s plenty more to come after that, so stay tuned, but there’s no doubt that March is going to be my busiest month of the year. I’m getting half my year’s events out of the way now so I can spend the rest of the year concentrating on my writing. My vacation was nice, but it’s time to get back to work. Let’s do this!

Happy birthday, Tantalus Depths! 

Can you believe it? My firstborn book child is officially one year old today! It feels so surreal. On the one hand, it’s hard to believe the more than a dozen conventions, book fairs, and author events I’ve been to have all happened in just a year. But on the other hand, the excitement I feel when I think about the fact that I’m a real, fully-published author now is just as fresh as it was the day I stepped up onto that auditorium stage at Kent Trumbull at my launch event to read excerpts to all my friends and supporters. 

We’ve come so far since then, selling hundreds of copies (possibly thousands, counting the audiobook), gathering so many glowing reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, making connections with amazingly talented authors from all over the country, and sharing my love of books and writing with crowds of people at convention panels and on podcasts. 

I wanted to celebrate Tantalus Depths’s one year anniversary with something special, and it just so happens I’ve been holding on to something for just such an occasion. A year ago, I recorded a one-on-one interview with Andi Arndt, the incredibly talented narrator who recorded the beautiful audiobook of Tantalus Depths. I originally meant to release this during launch week, but due to some technical difficulties (and me being generally way overcommitted with other launch week projects), I wasn’t able to get it out on time. It’s too big of a thing to share just any time, so I’ve been waiting for a special occasion to release it. And what’s more special than my one-year anniversary as a published author? 

You can listen to our interview right here:

Thank you all so much for sticking with me through this first year. I promise there’s plenty more to come. October has a lot of spooky fun in store, kicking off with the insane four-day extravaganza of Con on the Cob on the 5th-8th, my return to the wonderful Pan Yan bookstore for their Halloween Spooktacular on the 14th, and the Ohio Author’s Kickback on the 21st.  

Here’s to the next year! I promise you, I’m just getting started. 

*Blows cloud of dust off of blog.*

Oof. Have I seriously gone four months without an update? Yikes. Big yikes. Better fix that right now. In case you were thinking no updates meant nothing was going on...yeah, no. Honestly, I’ve had so much going on in the book world I haven’t had time to write an update until now, so buckle in for a LOT of news.

The first bit of news: I have a new short story out! It’s called Neurophage, and it’s part of Writing Bloc’s new Mythos anthology. I mentioned it in prior updates here and there, but I don’t think I ever actually mentioned it had come out. Well, it’s here now, and it’s amazing, so please give it a look!

Another big bit of news: I’ve already achieved two of my major goals for this year. If you’ll remember back in January, I set some New Year’s writing resolutions. One of them was to get up to 50 ratings for Tantalus Depths on Amazon, and another was to go to at least ten promotional events this year. Well guess what? As of right now, Tantalus Depths is up to 56 ratings on Amazon, and after this weekend’s visit to Akron Geekfest, I’ve been to a total of twelve events this year! And I’m still planning for plenty more of both!

My writing goals aren’t coming along nearly as swiftly, but I have been working at that too. I’ve been making slow but steady progress writing the next book, Proteus. My goal is still to finish it by the end of the year, but I am definitely not able to promise that. I will say, though, I am feeling really good about what I’ve written. Proteus is going to be a very different novel from Tantalus Depths, but I think it’s going to be something really special that you’re all going to love.

Another big thing that happened this summer: I’ve been on two podcasts! I had a great time chatting with the wonderful people at The Worldshapers Podcast and Drinking With Authors about my book, the writing process, other books I love, and all manner of things. You can find both podcasts on all the major podcast platforms, so give them both a listen!

Other than Akron Geekfest this weekend, I took a bit of a book break last month. This was partially to give the creative portions of my brain the chance to rest so I don’t burn myself out, but it was also partially out of necessity. I had very little free time over the past several weeks because I was one of the stars in a stage musical. That was a little gift to myself. I love the theatre, even though I rarely have the time to commit to a production, and I felt like I needed to take some time to devote to another of my passions for a bit. It was a bucket list role in a bucket list play: Nostradamus in Something Rotten, and I had the great honor of performing it a few weeks ago with my friends at Curtain 440. It was a wonderful experience, and I think I made the right choice by devoting some time to that production and letting my writing take a back seat for a few weeks. It set me back a bit in my writing goals, but it also stimulated my creativity and gave me the chance to recharge and refocus. I’m getting back into writing mode now, and I’m feeling fresher than ever.

So that’s where we are now. What can we expect going forward? Well, quite a bit. I may have hit my goal for promotional events this year already, but I still have a bunch more lined up, starting up again next month. As always, you can find an updated schedule of my upcoming appearances on the "Events" page of my website, so hop over there if you want to see what I’m up to next. Obviously, I’m planning to get back to writing, and I’m aiming to make my work writing Proteus my primary focus for the rest of the year. Beyond that, who knows what’s going to happen next? I’ll try to do better about sending updates more frequently, but if you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s probably safe to assume I’m not writing an update because I’m writing a book instead. That sounds like a fair excuse to me.

I woke up this morning with nowhere to be, and that felt weird as heck.

The last four weekends in a row have been dominated by back-to-back conventions and book fairs all over Ohio, from the shores of Lake Eerie to the West Virginia state border. Let me tell you, it was a rush!

We kicked things off at the Akron Book Fest on March 11th, where I had the great honor of sitting between my friends and fellow authors Cari Dubiel and Kalynn Applewhite. We had a great time and sold a ton of books considering it was only a half day event, and I definitely hope to return next year. 

(Incidentally, Kalynn is currently absolutely crushing a Kickstarter for her upcoming novel, Awakening Anne. I’d like to embarrass her with a surplus of support, so if you’re into paranormal historical fiction, go show her some love and back her Kickstarter.)

The next weekend was Cleveland ConCoction, and I have to say, I think this was the most fun for me, even though I sold the fewest books there. ConCoction was unique in that I didn’t have to man my own table for the event; convention staff sold my books for me, giving me total freedom to explore the convention and participate in the event programming. I had the great privilege to sit on three panels with some absolutely brilliant fellow authors, and pretty much any time I wasn’t in an author’s panel, I was watching one. Even though my sales were pretty slim for this event, the networking I was able to do was absolutely invaluable. I built some great new friendships with fellow authors from all over the Midwest, and had the great privilege to learn from their experiences and share my own in kind.

The following weekend was The Big One: the Cleveland Fan Expo. This one rivalled Galaxycon in scale, and probably surpassed it in turnout this year. Once again I had the chance to participate in a panel with a bunch of fellow authors, discussing our writing and answering audience questions. This was part of a pilot program Cleveland Fan Expo just started this year, so attendance and organization was a bit wanting, but that’s to be expected from something like that coming together for the first time at the last minute. I’m still glad I got to participate, and I’m optimistic to see how it goes next year. And yes, I will be back next year, because my sales were quite good at this one! I beat my record for most books sold in one day here, and you really can’t go wrong with that!

The last convention in this stretch was Ratha Con, and let me tell you, that was an endurance test for me. Four conventions in a row is rough under the best of circumstances, but Athens is a three and a half hour drive away, and it started at 10:00 AM. I got up at 4:00 in the morning and hit the road with my soul still asleep, and didn’t get home that night until midnight. But it was worth it! Even though Ratha Con was much smaller than any of the other cons I’ve gon to this year, I sold just as many in that one day as I would expect to sell at any other event, which really goes to show that you should not dismiss the value of smaller venues. I also had a really awesome fan interaction here that I won’t soon forget. Someone bought a copy of Tantalus Depths in the morning, and came back to my table around noon to let me know they had already made it eleven chapters in, and loved it so much they bought two of my short story collections as well! By the end of the day they were 24 chapters in and still loving it. That one interaction would have made the whole event worthwhile even if those were the only three books I sold.

So that brings me to today: my first weekend off in over a month. I definitely needed the rest, and I’m hoping I’ll make some significant progress writing Proteus this weekend. You know, being an actual author, and all. But this is only a brief interlude, because I am jumping back into the convention world right away. Like, literally, next weekend.

That’s right. I wasn’t overcommitted enough with the events I’d already signed up for, so I’ve added five new ones, starting next weekend with Operation Fandom in Wooster! Add these bad boys to the list of coming attractions:

Operation Fandom
April 16, 10-6:00, Wayne County Fair Event Center, Wooster, OH

Local Author Fair
April 22, 1-3:00, Chardon Public Library, Chardon, OH

MARcon
May 26-28, Hyatt Regency, Columbus, OH

50 Book Challenge Author Fair
June 11, 1-3:00, Twinsburg Public Library, Twinsburg, OH

Columbus Book Festival
July 15-16, Columbus Metropolitan Library, Columbus, OH

That brings my 2023 convention schedule up to 12 events, and I’m probably still going to add more later in the year. You’re probably saying "Even, that is too many events." Yes. Yes it is. I have an underdeveloped preservation instinct, and I’m capitalizing on it. I regret nothing.

Since I have so many events now, it’s getting hard for even me to keep track, so I’ve set up a page on my website conveniently listing all of my upcoming events and linking to their respective websites. I’ll update it as often as possible, so stay tuned for a lot more stuff in the future!

Hello everyone! It’s time for our February update, and I have so much exciting news to share with you all! 

First up, I’d like to say welcome to all the new followers! For any who don’t know, Audible featured Tantalus Depths as their special deal of the day, which led to an absolutely tremendous influx of people discovering Tantalus Depths, literally overnight. I don’t have exact sales figures for the audiobook, so I’m not sure exactly how many new people downloaded it, but I do know this: before the sale, Tantalus Depths was holding steady at around 40 ratings on Audible. As of the time I’m writing this, though? 238 and still steadily rising! That’s right; in the span of about two weeks, Tantalus Depths’ ratings on Audible have multiplied nearly sixfold, and it’s still holding steady at a highly respectable 4.1 out of five. Nearly half the ratings are five stars! 

These new fans of the audiobook have already trickled onto other platforms as well, and our ratings on Goodreads have also climbed a fair bit in that time. We’re still not up to my goal of 50 reviews on Amazon, but I’m really encouraged by the growth we’ve had over the past few weeks. 

But enough about ratings and statistics. It’s time for the announcement you guys are all REALLY going to be interested in… 

I’m formally announcing my 2023 book tour! I’ve been working hard to get this ready over the past few weeks, and I couldn’t be more stoked to make this announcement. I’m aiming to make a lot of public appearances all over Ohio to promote Tantalus Depths this year, and we are off to a very strong start. Here are the conventions I’m confirmed to appear this year so far! 

 Akron Book Fest: March 11 at Akron Main Public Library, 60 South High St, Akron OH, 44326 

 Cleveland ConCoction: March 17-19 at Bertram Inn Hotel and Conference Center, 600 N Aurora Rd, Aurora, OH 44202 

 The Cleveland Fan Expo: March 24-26 at Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, 300 Lakeside Ave E, Cleveland, OH 44113  

 Ratha Con: April 1st at Athens Community Center, 701 E. State St, Athens OH 45701 

 Pulp Fiction Convention: June 4 Doubletree by Hilton, 1100 Crocker rd. Westlake, OH 44145  

 Con on the Cob: October 5-8,Quality Inn and Suites, 4742 Brecksville Rd, Richfield, OH 44286 

 Ohio Authors Kickback: October 21 5441 Westerville Rd., Westerville, OH 43081 

 Believe it or not, that’s not going to be all. I have several other convention appearances I’m working on scheduling right now, so this list is going to keep growing. But since some of them are coming up in less than a month, I figured now is the time to make an announcement of some of the awesome places you’ll find me this year! 

Really looking forward to seeing some of you out there and having all kinds of exciting new experiences this year as I keep building my audience and preparing for the future. 2023 is looking to be quite a wild ride! 

Well friends, it’s time to wrap up my first year as a published author. Considering Tantalus Depths only came out a bit over three months ago, we sure crammed a lot into the tail end of this year.

We began this month with GalaxyCon in Columbus, which was an absolutely magical experience from beginning to end. I met so many amazing people, and was able to introduce Tantalus Depths to a whole new audience. I’d never been to a convention before, even as an attendee, but I always knew it would be something I’d love, and I was not mistaken. I made some new friends there, learned a lot about the business end of things, got to socialize with other authors, and even had one person recognize my book from an Audible recommendation after listening to Project Hail Mary! That’s right. Someone recognized my book in the wild because an algorithm compared it to Andy Weir’s writing. You could have knocked me over with a neutrino after that one.

I’ve spent the rest of the month making plans for the new year, and let me tell you, I have some big ones. I’m going to do a LOT more conventions next year, along with some other events. I’ve already lined some of them up, so expect a proper event schedule announcement for my 2023 Book Tour very soon.

With New Years being a time for resolutions, I want to share with you my goals as an author for 2023. I’m famously bad at adhering to timelines, but I’m hoping some public accountability will help keep me on track. I have three main goals for the year; all three ambitious as well as important.

1: Get Tantalus Depths up to 50 reviews on Amazon (if y’all want to help out with that one I sure wouldn’t mind)

2: Attend at least ten promotional events (hopefully many more than that)

3: Write and submit Proteus to my publisher. Tantalus Depths took eight years from writing the first word to publication day. I don’t want Proteus to take longer than three at the most.

Those are most of my big plans for the year, but I also have a bunch of other surprises coming up. My fifth short story, Neurophage, will be coming out this year in Writing Bloc’s next anthology collection, Passageways: Mythos. I also have a guest appearance coming up on a wonderful authors’ podcast later this year, which I’ll tell you more about when it gets closer.

All in all, 2023 is looking to be a really big year, and I cannot wait to share my experiences with you all. Have a happy New Year, everyone, and get ready for a wild ride!

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you’re all having a great time filled with all the best kinds of dread.

It’s been a full month since Tantalus Depths launched, so an update is definitely warranted. Things have been a bit chaotic on my end, with some pretty drastic unexpected shakeups in my personal life that really threw me for a loop. But if Mary can keep getting up again every time she gets knocked down, so can I. I’m finally bouncing back, and things should reach a new level of normality soon (fingers crossed).

Unfortunately this obstacle has definitely disrupted my post-launch plans for Tantalus Depths. I had hoped to have multiple signings and events booked by now, but so far Galaxycon is all I have on the agenda. Hopefully I’ll be able to line up some more opportunities soon, but I’m definitely not where I’d hoped I’d be at this stage.

But one area where we have made pretty solid progress is our reviews. At the time of writing this, we have 22 reviews on Amazon and 26 on Audible, which is not shabby at all. The algorithm starts to notice and promote books when they hit 50 reviews, so we’re nearly to that first goal! So far our reviews are overwhelmingly positive, and I am beyond thrilled to see such a strong positive response from the community.

If you haven’t left a review yet, please consider doing so soon. Even the simplest reviews are tremendously helpful, and each one serves to elevate the book’s success and increase the potential of my career as an author.

Follow this link to leave your fair and honest review on Amazon. Every review makes a difference!

That’s all I have for an update today, but hopefully there will be a lot more exciting news very soon!

It’s been a full week since the launch of Tantalus Depths, and it already feels like the whole world has changed. Our launch event was a fantastic experience; I loved the chance to spend time with so many of you and revel in this amazing experience with so many of the people who made it happen. Bookstores and libraries are beginning to carry it, glowing reviews are coming in from all over the world, and we’re right on track with where I wanted to be.

So what comes next? Well, the official launch day of a new novel is only the beginning when it comes to determining that book’s overall success. Technically, I could just forget about it and move on to the next project right now, but as far as launching a career as a published author, that would be the equivalent of sitting down to take a nap ten feet away from the finish line in a marathon. Many people have now read, and enjoyed, Tantalus Depths, but this still mostly consists of those of you who preordered it years ago. In order for this book to truly take off and become successful, it must be able to find new readers. It needs to build momentum, gather attention from outside my personal social circle, and start catching the attention of complete strangers. It’s a challenging, but necessary phase in launching a book, and right now the best way to achieve it will require your help once again.

We need reviews!

Reviews are absolutely necessary for a book to find its full potential. Amazon reviews are especially vital: it’s the primary driver of book sales in the industry, and it takes at least 50 reviews for Amazon’s automated algorithms to start recommending it to new customers. Fifty reviews just to get noticed, a hundred to be actively promoted, and at the time of writing this, Tantalus Depths has...four.

Those four reviews are incredibly valuable in their own right, but we’ll need far more to get the attention Tantalus Depths needs to find its best chances of success. With Tantalus Depths in all of your hands now, I must ask for your help one more time. If you can spare a few minutes of your time to leave a fair and honest review of Tantalus Depths on Amazon, or another site such as Goodreads, I would be eternally grateful.

Amazon can be a bit of a pain. Sometimes it takes several days for a review to go up after you’ve submitted it, and sometimes they will reject a review for no obvious reason and not tell you about it. That’s all the more reason why every review is vital and precious to Tantalus Depths’ survival, so please don’t underestimate how much of a difference your review will make.

I’m optimistic that we’ll get there eventually. Early reviews are very positive, and I suspect we’ll keep getting a lot more in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, thank you all again so very much for all your continuing support, and I hope you’re all enjoying your experiences reading Tantalus Depths after such a long wait!

To leave a review on Amazon, follow this link here:

The wait is almost over, my friends! For some of you it IS over, since I’ve heard from a lot of you that your copies of Tantalus Depths arrived a day early! All across the country, people other than me are finally getting to hold a copy of Tantalus Depth in their own two hands, and I am absolutely freaking out about it!

There’s so much still to do in the final hours before launch, so I can’t take much time to post a lengthy update. I’m hoping to see many of you at my big launch event in the auditorium of Kent State Trumbull tomorrow evening at 7. Please come out and see me! I’ll be signing books, taking pictures, and doing a little reading for you all. Let’s come celebrate this launch together!

Okay, here it is: the final two characters in our Tantalus Depths lore series, and naturally I saved the most important for last. I give you the stars of the show: the esteemed starship pilot Mary Ketch, and the cunning artificial intelligence, SCARAB.

 

 

Mary’s had a rough time of it lately. She signed on to pilot the XIS Diamelen for Exotech’s survey mission to Tantalus 13 in hopes that some time away from her troubles at home might give her a sense of clarity or purpose. It wasn’t supposed to be more than that, but it wasn’t long after landing that her expectations of what this mission was going to be flew completely out the airlock. Now she’s been dragged into a cosmic mystery millennia in the making, and the stakes are life and death. When things get bloody, will she have what it takes to get home in one piece?

SCARAB is the ultimate AI assistant. It can build anything out of anything; its sole purpose is to turn a lifeless world into a home away from home for its human crew. At least, that’s supposed to be its sole purpose. The SCARAB unit sent to Tantalus 13 seems to have found another one, and it isn’t keen on letting anyone know what that purpose is. One thing seems perilously clear, however: the safety of the Diamelen’s crew is not its top priority.

Read all about Mary Ketch and SCARAB on my website now, and in the pages of Tantalus Depths everywhere tomorrow!