Well I didn’t get a chance this week to pull up some more sample chapters but they’ll be coming, I promise. It’s going to go probably as far as halfway but it just takes time pulling chapters from the original document and I ran out of predrawn chapters. If I can pull together a load of them this weekend maybe I’ll drop two chapters next week.

See yo then.

So I missed last Friday’s update mainly because the holidays, and local snowfall, blew my plans out of the water, like a tiny Oompa Loopa saboteur. But, I’ve got chapter eight up for all of you fine folks to read. Enjoy it!

Things are still progressing a little slowly on The Price Of A Bullet, but I think that’s mainly due to the fact that I’m jumping between a Sci-Fi Technothriller style and something akin to Red Cliff. Maybe it’s just throwing my rhythm off, maybe it’s a bad idea, I don’t know. What do you think? I’m open to suggestions.

I am at a chapter break in it so I think I’m going to try outlining all of the chapters on Jovanne’s side of the story then go back and fill in the historical stuff in between.

Anyway, see you next Friday, if I can keep the Oompa Loopas away.

MERRY CHRISTMAS YA FILTHY ANIMALS! .........Okay that’s enough Home Alone for the rest of the year. :)

Chapter 7 is up and ready for reading and there’s only one more ready to go. I’ll probably get a few more ready to go I’m just not sure how deep to go right now. If you’ve been reading what I’ve been putting up please let me know and let me know what you think of it I could use a little feedback\reviews\complaints whatever.

Anyway, happy holidays!

Chapter 6 is out now and it rolls into the opening, simulated, combat of the Excalibur Tournament. If you’re wondering what my combat writing is like this is a good example of how I roll the dogfights out.

Chapter 5 is up and you get to meet Camus and her band of black ops soldiers. So check it out and let me know what you think.

Well. I’m heading out of town tomorrow for a weekend trip so you all get the next chapter early, yay. Chapter 4 kicks off the Excalibur tournament, a mix of Reforger and the Superbowl. It also introduces Nikolai Ramirov, a friend of Jovanne’s from his Academy days and neighbor in his hometown of Barrett River.

The next chapter outline, in  The Price Of A Bullet, is still moving slow due largely to big secondary project that should be complete tonight. So, when I’m not driving, this weekend I should be able to get it squared away in earnest.

Catch you all next week!

Well I hope all of my U.S. friends had a great Thanksgiving and obviously all of the hullabaloo surrounding the holiday means I missed the Friday update. But Chapter 3 is up today and you should all have it it in your grubby little inboxes.

The outline for the first Historical chapter, in Book 2 The Price Of A Bullet, is done and I’ve settled on a dating scheme for it. The next chapter should outline quickly because, prior to choosing to split it, I had nearly a half a book outlined with even amounts of time spent with Jovanne and Ramirov, so I have a good chunk of stuff to use that’s focused on Jovanne.

As a side note, Christopher Lee does these background\lore updates, which I think is pretty cool, and if you guys would like to see something similar for Battle Flag, in my updates, I could put some stuff together to include in each update. I don’t have the art skills that Mr. Lee has in his updates but I do have big chunks of background information on races, spaceships, etc. that I can send out. So let me know if you want to see that.

I’m not trying to be cryptic, The Road To Hell is completed, so all I’ve got to update with is the finished chapters and The Price Of A Bullet is in the outline phase.  So give me any feedback you’ve got. I’m open to all of it.

Chapter 2 is up now for all those interested. I’m going to try to get a chapter out every Friday until I hit somewhere around the book’s halfway point, maybe, if I miss a Friday shot I’ll make sure to get it out the following Monday.

Work on Book 2’s outline is a little slow right now but that’s primarily due to the fact that I’m into the first "historical" chapter and, not only am I working out a dating scheme for events, I’ve also partially thrown out my old naming conventions for the Kepler people. This will be explained, in the course of the story, but the old naming convention is ironically the modern one for the Kepler people, in the series’ chronology. While it’s slowed things down a bit, it’s been really exciting to explore and build all of this ancient history stuff that I’ve barely even hinted at and I never really thought would appear in anything more than a series encyclopedia entry.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new content and I would love to hear any feedback you have.

So Chapter 1 of The Road To Hell is now up for all to read. If you’ve been following this project from the start, at least the Inkshares start, this is the latest version of the chapter. I know it’s a little different from what was posted before, because I did the rewrite, but how much different is kind of a mystery to me because I’m not exactly an objective observe. Most of these early chapters are probably going to be that way.

I know it’s a little dense on descriptions and introducing a bunch of new stuff but the first half to three quarters of this book are some of the oldest chapters I’ve written, like maybe as much as fifteen years old, and when I first wrote them I was trying to setup a lot of stuff for the rest of the series. Not to mention that I was trying really hard to channel Tom Clancy and, after awhile, I learned that was kind of pointless because I’m not him. I’m me.

The outline for Book 2 is coming along a little slowly but because of my redesign I have to come with a whole historical epic that has really only been whispered at. The slow down isn’t aggravating, like writers block, it’s a kind of invigorating with all the planning and mapping battles and prison riots and such. It’s all just kind of time consuming to get all of the geography right and I have had to break out of my normal naming conventions for the Kepler people which throws it’s own unique wrench into the works.

But things are going well and I’m going to try to get a new sample chapter up every Friday until I hit maybe the halfway point in the book, although If I can pull in a few thousand direct followers like right away I may just open up preorders outright. Yeah I know that would be a miracle. :)

So having just come through a cold, and a big embroidery project for my mom, I am now free to move ahead quickly with the Battle Flag page redesign and continuing my outline work for Book 2. So the Prologue should be up by tomorrow night or at the very least by the weekend. I’m going to try and get up a chapter or so a week until I reach the book’s halfway point, but we’ll see how well that works out.

Since I’m going to let things simmer for a bit, as far as The Road To Hell is concerned, I figured I would use part of these updates to inform you of the other stories going into this series, at least until I decide whether or not to create pages for them. This is to give all of you an insight into what’s to come and to, hopefully, try and pump up some more excitement for The Road To Hell as well as the rest of the series in general.

SPOILERS AHEAD: Book 2 was intended to deal with the aftermath, both politically and psychologically, of the final battle in Book 1. I got about halfway through one outline, which incorporated an espionage mission involving Ramirov and the mental breakdown that Jovanne suffers. Now I’ve decided to split those stories in two. Now Book 2, to be known as The Price Of A Bullet, will follow Jovanne as he recovers from what happened in the last battle while also telling the story of an ancient Kepler warrior\philosopher named Coralujan. He’s a bit like Sun Tzu and that part of the book will be essentially Coralujan’s historic campaign mixed with his treatise on warfare, much like The Art Of War.

Book 3 will occur in time with 2 but will follow Ramirov through his espionage mission. This one is a little more thorny to work with primarily because my initial concept is little too derivative of Firefox and Firefox Down, although oddly I’ve never actually read Firefox Down. The two concepts are a little too close and I’m going to have to work with it a bit.

Anyway that’s where things stand. If there’s anything you like let me know and if there’s anything you hate let me know as well. I don’t mind a DM or a posting on the book’s page.

P.S. Don’t forget to check out my other project The Agoge it’s got some chapters up and you might like it.