The proof copy for Beacon’s Spark arrived on Saturday and I was so excited I made an unboxing video. I’m working my way through it now, correcting the handful of typos I found. The print version should be live within a week or so!
I’m very pleased (read: bouncing off the walls) to announce that I’ll be a member of the writing team working on the new Star Trek Adventures pen and paper roleplaying game, to be published by Modiphius. This is something of a dream come true for me–I almost worked on the Decipher version of the Trek RPG back in the early 2000s, but didn’t when Decipher closed up shop before I had a chance to put words down on their line.
I’ve been playing and GMing Star Trek RPG adventures of one sort or another since 1988, starting with the FASA blue books, then Last Unicorn Games’s ICON system, then Decipher’s CODA system, and a few homebrew systems in between. It was always something of a dream to be able to work on a Trek RPG professionally, and now here it is.
Hope you get a chance to check it out. I think it’s gonna be a fun ride. As Picard said, “The sky’s the limit.”
Hot on the heels of the impending release of Beacon’s Spark, the pre-order for book 2 in the Potomac Shadows series, Beacon’s Hope, is now available as well! Yay!
Two bits of news today (more to follow):
–The good folks over at Genre Reader posted the cover art of the book, plus awesome covers of some other indie books. So check them out and grab the ones that grab you!
–The good folks over at Speculative Fiction Showcase ran a promo for the book, along with an exclusive short excerpt. Go check it out!
Happy Thursday, all!
As a bonus to my readers, here’s an excerpt from Beacon’s Spark, now available as a pre-order:
I stared down the drab hallway, the heavy weight of fear pressing me firmly in my ugly blue molded plastic chair. I opened my mouth to call out, but little more than a hollow croak sounded. I tried to swallow, to get some sort of moisture in my mouth, but my breath caught. An icy chill ran along my spine and up into my hairline. My scalp felt like a million ants were crawling their way around inside my hair.
The face poking out of the door stared at me, and after a moment I realized it looked like a woman. Her face was a pale circle with two black circles where her eyes should have been, a thin dark line underneath that I guessed was her mouth, and the whole framed in a fuzzy halo of dingy gray hair.
I couldn’t make out much detail from where I sat, but my guess was that she was one of the residents here. Was she lost or confused? Why was there no nurse helping her out?
Then a more important thought slammed into me: why was her head sticking through the freaking door?
I wanted to turn my head away, to look at something else, to focus on waiting for Robert to come out of my grandpa’s room—anything else but that strange face. A subtle bass drone, almost electrical, suddenly hummed down the corridor and echoed in my ears.
I furrowed my brow, realizing that as hard as I tried, I couldn’t turn my head away from the strange woman. I even tried moving my eyes, but they were rooted in place, as if all the muscles had cramped up to keep me focused on that one strange face.
If I could have generated a sound, I would have screamed, or at least cried out, but all I could manage was another little squeak, hardly audible over that strange electrical sound.
And as suddenly as it had started, the hum ceased, the pressure eased on my headache, and the woman’s face faded out of sight, dissipating like smoke in the wind. The temperature all around me soon shifted from frigid to temperate, and my whole body slumped forward, free of whatever unseen force had held me in place.
Even with the new warmth in the hall, I pulled my arms around and hugged myself hard. “What the Hell was that?” I muttered, though there was no one in the hall to hear me.
I’m home safe and sound from Shore Leave, where I had a great time catching up with old friends and making new ones. I promoted my upcoming urban fantasy series, Potomac Shadows, while I was there, and handed out postcards.
Once I got home, I made the final edits on the book and posted it to Amazon for pre-order. The pre-order’s now live, so go check it out and grab a copy if you so desire! If you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you might want to wait for release day so that you can read it for freesies.
I’m running the pre-order at a special introductory price of $0.99 cents. That price will be good only til the end of July, and then will go up to $3.99. So get in on the deal while you can.
It’s that time of year once again, when writers and fans gather in Hunt Valley, MD for the Shore Leave convention! I’ll be there with books to sell, knowledge to impart, and fun to be had.
If you’re able to attend and would like to catch up, here’s a quick list of the panels I’ll be attending as a participant (and there are a bunch I’ll sit in on as an audience member, lobbing questions at the panelists).
Friday, 8-9PM: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Friday, 10PM-12AM: Meet the Pros party and book signing marathon
Saturday, Noon-1PM: The Whole Package! (books, not…you know)
Saturday, 2-3PM: World-building
Sunday, 11-Noon: Publishing in 2016
Sunday, Noon-1PM: Original Ebooks and Novellas
Shore Leave is a fun convention and I’m looking forward to seeing all my friends there again, and looking forward to making a few more. Hope to see you there!
Long time away from video capability and updating, but here’s a two-week update of the challenge. Book 2 rolls along, just about 2/3rds of the way there. On Day 65 now, charging into the third month.
Days 44 through 50, finally had a chance to do an update! Didn’t have video capability for a while, so here we go. More progress; not as much as I’d like but rolling forward with the new day job, writing, baby, life, etc. Onward!
Another day down, closing in on the halfway point of the challenge.
