Today I’d like to share some exciting news for my fans … the long-awaited 3rd book in my popular Galactic Smugglers series is on track to hit its planned release date June 28.
I’ve been writing like mad for a couple of months now, and recently finished a good clean final draft. The manuscript is currently being edited and reviewed by my editorial staff (full disclosure – as a indie author I don’t have staff, strictly speaking, but I do have lots of friends and a very patient wife). I really do work hard at publishing my books without typos and other errors, and I’ve paid for professional editing for ALL my books in the past. It really does pay off.
But I digress. The point is that I’m well ahead of schedule and right now it looks like I’ll be able to release “A Spaceship for Hire” early. Which is only fair because it’s been too long since the last book came out.
Way too long.
I first published “Coffee to Go, With a Spaceship” back in December of 2017, a little over six years ago. Kind of embarrassing, and I’ve had a lot of fans asking when the third installment was coming out because the end of the second book left things hanging – especially with regards to Jack and Donna’s relationship.
Some fans even noted that the book ends on a sad note because of that. Well, personally I hate sad and depressing endings. We’ve got the daily news for that, so when it comes to fiction – especially the mindless fluff I prefer to write – I’m a HUGE fan of happy endings.
The goal of my novels is to entertain. That’s it. I think writing light-hearted, mindless fluff is a high calling, because there are times when people need that. So all of my books end on an upbeat note and happy ending for the good guys eventually. If you don’t like that, or feel that’s too Pollyanna, feel free to read someone else to leave you sad and depressed. There are plenty of pretentious authors who feel they are being ‘serious’ and more ‘realistic’ by being depressing. Or better yet, don’t waste your money on those guys at all and just turn on the news or read CNN for free.
Anyway, the second book did leave things hanging on a sad note for our two heroes, as I’ve mentioned, and I feel bad that’s it’s taken so long to write the next in the series. But I’m in good company: it took Harper Lee, the author of the world famous novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, forty-five years to come out with a follow-up. So maybe I don’t need to feel all that bad.
Why has it taken so long? My list of excuses:
So why’d it take six years? many of my fans have been asking. What follows is my numbered list of excuses, in no particular order:
- I’ve been busy. Up until recently I was still working full-time, holding down a ‘day-job’ that almost all creative people who have to support themselves dread. So I’ve only been able to write part-time.
- I’ve got kids and grandkids. Lots of them. Six kids and eight grandkids – far too many in my opinion, but my wife wouldn’t let me send any of them back, so I’m stuck with all of them.
- I got sidetracked. Between 2017 and now, I was busy with a few other writing projects that took most of my free time, like The Heretic and The Tolerance Bureau.
- I was indecisive. Very indecisive, to be honest. I’ve been working on outlines and story ideas for the third book for much of the last six years – I promise. I’m not lying, I really was. I wrote and re-wrote about twenty different outlines for this book, throwing them all out eventually. I couldn’t come up with a story line for this book that I was happy with until recently, and I never start writing a book without a good outline that I feel really happy with.
That’s it. These are all my excuses to date, but as I think of more I’ll add to the list.
I think you’ll be really happy with “A Spaceship for Hire”. I’m really excited about it; it’s a fun read. It’s available for pre-order now at a special price of 99 cents. I strongly encourage you to go ahead and reserve your copy today, because the price will go up to somewhere between 3.99 and 5.99 when it’s released. I do have to make some money on this, after all.
When the book is released, it will be automatically downloaded to your device if you’ve pre-ordered.
Thanks for reading my blog today. Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.
