And Challenge Complete!
Hello!
I hope you’re doing well! This one’s got a lot in it, so let’s just get to it.
First up…
I’m Moving the Newsletter
I finished my year-long challenge (more on that below), and for this coming year I’ve set myself the challenge of actually letting my avatar readers know that my books exist.
Maybe post some social media posts. Consistently. That kind of thing.
To that end, I’ve been working on how to make this as easy on myself as possible, and I’ve decided to centralize as much of my online presence as I can. So I’m moving the newsletter to my website, my grand central. There’s a lot of reasons for this that I won’t bore you with, but the gist is… October’s newsletter will probably come from WordPress rather than Substack.
I’m going to be migrating subscribers at some point, and I want to make sure I take only the people who actually want to be here.
(Why? Because when you first start a Substack, Substack promotes your newsletter to people who aren’t necessarily a good fit and who never open your emails. This drags down your open rate, which, if it gets too low, can put your emails in people’s spam, which is the opposite of next year’s goal of letting my readers know my stuff exists.)
So! If you want to make sure that your email gets migrated over to WordPress, then answer the following poll. Your click will tell my stats that your subscription is active.
Your click will also tell me where to focus my attention for the next book. ❤️
If you don’t want to migrate to WordPress with me, you can unsubscribe from my newsletter here:
I will probably send another email from this Substack newsletter to tell you when I’ve completed the switch. I’m working on making it all homey over on my website first.
Okay, on to the good stuff!
The Epoch Rite of Passage
The Precipice People, the first book in The Epoch Rite of Passage, comes out next month, on October 20th. As I think I’ve mentioned, I’m both super excited and super anxious about this, hoping both that everybody and nobody reads it. 🤪
The trilogy is unlike anything I’ve ever done before. I have two early readers that I thought would both hate it. Neither has finished reading the first book yet—I just gave it to them yesterday—but one surprised me, saying that so far it’s right up her alley. 😲 For context, she’s the one who thinks The Metanaut is my best book. The one who likes the Corbin books the best said he thinks I’m going to get cancelled just based on the content warning. 😬
The Precipice People—and The Epoch Rite of Passage trilogy—is for readers who wish 1984 could have ended another way. It was inspired by ICE in Minnesota and by a comment I read that was made to Disney after Jimmy Kimmel was suspended. It said, “Didn’t you watch Andor? It’s your own show!” It occurred to me that maybe, for some people, when a story’s world is too far removed from the real world, the themes don’t always hit home as strongly as they could. So The Precipice People is set in the real world—today’s real world—as much as possible.
Also important to me was ending the trilogy in a better place than it started without having to resort to violence. Too many dystopian stories end violently, which I’ve always found disheartening. It took me three books to move the “High States,” a fictional country that looks a lot like the early 2026 United States, from a growing fascist state into something more free, but I did eventually get the characters there.
I hope you give it a read.
Backlist Love!
Last up in this round of Backlist Love is the Corbin Kohl in Hell series. They’re cozy fantasies that follow an everyday optimist who finds himself in Hell (or someplace like it) and makes the best of his situation. It’s got humor, hijinks, found family. It’s a fun little romp.
There’s three books out in the series so far—four, if you count the preorder for Corbin D. I’ll announce it formally after the trilogy is out, but you can hunt it down now if you are so inclined. ❤️
A friend sent me a text recently that said one of her friends saw the second book, Baited in Hell, at their local library and it was a Staff Pick. That was a good text.
Does Corbin need to be read in order? Nope. There’s background stuff that carries from book to book, but each one stands alone. Enjoy.
What I’m Working On Now
I finished Corbin D and, with it, my challenge to write nine books in a year. Best experience ever. I learned a lot about a lot, about what I can do and what works best for me and what doesn’t, and about how I want to move forward.
Right now I’m working on preparing the last four books for publication. I should probably be writing, too, but I’m not. I’m trying to clear my plate first. So your answers to the poll, above, will definitely help my subconscious home in on what to write next, once I start up again.
What Else I’ve Been Up To / What I’ve Been Reading
We’re just going to combine these two this time out.
I’m reading A Game of Thrones, the first book, but I’m not done yet. It’s really long.
(I have this set of books. They’re these tiny little bible-style books that are not at all what I was expecting—and I’m loving them. They’re not too big or too heavy, and the spine is constructed in a way that it’s not creasing. (!!) The print is a little small, but I’m not having any problems.)
On my walks, I’ve been listening to nonfiction. Mostly business stuff. I won’t bore you.
I watched a TON of news and YouTube while I was writing the trilogy, for research, and I developed a bit of a habit of turning on the TV. While I was writing the fourth Corbin book, I had to put myself on a detox in order to get the book done. That last week of writing was so glorious, mentally and productively, that I’m still on the detox. No YouTube. No Streaming. No Social Media. (How’s that going to work with my goal, you ask? Good question, but I’m crafty.) I’m limiting my entertainment consumption to books and physical DVDs.
I’m watching Severance. Have you seen that? I’m only early on the first season still. It’s weird. I like weird. It’s a little bit mystery-box, too, which I also like. I hope they can pull it off. I’m getting the sense that they have more of a plan than the typical mystery box tends to have. We shall see.
I have a big pile of books that I’ve been accumulating over the past year while I worked on the challenge. Most of them are nonfiction, but there’s some fiction in there too. Here’s hoping I can find some time to read them all.
Links to books are affiliate links.1
ICYMI
Get my books from your library
These are links to the info your library might need if they don’t have one of my books and you want them to get it for you:
Leave a review
If you’ve read one of the backlist books and want to leave a review (❤️), here are some quick links to do so:
Visit the Secret Pages
A couple of the books have secret pages with fun stuff, like bookmarks and playlists and whatnot. The passwords are in the Author’s Notes section at the back of the books. You can find the pages here:
The Trilogy will have a Secret Page!
The Corbin Kohl In Hell Secret Page (still adding stuff—might be September before I really get back to this)
(The Metanaut and Glitching the Matrix don’t have a Secret Page)
Winnie Pug Update
Winnie turned 4 last month! She’s had a hand-me-down harness this whole time, so we finally got her a new one. Here she is, hating it:
She’s getting used to it. It’s supposed to be a no-pull harness, but when the leash is hooked to the front like that, she won’t move. Not an inch, and she suddenly weighs a thousand pounds. So I hook it to the back. Don’t worry, she can totally still pull just fine.
Since you’ve made it this far…
Comment “Moving!” so I know you’re with me!
Good To Knows
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Thank you for reading! Talk to you again soon!
Links to bookshop.org and/or amazon.com are affiliate links, meaning that if you make a purchase through a link, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support my work and allows me to continue writing for you. Thank you for your support!
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