Declan Finn's Blog, page 12

Allan Kemp's "Bitter Pill" in Supernatural Streets

Today, I'm giving my blog over to Allan Kemp, so he can discuss his short story, Bitter Pill, in the new anthology, Supernatural Streets .



So, over to Allan.


Bitter Pill




In
my urban fantasy novels, The Black Phoenix and Hagar’s
Tears, I created a world in which the supernaturals had conquered
and enslaved humans. At the end of Hagar’s Tears , the main
character, Mutt Davidson, opens a nightclub called The Black Phoenix.
Though Mutt is both a wizard and a werewolf, he didn’t take part in
the supernatural invasion because he felt it was a cruel solution to
their problems. His nightclub is neutral ground where supernaturals
and humans are treated equally.




I’m
a fan of Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s series and thought it would
be fun to write a series of short stories that feature characters who
visit The Black Phoenix. The Bitter Pill was the first of
three Tales of the Black Phoenix. The other two are Panty Man
and Loopy in Love.




Once
I was in a kosher grocery when a girl around eight-years-old said,
“You’re such a pill!” She was talking to her brother who was
around five-years-old. I’ve never used the slang term myself, even
when it was appropriate, but by having Mutt say it gave me an opening
into where the story would go.




The
slang phrase preacher creature was the inspiration for Bishop
Willie Walker Jr. the vampire preacher. Researching sermons to come
up with Walker’s sermons was some of the most enjoyable research
I’ve ever done.





Chad
Blyth was a satire of all the rich loafer boys who think they rule
the world. I worked with a guy like Chad. He wore pressed khakis that
he was constantly hitching up so that’s why Chad does the same
thing. Having Chad get what was coming to him was my way of getting
revenge on that guy I worked with. He was such a pill.




I
wanted the story to have an ending that was truly horrifying,
something I hadn’t done before. Though my Black Phoenix novels are
urban fantasy, they contain more mystery and adventure than horror.
Here was an opportunity to explore elements that were dark and
disturbing.








And
that is basically where The Bitter Pill came from.

Buy Supernatural Streets here.

Rob Reed's Night Hawks for Supernatural Streets

The anthology Supernatural Streets is out and ready for debut.
And I'm not the only one in this anthology. Meet Rob Reed, as he talks about his short story, Night Hawks.


The origins of my story “Night Hawks” in the “Supernatural Streets” anthologyRob Reed


As co-editor of the urban fantasy anthology “Supernatural Streets” I went back and forth on whether I’d include one of my own stories. I had several ideas I really wanted to write, but we had more good stories then spots available, and I didn’t want to bump someone just to run my own story.

That changed when we had a couple authors drop out close to the last minute for different personal reasons. There was no heartburn on my end. They are both pros and were upfront about their reasons and I’d work with either person again. But, that left us two stories down and we needed to fill at least one of those holes with a new story.


Enter Frank and Tiny. I had created these characters in my mind as sort of a look at the “dark underbelly” of what monster hunting might be like as a lifestyle. I wanted to explore the toll it would take on the characters and how they’d cope.


I also wanted to create a story that was fun to read. It had to have relatable characters, some well-staged action, and more than a touch of humor.


I had their world. I had their voice. All I needed now was a story. The germ of the idea started with something I’d observed in my own life. I stretched it out into a running gag that also gave me a pivotal bit of action near the climax. That first piece helped structure the rest of the plot complications.


One thing I like about this story is that I wound up using every idea I thought up along the way. Every character trait, every joke, every little bit of business I envisioned, they all made it into the final product. Some of them were changed along the way, smoothed out a bit or restructured slightly to fit the other pieces better, but they all made it in. Like a well-built bicycle on Christmas morning, there were no extra pieces left over when I was done.


The title is deliberately evocative of the masterful Edward Hopper painting, “Nighthawks.” I had that image in mind when mulling over the characters. It’s no coincidence the story opens with the two main characters at an all-night truck stop reminiscent (in my mind at least) of the diner in the painting.


What’s amazing to me is how close the final story on the page is to how I originally envisioned the story in my head. Even before I had all the details worked out I had a vision for what I wanted the story to be and the result is as true to that vision as anything I’ve ever written.


I hope you all enjoy the result.
Buy Supernatural Streets here.

New Release, Supernatural Streets anthology

Last year, Amie Gibbons of the Psychic series put out a call for urban fantasy detective fiction for a new anthology series: Supernatural Streets .



My first thought was "Oh, why not?"



After all, at the time, I had been writing my Saint Tommy, NYPD series for 40 hours a week for months. It was a world filled with detective stories and fantasy in the big city. What else would I write for this? I knew the world inside and out. At the time, book three,  Infernal Affairs had come out, and #4,  City of Shadows  was about to come out, and I may not have even started on Crusader.



So I had a day or two to kill to work on this one. 
Before you ask, yes, that is how long it takes for me to pound out a short story.



But I knew I wanted to do something with witches. After all, Alyssa Milano wouldn't shut up at the time, and you had covens putting curses on President Trump (Yes, really), John C Wright had noted they were on the rise, my research told me they were getting big in Europe. It was clearly in the Zeitgeist, even before people on Twitter decided that witch hunts were cool.



Besides, I hadn't used witches yet. I had meant to in book 3... then book 4... then later, book 7 (hint, it's called Coven). But I never quite got there.



So, I knew the short story would have witches.



I also knew it would have one other element. And it wouldn't be Saint Tommy, NYPD.



See, there was a problem. Given what I was writing at the time, I didn't have a lot of places to put Tommy. Yes, there is Lupus Dei, but I hadn't considered that idea then (and it was less detective fiction and more The Most Dangerous Game with magic). There was very little room in the timeline to use my main character for a short story between books 3 and 4. In my novels, I had explicitly mentioned that nothing supernatural had hit Tommy Nolan between books one and three.



However, while Tommy Nolan is a wonder worker, and fights the forces of darkness in every book, he's also a cop. And cops all have one standard issue piece of equipment. 
He has a partner. 



Enter Alexander Packard, the new POV character. Unlike his partner, Packard has no charisms, no superpowers except sarcasm, but I was still going to send up up against the forces of darkness.




The story was originally entitled Dark Web, and it would open with "My name is Alex Packard, and I am nowhere near a saint--unless my partner is in the car."



It was all downhill from there. 



Set between Infernal Affairs and City of Shadows , the premise is simple--Tommy has a price on his head on the dark web. When the person who put out the bounty is killed, there's no way to tell everyone that the price is off. Time for him and his family to be ... away. Far away.



This leaves Tommy's house empty, except for his partner. After a few months of this, finding a body on the front lawn is no longer a big deal. But this one is special -- it's in pieces, and it looks like it has nothing to do with Tommy Nolan.



Then we're off to the races. From there it was easy. The fun part was giving Packard a small team to work with, and fighting the forces of darkness with only his wits, and his new fondness for chemistry. And one or two magic tricks up his sleeve.



One or two rewrites later, the narration changed a little changed, and became "They burn witches, don't they?"




Anyway, that's one of the stories in Supernatural Streets. Go buy it. I think you'll like it.

Review: Storm Between the Stars, by Karl Gallagher

Anyone who follows my reviews knows that I've been a fan of Karl Gallagher's books. He delivers character and plot, even at times when you don't know which he's delivering on. Torchship was a better Firefly than the actual product. His Lost War series is criminally underrated, even though I think it's even better than Torchship.

And now he's back to a slightly harder SciFi, with a bit of a twist to it.

Storm Between the Stars: Book 1 in the Fall of the Censor is his latest release. I was worried about spoiling the key threat in this book... but the series title has already given that away.

To begin with, Niko Landry is Captain of a family-owned and operated freighter. Like all shipping companies, he makes a lot of deals based off of what will sell better in X system over Y, and never leaving his cargo hold empty. 

When Niko and his crew find himself lost in space, he finds himself in the midst of a great business opportunity. After three thousand years of a human diaspora caused humans to flee Earth and being subsequently cut off from the home system, they find themselves to be the first ones to have found a way back.

Since the Landry family business is private, they don't have to report anything to any one. They're the first ones back to the home system, and therefore, the first ones to find what new resources and technology may have been developed in the last three thousand years.

But Earth and the associated systems are now ruled by something called "the Censor." And what seems to begin as a system of bureaucrats is slowly revealed to be a creepy, terrifying system of oppression. Each new revelation makes the reader feel new levels of dread every time. It goes from "aw Hell" to "aw f***" to "why aren't they running?"

Karl essentially unveils a system, piece by piece, that builds into 1984 / Farenheight 451 IN SPACE, and ends with an interstellar space chase that David Weber would have been happy to have written. It feels a little like the end of On Basilik Station, only our heroes are being chased, and they don't have real weapons. Their only weapons? Physics.

Karl does a good job of developing a world. Many of the ideas are sane Libertarian. I have to make that distinction because there are the libertarians I know, versus the ones I've seen in public. He has a smart and sane approach to extended families, marrying into a family business, barter to get around taxes, how to work around oppression, and a lot of cultural elements that would make some libertarians I know scream like a sunburnt vampire.

There is also a great bit of work on language. I haven't seen this much effort put in since John C Wright's Somewhither. It's not as extensive, but it works well for the story. 

And there are nice little touches here and there. Character names that are very ... Welsh. Details on spaceship cargo loading. Human zebras (long story). Bringing back the zealots.

The only problem with this entire novel? We could have spent five pages on the crew being a bit more impressed with "This is something no one on our side has seen for thousands of years." In the book, they were all business, no wonder. Five pages would've been enough. It's a minor quibble, but I have to find a flaw somewhere.

In short, it's great world building. And I definitely enjoyed it. At least a 4/5. Maybe 5/5. I definitely recommend it. There's sequel bait, but there's there isn't a cliffhanger. So this won't cause you to throw your book against a wall.

Buy it here.

Dragon Ballot 2020

 You know, I am fairly hooked into the book community. If I don't read every book, I at least hear about a lot of them. Even if I take one look and decide I don't want to read it, I at least check it out.

Then I saw the 2020 Dragon Award ballot and wondered who the fuck any of these people were. Seriously, what sort of shit show is this?

Sure, I've heard of a few. Margaret Atwood at least has a TV show. She's an opportunistic parasite, but people have at least heard of her (though I haven't heard of that book. I guess she came out with another). I've heard of Scalzi--don't like him, but I can at least pick his name out of a phone book. Chuck Wendigo? The same.

But so many of these names are just ... Who? What? Huh?

I've been assured by some people (randoms online, mostly) that these are Hugo authors. I guess I'll take their word on it... but usually, I've at least HEARD about those authors. These folks? Nah.

I would like to congratulate both Nick Cole and Chris Ruocchio for being nominated in best military SF.  And DJ Butler for best alternate history. I don't feel like all of the nominees were out of left field, Twilight Zone. 

But Timothy Zahn doesn't get a nomination for a Thrawn novel? Did he turn it down?

And nominations for Picard and Discovery? I can't even find people who watch those shows, but the media tie-ins are supposed to be readable? Unlikely.

Best horror is a pass. I feel like I should have met Cherie Priest at a con, but don't hold me to that.

Best coming book .... well, I did have a fondness for a few issues of Immortal Hulk, so, I called that? I guess.

Oh look, Mandalorian and Witcher ended up on the best TV list. I'm shocked. 

But for the love of all that's holy, Terminator: Dark Fate? Are we serious now? There are people I know who didn't even hear about the stupid thing. I didn't see a single positive review about it. But it got on this list? And Joker was SFF? How?

The funny part ... the hilarious part ... is that people were lamenting that the ballot this year is filled with such... crap.

If only someone could have warned about this.

If only someone could have tried to lead discussions, hold conversations on what books came out. That way, we could have narrowed it down to a few.

If only...

WAIT! I know! I DID. I FUCKING WANTED PEOPLE TO DISCUSS BOOKS FOR THE DRAGONS. WHAT DID EVERYONE THINK I WAS DOING IN 2018 AND 2019? COMPILING EVERY ELIGIBLE BOOK BECAUSE IT WAS FUN? I DID IT FOR MY HEALTH? THAT WAS EXTRA WORK I DIDN'T NEED TO DO.

In the immortal words of Razorfist: Fuck you, I was right.

It was especially fun this year when I had an author see that "I was talking about the Dragon again," therefore, she asked if "I could put her book on the list." IE: She didn't even read the blog post to see what I was talking about. It was assumed I enjoyed killing myself so I could market their book for free.

No one wanted to play. That's fine. I'm used to it. 

But everyone can all stop bitching about it. They either didn't vote, or didn't want to talk about it. They didn't want to invest even thirty minutes into presenting a selection of choices, or having a conversation.

Now this years ballot sucks.

Maybe next year, when I propose that we all just MIGHT want to talk about it for a week or so? We actually freaking TALK ABOUT IT.

Otherwise, don't come bitching to me when the Dragon ballot is filled with suck again.

Because I told them so. And no one wanted to hear it.

Damned Politics

Ya know, when I started writing my St. Tommy NYPD novels, I didn't exactly think that I would be writing future events.



Take book one, Hell Spawn .



It had an offhand, casual mention of Black Lives Matter after our hero arrests a serial killer. The Serial killer is in the "right" profession and thus call out BLM,... because reasons.



There were, of course, reviewers who cringed that I even mentioned BLM.



I wonder if their thoughts on the matter would change any now?



We won't even go into what I did to the mayor, or the death cult. I just figured I would have the mayor as an idiot that concealed a truly darker side to the office. (no spoilers). But Death Cult came out only three months before NY states' Moloch bill. (I forget, does that include killing children ten days after birth?)




And, of course, I do expect social media to "fact check" my sarcasm, telling me that it wasn't called the Moloch Bill, blah blah blah.



Then de Blasio goes and shows exactly how much of a pure f***ing psychopath **he** really is. Here I thought he was just a moron and a thief. Now he wants to destroy the entire city. 



The endgame of the first trilogy is being enacted on the streets of New York city this very minute with this stupid catch and release "bail reform: nonsense



And since I wanted to get away from politics for later books, I didn't even want to touch the governor's office.



Then Cuomo goes and shows that, yes, he's a straight up f***ing mass murderer.



I mean, really guys? I mean, in 2019 I thought that my darkest dreams could not conceive of something so twisted and evil that the Democrats would not put it on their platform.

But killing off the elderly? Not even assisted suicide, or euthanasia, or any of the nice terms they like to throw around. But straight up bio-warfare the old fashioned way.

I mean, good God, last year I came out with Crusader: sex trafficking run by a succubus in conjunction with Jihadis.


This year: is there any Leftist who isn't a supporter of Epstein's client list?


The slippery slope used to be "gay marriage to pedophilia" (which took five years).


Now it's "close the churches" to "burn the churches" in five MONTHS.


I think I preferred it when I could at least imagine that they were misguided idiots instead of straight up fiends from the pit.


It used to take full on wartime propaganda to dehumanize the enemy to such a state that we perceived them as something so monstrous and alien that we didn't even blink at killing them.


Now all I have to do is listen to what comes out of their mouths.



.... This is the point where I should mention that you should vote in the Dragon Awards before this Sunday, here's My Dragon Award ballot is here and here is where you should vote. But I don't feel like doing PR today.

Oh Corona

Over the fourth of July weekend, illegal fireworks went off from about twelve different sites around my home.



It was probably New Yorkers telling Mayor de Blasio to go fuck himself.



That Sunday, I went to church, where the pastor, another spineless eunuch, held a public service announcement about social distancing, and not a mass worshiping Jesus Christ.



I am sick to death of an asshole I didn't vote for, telling me how to worship. 



I'm even more pissed off about my bishops, who are more concerned about being invited to the right parties than about tending to their flocks.



With my family I joked about crowdfunding an assassination of a few mayors and a few bishops. The response was less of a laugh and more of an "I'm afraid that you'd make money."


It's gotten so bad that I've had people suggest running for public office in New York.



It's so bad, I'm considering it.



I want to violate every mask regulation on a daily basis. The only reason I don't is because the jackbooted thugs have closed down the few places I like going. For once in my life, I've gone to my nearby parks, just so I can go somewhere and flaunt the mask laws.



Mercifully, my local cops are more concerned about riots than masks. 



Speaking of Black Lives Matter, don't you like their political privileges? After months of Jews being denied the quorum required for services (a minion is ten people-- De Blasio capped gatherings at 9) and funerals and masses being denied, BLM can go riot without masks on or social distancing, and wreck whole city streets without consequence.



Talk to me again about white privilege? 



Fuck it. I'm done for right now.


While I think about it, please remember to vote in the Dragon Awards. The nominations period is up on July 19th -- this Sunday.


My Dragon Award ballot is here.


Voting is here.

Hollywood Politics

One of the things I hate about Hollywood is that they claim to be premiere artists, when they're really just garbage human beings churning out garbage films for the sake of garbage.



Then, when they realize they need money, they will make something good. Or buy rights to a comic book IP and cross their fingers. Aren't we due for another remake of the Shadow? I actually liked that one... so probably not.



But yeah, their attempts are "art" films almost never work. Unless it's Clint Eastwood's Oscar bait. 



Can we all agree that Art should have something ... true about it? In Die Hard, we have heroism in an ordinary guy who spends the movie getting cut up, shot up and beat up. In A Quiet Place, we have family. In Halloween, we have the truth of pure evil ... and that sex will deplete your situational awareness.



Recently, I looked at an old blog of mine on Hollywood's obsession with Nazis. And it occurred to me that they would go out of their way to ignore every real, contemporaneous evil in the world, rather than 

We need someone evil. 

Let's see... MS-13, Jihadis, China...

Someone involved in the slave trade!

Still MS-13, Jihadis, China...

Someone who tramps on the rights of their citizens

Okay, that's the Middle East and China.

Someone who racist and hates women.

The Middle East for sure! ... and China.

Someone with death camps!

Definitely China. 

Someone who cuts up people for actual spare parts!

Planned Parenthood... and China. 

I have it! Nazis!

It's gotten so bad, an author I respected, Jon Land, in one of his latest Texas Ranger novels, decided that the villain of the piece was Hitler's Great Grandson... and that the one of our heroes' killed Hitler's Grandson in prison... after the OTHER hero had her father hunt down Hitler's son after escaping a Texas POW camp in 1944...



Yes, really.



Oh, yeah, and Hitler's Great Grandson was behind Brexit, Marie Le Pen... and a few other unbelievable bits of BS that I have since burned out of my brain.



Then again, why should I expect any truth from Hollywood about anything? Jack Reed and William Durante were reporters who covered the Russian Revolution, and covered up every horror and atrocity committed in the name of progress. Durante got an award for COVERING UP A MAN MADE FAMINE IN UKRAINE.



Hollywood, of course, have spun the history of both Jack Reed and William Durante into heroes, in a fiction so unrecognizable, there is more truth in Team America: World Police than Hollywood's "historical" movies. 



Who am I kidding? There was more truth in Team America: World Police than some "documentaries."



People wonder why I haven't reviewed many movies over the past few years. It's because of crap like this. Because Hollywood is in the pocket of scum. Not surprising, because most of them are scum -- and if they aren't scum because of what they do, they're scum because of who they protect. Funny how "everyone knew" about Harvey Weinstein, but no one said anything about him until after he was safely in jail.





And those who aren't scum, or supporting scum by proxy, they will take billions of dollars from China, who are the Nazis of today. And if we had any justice in the world, we would have bombed the shit out of them by now.



[Insert longwinded, deranged, murderous rant where genocide on the human race is a valid plan A, B, and C.]



.... Anyway, I'm pissed off and cranky today, but it's Monday. What else is new? I'm going to stop now before I suggest wholesale slaughter of major cities. And get off my lawn...



Mutter mutter....



While I think about it, please remember to vote in the Dragon Awards. The nominations period is up on July 19th -- this Sunday.



My Dragon Award ballot is here.



Voting is here.

Building a Saint

I've been going through a lot of old posts lately as I cut them up and turn them into Twitter threads. It's had some success, and there are people who have never read them before. I might get around to rewriting them here as well. Because there are a lot of things that have changed lately, and some notes I need to stress.



But I noticed I put in a LOT of thought into creating Marco and Amanda for Honor at Stake, et al. Make them polar opposites, yet very similar. How does each one work within the world I've made for them. That sort of thing.



I've never done that for Tommy Nolan.



It's odd. Because I tend to put in a TON of thought into character and biography. Probably too much. My original thought of character creation was to make a character, build a whole biography, wind them up, drop them in a situation, then let them wander. 








Every book prior to Hell Spawn was a seat of the pants affair.



Then along came Saint Tommy. And I haven't needed to do anything for him on that scale.



Sure, I do have more background on him in my head, but that's only come up within the last few books. And I don't even mean the books that are published yet. Book #8, Hussar, is where I have the germ of an idea for more of Tommy's background.



When I wrote Hell Spawn , all I knew about Tommy was that he was married with a kid, he was homeschooled, and more or less educated via the Opus Dei. I mentioned that he and his wife had "family out of state." When I needed someplace to stash Mariel and the kids during Saint Tommy abroad ( City of Shadows , Crusader , and Deus Vult ), I invented family in Tennessee.



That was the extent of my knowledge of Tommy's background.



Yes, there is little bits and pieces of Tommy Nolan scattered throughout my books. A character of the same name has appeared in Honor at Stake , and in A Pius Stand , but they are officially not the same person. Silver Empire wants separate IPs. There's nothing that forbids reader headcanon.



But even if you included his appearances in both of them, there was nothing that really added to the character. 



Now, in part, this was done in order to keep down the cast of characters. Hell Spawn was after some reviewers were confused by the cast of The Pius Trilogy, and even the Love at First Bite series spiraled into a sizable cast.






Obviously, if I haven't written and designed Tommy's parents, I can't have him call them for help or advice, or have subplots with them. The same with grandparents or in-laws.





Obviously, this hasn't worked in the long run. I tried to downplay the existence of everyone else in Hell Spawn as much as was reasonable. Wouldn't want people to get confused, after all. Then again, it was a first person point of view, how confused could people get?





Reading some of the dumber one star reviews, pretty confused. But those were 100% pure moron, so I don't feel so bad. But they weren't confused about characters. So, win!





And yes, after a while, the cast has spiraled. Like everything else in my writing. 



The ME, Doctor Sinead Holland
Father Richard Freeman, PhD
Father Michael Pearson
Bokor Baracus (after a fashion)
Alex Packard
Jeremy
Lena
Mariel 
Grace
William Carlton
Texas Ranger Lloyd Lermon (wait for Hussar)
Pope Pius XIII
Aux Bishop Xavier "XO" O'Brian

Now, all 13 of these people have not yet shown up on the page at the same time, or even in the same book. Thankfully. Yet. I don't have that planned, either, but we'll see.






I will note that I've had no reviews or comments asking about Tommy's background. No one. No one cares. In fact, the only person asking for it is my wife, when I mentioned a character idea I was going to use in Hussar, but I postponed for Dark Web. Assuming that Dark Web happens as outlined.





Park of it has been influenced by the Pulp crew I deal with online. In part because, well, we don't have anything about the Shadow's background, do we? He used to be a really bad guy, he now kills really bad guys with dual wielding forty-fives.





There's more than a few other influences about the Shadow as well. But then, I have more than a few characters who can say yes to "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men." Tommy isn't technically one of them.





All I've really needed from Tommy for his character has been is his acts and his works, as well as his faith. His social life is his family and his church--gun club, soup kitchen, prayer rallies, etc. In Infernal Affairs , his wife is pregnant, so they do get some alone time.
The one thing I've had to put work into --and I've put work into it--was giving him a flaw. Well, a few flaws. He has a temper. He gets angry. He rarely gives into it, so everyone looks at him like he has three heads when he mentions it.

His confessions are like the following.

"Bless me father for I have sinned, it's been a week since my last confession.""Tommy, honestly, what could you have done in a week?""I cuffed a child molester. I wanted to hit him upside the head.""Did you?""No. But I was probably a little rough with the cuffs.""... Tommy? Take a breath."

Over time, I do have things that get to him. And his anger is where demons get at him... because the only anger Tommy feels is safe is anger at himself. You can see where that can go wrong. 

The solution to these little dark nights is reason and rationality. There was a guilt trip an editor wanted me to inflict on Tommy in book one. My solution? Directly address it as completely irrational from his perspective, because that would have required him to be omniscient.



But hitting him where it hurts means he feels first, and thinks later. Heh heh heh.



It's odd. I wrote  Hell Spawn  in late 2017 for release in late 2018, and now I've finished book 10, and I'm having trouble thinking back to what everything was like writing book one. I guess it's good I'm thinking about it while I can.



If you haven't read Hell Spawn  or any of the others yet, now's a good time to start, because the series is coming to a head.



Or should I say that all Hell is about to break loose?

#PulpSpeed Ahead

Yikes, it's been a busy couple of weeks.



So, I've finished writing book #10 of Saint Tommy, NYPD.



This one is called Lightbringer.



As usual, I remain my standard subtle self.



You have to be wondering at this point "book 10? Declan, isn't book 7 still only on your publisher website? Where's books 8 and 9?"



Hussar and Destiny--books 8 and 9-- are still in the process of being made ready. Cover artists can only move so fast. And I dropped Hussar and Destiny on Silver Empire the same... day? The same week? I honestly don't recall.



Why am I pushing so hard? Why not take a break?



Because I'm too lazy to take a break. Taking a break requires energy to stop. My sin of sloth is in my work ethic. I don't have an off button. I work forty days a week. When I'm not physically at the keyboard, trust me, I'm at least thinking about work. The pressure in my skull builds when I'm not working. Either that, or I've had a three month sinus infection... or meningitis.



Hmm. That would explain my bloody noses. I haven't started bleeding from the eyes and ears yet, so I must be doing okay.



As I write this, Lightbringer is being looked at by the last beta reader, a woman who is easily confused if I'm not crystal clear, and who reads newspapers with a set of red and blue writing implements. 



So that will soon be going to Silver Empire soon, right after the editor.



Right now, the coming stories are 




8) Hussar
9) Destiny
10) Lightbringer
11) Dark Web
12) Blue Saint



As you can imagine, I'm a little tired. Exhausted. But I'm in the home stretch. I'm almost done. If I push for the next six weeks, I will be done with Saint Tommy. 



Yes, this is the finale. How will it end? If you read Hell Spawn, you should have an idea. Heh heh heh.



Why am I wrapping up Tommy? Unlike Arthur Conan-Doyle, I still like Tommy. Like him, I need to wrap up the character so I can move on to other projects that I've wanted to get to. In some cases, I've wanted to get to them for nearly a year now.



And me? Burnout? Naww. It'll be fine.



Anyway, the next three books will be in the hands of other people at the moment-- editors and artists and etc. 



Please remember to vote in the Dragon Awards. You can vote here if you have an idea of what you're voting for.  If not, I have a ballot with some thoughts. Just remember to vote for Deus Vult in horror.