Milestones on Three Big Projects
A lot of big milestones have come together in the past few days. I’ll outline them each here:
Kangblabla! Cover Art
Cover art is [mostly] finished for my upcoming space comedy short-story collection called Kangblabla! It did not take long to put this book together, since two of the five stories collected were already written for the Pew! Pew! collections. I took those two stories, then added in two short 5,000 word pieces and one even shorter 2,000 word piece and bundled it all up. Talk about a fast book to put together!
For the cover, I wanted to emulate a Jack Kirby comic-booky style. I wanted it to be reminiscent of old Marvel Avengers covers, but still have some quirkiness to it to show that it is a comedy.
I recruited Lloyd Ladera for the artwork and had Sarah Anderson do the design and text. This is the end result:
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What you see above is the front cover and Kindle cover, but the full paperback cover still has to be finished. Right now there is no spine or back-cover design, but that is in progress now.
Kangblabla! has no set release date and I do not intend to put it up for pre-order. My plan is to simply release the book when it is ready, which I anticipate being either this month or November.
101-Day Running Challenge Story
On the non-fiction side of things, many of you may know that I write for a local publication, Run Washington Magazine. I don’t usually write about it on this blog, but one story in particular is pretty close to me and I am very proud of and I wanted to share it here:
https://www.runwashington.com/2018/10/16/friend-compete-in-101-day-running-challenge/
Unlike most of the stories I write, this one is actually about me and something that I did over the summer. I am very excited to get this story up and out there for the world to see.
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Battle Planet: The Champion of Earth
Now that I am finished writing The Color of Water and Sky series, I’ve started working on my next sci-fi book, which I’m calling Battle Planet: The Champion of Earth. I eluded to it briefly in my previous post about future projects, but now it is officially in progress!
The premise is this: Five humans are kidnapped at random and brought to a gladiator-style fighting arena in space where they battle monsters for survival.
The idea for this story was inspired by a couple of things: Planet Hulk, The Hunger Games, Thor: Ragnarok and to a degree even the movie Atomic Blonde. And I based main character off of some cover art I saw for a different book, which you can see below:
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In short, there are a whole lot of different elements mashed together here in the story Battle Planet. From sci-fi, to old gladiator stories, to even a bit of Cold War bits.
I am now 13,000 words into writing Battle Planet and still early on in the story. I’m having a blast putting this story together.
One thing I am really looking forward to about this book will be my ability to advertise it. Right now I am discovering that The Color of Water and Sky is difficult to advertise. The title does not really say what it is about and the subject is so niche that I really have no way of knowing how to reach an audience interested in post-apocalyptic deep-sea zombie survival space-operas. Just describing the premise is difficult. Battle Planet on the other hand tells you a lot about the story in two words, so I expect that selling it will be much easier.
That’s all for now. It’s been an exciting couple of days. As always, check back here for more details.
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