The shingles are starting to go away some, so I’ve been up and moving about a little more now that the pain is manageable. It still kinda sucks, and from the looks of things I’m going to have severe scarring around my ribs on my right side, but otherwise I should make a full recovery. Once this is over I’m going back to the VA and saying “okay, two times before I’m 42 is MORE than enough! Give me the vaccine!”

I was in quite a bit of pain yesterday and forgot to post that SONS OF THE LION is now available on Audible. The 2019 Dragon Award finalist was read by Todd McLaren. He’s done the Altered Carbon series, Halo, and all of the other 4HU books. He’s probably one of the best narrators out there. What’s really cool is that Audible is giving away a free 30 day trial right now to get people to sign up. If you do, you get two Audible credits for free. That means you can purchase SONS OF THE LION as well as WRAITHKIN, narrated by Rob Saladino. And you can cancel the membership when your 30 days are up. If you’re worried about me not getting paid, don’t be. I get paid whether Audible gives it to you as a freebie or not.

Winter is actually threatening to occur this weekend. I’ll believe it when I see it. We haven’t had a good solid snow in 2-3 years now. Sure, it snows, but it doesn’t quite snow. I’ll admit my time living in Colorado has colored my expectations slightly about what snowing means, not to mention my time in Indiana during college.

Projects I am working on include the sooper sekrit fantasy project where I’m teaming up with a New York Times bestselling author to bring you, the reader, an all new world with a rich history and massive world (in other words, Jason the Historian went nuts with his world building and the coauthor nodded and said, “I’ll allow it”). One thing I really love to do is to world build. It sometimes drives fellow authors nuts, especially in the case of the Four Horsemen universe, where I will go into the history and drive behind a race people had been, up to that point, painting as one-dimensional. It gets me more than a few looks. 😀

Another project is the direct sequel to SONS OF THE LION. Titled DAUGHTERS OF THE PRIDE, it follows Lieutenant Sunshine as she struggles to navigate a dangerous universe in order to pass along a message so that her adoptive family’s sacrifice was not in vain. It’s been a punch in the guts writing this one, because I never realized how much I liked Sunshine as a character until she got her own book. Yeah, she had a lot of promise in SotL, but she’s coming into her own and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

I’m also working on the second Littlest Kaiju book, THE UNLUCKIEST LEPRECHAUN. These are cute and fun to write, and don’t take me as much time as some of the others. I was joking around with the cover artist the other day about the possibility of there being 12 of these books eventually. I think it would be pretty cool, personally. One book for each month, but spread out across a few years. That could show Georgie growing and getting into more hijinks while trying to keep his existence hidden from Kyra’s parents.

My next convention I will be attending is Mar 20-22 in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina at FantaSci. There will be a lot of terrific authors in attendance. I’m looking forward to it. I’ll have extra copies of A CHRISTMAS SURPRISE if anyone wants to pick up an autograph. I’ll have the entire series of the Kin Wars Saga as well, and both SONS OF THE LION and GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY with me.

Speaking of all of the above, have you left a review yet? Amazon does funky things with its algorithms for book recommendations and the best way to support your favorite author (or me, your third favorite) is to leave reviews. They don’t need to be hundreds of words long, double spaced, 12 pt font in New Times Roman. You can simply say “Loved the book. You should buy it!” and that’s that. I won’t complain about that because it’s still a review, and a positive review to boot.