It’s amazing the amount of crap that can happen over the course of two weeks, am I right?

First off, the kinda bad news — CKP has declined to pick up the fifth book in the Kin Wars Saga, WINTERBORN. This isn’t entirely unexpected as sales in the series have flagged since the first two. Call it bad timing or what you will, but neither DEATHLORDS or HOMEGUARD reached the threshold necessary to make the books extremely popular. I understand CKP’s decision, but it does put me in a bind as I’ve spent the last few months working on a book which is no longer going to be published for them.

Side note: this is why authors like advances.

However, this isn’t the end of the series. Far from it, actually. I know a thing or two about self-publishing, and have many friends who go this route with tremendous success. Commissioning a cover artist can be costly, true. but if you know someone and you’ve been a Patreon supporter of theirs for long enough to qualify you for a discount on all commission pieces… The Kin Wars will continue, and I will see this series to the end. One way of the other.

Then the next bad news — I went to the ER late Thursday night/Friday morning for possible torsion/hernia/appendicitis. Since I’m already up and about, you probably guessed it wasn’t any of those three. It was a kidney stone, small one, but located in a spot which confused everyone — doctor, nurses, and me. I mean, who gets a kidney stone and has absolutely zero back pain?

Well, during the kidney stone process they loaded me up with contrast dye to see what the hell was going on inside me (again, everyone is thinking appendicitis at this point because remember, no back pain) and they find a kidney stone. Okay, this is good news, because it means I won’t have an apendectomy. But… while they were doing the CT scan with the contrast dye, they noticed a very strange and suspicious spot on my liver.

So… in the next six months I’ll be setting up an appointment with a specialist to see what’s going on here. The doctor stated either it’s nothing or we caught it early enough that the kidney stone possibly saved my life. Yay?

I’m actually glad the kidney stone happened, now that I’m no longer throwing up and fully convinced the pain was going to kill me. We’ll get this looked at, find out it’s a huge nothingburger, and I’ll just continue on writing until I’m really old and gray. That’s the plan, and I plan on sticking to it.

In the meantime, support your local author. Buy a book. Leave a review. Share the heck out of your favorite Cordova novel.