Yeah, it freaks me out a little, too. Only nineteen more days until my first solo novel from Baen Books is released!

Mountain of Fire is one of those really cool ideas that pop into your head when the publisher asks if you could turn a short story into a novel. Using a few towns I lived/worked in rural Appalachia, it was relatively easy to look at the entire area and realizing that it would do rather well in a zombie apocalypse–assuming it’s a biological contaminant, and not a magical zombie outbreak. If you ever find yourself driving along I-64 and close to West Virginia and you’ve read this book, you’re going to start looking around and getting strange vibes.

While the girl’s school is fictional, the location where it was built is not. If you know where to look, you’ll see there actually is a school there, and it was built back in the 1910s or so. Dig deeper and you’ll discover that the underground bunker in the book is real as well, the reasoning for the nuclear emergency bunker (both the Greenbrier and the Homestead are not too far away) and located at said school.

In other news, I turned in a short story that is going to be given away for free at Baen.com next month as well, and covers the escape from Richmond for some characters people will come to know in Mountain of Fire. The story is called The Last Convoy of River City and covers the fall of Richmond, Virginia in the early days of the Black Tide Rising.

Nick Steverson and I have a release date for the first book in an all-new Salvage Universe series titled “The Invasion.” Salvage Purgatory is Book 1 and scheduled for an October 4, 2024 release. Salvage Harbinger, Book 2, should be out soon after, probably November. Once I have the date, I’ll share it here. Unfortunately, CKP doesn’t do preorders, so I can’t direct you to a link now for it. However, I’ll be blasting it far and wide when I have more info. And no, I haven’t seen the cover for it yet. When I see the final, you will, too.

A few months back I signed a contract to edit another anthology for Baen Books. No, this wasn’t for Monster Hunter Files Vol. 2, though I’m supposed to be co-editing that one with Larry Correia. The contract was for a project I quasi-inherited from someone else, and the last story was turned in, and contracts to authors have been mailed out. Dancing with Destruction is coming in Summer 2025, and it’s one hell of an anthology. It only (only?!) has nine stories, but I’ve got stories from David Weber & Marisa Wolf (their first official collaboration story!), Nick Cole & Jason Anspach (a WarGate novella), Rick “The Machine” Partlow, Blaine Pardoe (of Battletech fame!), Kacey Ezell, Melissa Olthoff & Nick Steverson, and Joelle Presby (a story set in her Dabare Snake Launcher universe). Oh, and I wrote a story, too. (EDIT: MATH IS HARD! Jacob Holo & Edie Skye teamed up to write a story as well, set in the Sol Blazers universe!!!) Truth be told, it’s more accurate to say I have 8 novelettes and 1 novella. Not a story in the bunch is under the 7,500 word short story threshold. Oops?

Once I have the preorder link, it’ll be up. Oh, and for this, I have seen the cover, and once again Kurt Miller absolutely crushed it.

Working on a seekrit project right now, as well as a more publicly-known one. Both should be done by… Nov 1? Yeah, that sounds reasonable. One will definitely be done by then, at least. Then it’s onto… uh… more Monster Hunter Memoirs? I’m not sure. There’s a big hole in my writing schedule at the end of the year.

So here’s my current release schedule–

• August — Tomorrow’s Troopers (from Baen Books, edited by Hank Davis & David Afsharirad) featuring my short story, Imperfect Mind. It’s for sale everywhere Baen books are sold.
• September — Mountain of Fire (from Baen Books, set in the bestselling Black Tide Rising universe) You can still preorder it.
• September — The Last Convoy of River City (from Baen Books) I’ll post the free link when I have it.
• October — Salvage Purgatory (from CKP, set in the Salvage Title universe and is the start of a new series) I’ll post the link when I’ve got it.
• November — Side Hustle Vol. 2 (from me, a collection of my short stories from over the years) You can still preorder it.
• November/December — Salvage Harbinger (from CKP, Salvage Title universe, book 2 of The Invasion) Again, will post the link when I have it.
• Summer 2025 — Dancing with Destruction (from Baen Books, an anthology I edited) another one of those where I’ll post the link when it drops

As I’m quickly learning in this industry, you stay busy, or you starve. I like food, so gotta #respectthehustle.