Been busy the past month moving stuff around at the office and two infusions in February, so I didn’t have a lot of energy to spare for anything outside of a bit of writing.

Melissa Olthoff and I finished our edits for Book 1 of our new series, and last night we detail outlined Book 2. We have a rough sketch of what’s going on in Book 3, so the opening trilogy is pretty much set. We’ll have more news on that in the coming weeks. We also finished our short story for Jamie Ibson’s next Baen anthology, Plausibly Deniable, and the story is set in the same universe as our new trilogy. It’s called To Catch A Crow and it is… wild. Yeah, let’s go with that. My guess would be that this anthology is coming out in Spring 2026, not sure.

By the way, if you haven’t checked Melissa’s stuff out yet, might I recommend Rise From Ruin? It is one of the best fantasy books I’ve had the privilege of reading in the past ten years. I got to read it early (perks of my day job) but you can read it now in eARC form, or pre-order it from Barnes & Noble or at Amazon and wait until June. Plus, it has a gorgeous cover by Pierluigi Abbondanza.

Still hard at work for the first Quintus Fox novel, Bounty Hunter. It’s at 75% done barring some edits and continuity checks. I thought turning a series of short stories into a cohesive novel would be easy, but I forgot that I played fast and loose with continuity in the short stories (because they were never intended to become the foundation for a couple of novels, Jason!) so lining things up has been more work than anticipated. Still, that June release date is going to be easily managed. The release date in September for the second Quintus Fox novel Moons Run Red is manageable as well. I’m feeling pretty good about both deadlines.

I didn’t mention it when it happened, but I got the last stories in for my next anthology, Dancing with Destruction, set for a July release from Baen Books. I’ve got stories from David Weber & Marisa Wolf, Nick Cole & Jason Anspach, Kacey Ezell, Jacob Holo & Edie Skye, Rick Partlow, Joelle Presby, Blaine Pardoe, Nick Steverson & Melissa Olthoff. I’m proud of the authors who participated in this one. They all jumped on this story concept and ran with it, and gave me a lot of fun (and sometimes dark…) stories. I almost got an entire novel from Cole & Anspach! Don’t worry, they cut it down a little…

I only have two more anthologies to do (Monster Hunter Files 2 and Chaos and Consequences) and then I think I’m taking a break from them. They’re fun, but it’s an entirely different experience than writing, and managing people is not one of my favorite things to do. I mean, I can do it, obviously, but I’m not one of those people who can’t wait to dive back into editing and building an anthology. Writing the short story is easier than editing it.

My next convention appearance is Libertycon in June. After that, it gets busy. Right now I’m planning on attending CrashCityCon in Roanoke, VA Aug 22-24, Dragoncon Aug 28-Sept 2 in Atlanta (I am going to hate life after those two back-to-back), and then WyVaCon (Wytheville, VA) in October and Dragonsteel Nexus December 4-6 in Salt Lake City, UT. There might be another convention in September but it’s unlikely. I probably won’t have the energy for it, since an infusion falls directly between Dragoncon and it. Plus, I usually get sick after Dragoncon, and with my cancer treatments ongoing, getting sick isn’t recommended.

Speaking of… we had a bit of a scare last month when my liver values decided to skyrocket for no damn reason. They almost stopped the treatments because they didn’t want to cause liver failure. The next time they did my bloodwork, they saw the liver values had dropped back down. Still higher than previous but back within the good margins, so treatments can continue. It also caused everything arthritic in my body to flare up and I was a walking meat puppet of pain for about three weeks.

Good times.