Jason Cordova's Website

My interview with SF Shenanigans went live yesterday. Had a lot of fun with JR and Chris as we discussed the new subgenre of LitRPG and how The Warp falls into that category. We also discussed early influences and how I totally fanboi’d Timothy Zahn the first time I met him.

Interview here

Got an email from another publisher this past week explaining that the next anthology I’m in, Sha’Daa: Toys, is either going to come out at the end of March or mid-April. This is great actually, since mid-April is the same time that Darkling will be released. One week, two books… haven’t done that since September of last year.

Still crushing it on Deathlords. This book is going to be a little slower paced as it goes, but I think that it’s a good change as our intrepid heroes and heroines have the suffer from the consequences of their actions, both good and bad. From there it’s Book 4, which I’m still deciding what the title is. Right now it’s between two different names, and whichever one isn’t chosen will be Book 5.

Yes, I’ve plotted for nine books in the series.

Still writing, still forgetting to update the website regularly.

Deathlords is currently just over 50% complete. I had to go back and delete some stuff due to it simply not working, but the goal of having it done and turned in by April 30 is good. I estimate getting it to the First Readers by April 10th. Then I’ll take a break from the Kin Wars Saga to work on a project with collaborator Christopher L. Smith, which is set in Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy’s Four Horsemen Universe. We don’t have a work-in-progress title yet but it encompasses both of our short stories from A Fistful of Credits and The Good, The Bad, and The Merc. Good stuff.

BASKETBALL SEASON IS OVER!!! As much fun as it was this season, it was exhausting. We participated in an end of the season tournament in Summersville, West Virginia. We went in as the #2 seed and finished in second place. Two of my players finished 1-2 in the dunk contest and another boy finished in 2nd for the three point shootout. One was named to the All-Tournament 2nd Team, while two were named to the All-Tournament First Team. Our leading scorer for the season was named Tournament MVP by the broadcasting company, which was pretty cool. As usual the crowd was fully on our side and though we lost in the final game, we gave the champs a scare they won’t forget. Best part? Our leading scorer is up for Player of the Year for the region of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. I’m hoping it leads to bigger and better things for the graduating senior.

Next year is going to be interesting, since we’re going to have to go small and simply out-shoot the other teams. Given how… poorly we shot the three ball this season, that’s either going to be amazing or amazingly bad. I have faith in the guys, especially since the majority of them are currently freshmen and sophomores. I think they’ll be fine if they have a little confidence in themselves, something that they lacked at times this season. Still, finishing the season with a 12-13 win/loss record isn’t bad at all. Next year our goal is 15 wins.

I was recently featured by my workplace on their Facebook page while talking to the 10th grade English class about being a writer. The kids weren’t too interested in first (they see me all the time so it wasn’t as if they were getting some stranger, so the awe factor was a little low) but they did become interested when I told them about some other authors I know and how well they’re doing, primarily John Ringo and Larry Correia. The “money” factor definitely got their attention. I told them that success like that was not common but they didn’t seem to care. One of the boys suggested later that a successful writer is like a successful rapper. Never thought of it like that before but there are some parallels. Granted, I don’t think writers ever really get into drive-by shootings, but there are some similarities in structuring a career and “getting a big break” from hard work and constantly honing your craft.

Don’t forget: Darkling, the sequel to Wraithkin, will be out on April 13, 2018. Make sure you leave a review when you finish the book! This is an intense and emotional roller coaster filled with mayhem, death, fights, love, loyalty, and most importantly, family ties.

Darkling – Book 2 of the Kin Wars Saga

I just got over some viral infection (yay!) so things have been slow around at Casa Cordova these past few weeks. I am definitely looking forward to the release of Darkling on April 13, 2018. I am also still hard at work on Deathlords, which is looking more and more like a Libertycon 31 release (June 29-July 1, 2018) if I can get it turned in on time. Considering I finally worked past the last issue of the book last night while watching TV (thank you Altered Carbon) I think the self-imposed deadline will definitely be met.

I heard that Sha’Daa: Toys will be coming out around Libertycon 31 as well. Two books in one weekend? Exciting! On top of that I just submitted a proposal for another short story for a national bestselling series that I’m waiting to hear back from. Positive opinion of the idea from the editor so far, but I need to write it soon.

Did an interview for a podcast on Friday. Not sure when it goes live, but when it does you’ll hear about it. We spoke about LitRPG and the rise of the subgenre (spoiler bit: I had never heard of it until I was approached, then realized later that I wrote it).

Basketball team currently sits at 9-11, which isn’t horrible. It should be 12-8 though, potentially even 14-6 due to some losses that shouldn’t have happened. We have a massive tournament this coming weekend (Mar 2-3) in West Virginia that will end our season, win or lose. Our goal is to walk out holding the giant championship trophy. If we can do it, well, I wouldn’t be shocked. We are a very talented team that just needs more time together. Since I’m only graduating two seniors, that looks great. The downside is that one of the seniors is about 50% of our offense.

Other than that, not a whole lot going on right now.

Turned in the completed Darkling to my publisher over at Theogony Books and am super excited about this. So far the First Reader responses have been far more enthusiastic over this book than they were with Wraithkin, which is saying something.

Already 30% of the way through Deathlords as well. The deeper I get into this series the easier it’s becoming to write. This is good.

2017 was a strange year. It had some tremendous highs and a few lows.

The hardest part of the year was putting down Wally-cat. He was still a young cat (6 years old) when the decision was made. He was suffering from kidney failure and it was a genetic thing that nobody caught until he became a little old. I buried him next to Sophie out on the farm, so he can hang with the only dog he ever liked. I still miss him and occasionally catch myself asking Casper where his brother is.

I had to rehome Odin due to him just not getting enough attention. I hated leaving him in his crate all the time but with my work schedule it wasn’t feasible to do much with him. Fortunately I found a nice family that I knew who were willing to take him on. I still get to go visit him regularly and he’s always happy to see me. He traded 8 teenage boys for 2 teenagers, so he’s pretty happy that he has someone to run with still.

My work was exhausting this year but I survived it. We had a staffing shortage at one point and I was working 6 days straight, 24 hours a day for just over three months. That killed any extra energy I might have needed, but it all worked out in the end.

I also survived another Libertycon. This one was a lot of fun because I got to hang out with people I hadn’t seen in years and finally met the guy who pretty much is my twin, Jon Del Arroz. Now that people have seen us in the same place together they will quit confusing us.

In 2017, I released or turned in a lot of stuff for the publishers. The list follows:

1. Paint the Sky, my Four Horsemen Universe short story which featured the first Liberian mercenary unit in the 4H universe. It was in A Fistful of Credits, and edited by Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy. It was pretty popular from what I heard.
2. Magnum Opus was released in the Michael Z Williamson Freehold universe anthology, Forged in Blood. Again, pretty good reviews (61 five-stars as of this moment) and lots of people really liked Rowan Moran, the Operative in my story. I love working with Baen Books and really, really need to get them a standalone or series.
3. Corruptor was re-released as a science fiction YA book in September, mere days after Forged in Blood came out, which is what it is at it’s core, by Anticipation Press. I’d resecured the rights to the novel earlier this year and it was almost immediately snapped up by another publisher. The sales have been slow, but I figured that would happen due to it being 7 years old. However, the publisher didn’t get the rights to a single novel, oh no. As you’ll see later on this list, they got much much more.
4. Then I got word that the Japanese translation of Kaiju Apocalypse came out in Japan from Takeshobo. The cover was awesome and I really enjoyed seeing my name in Japanese. I’m still waiting to see about getting a copy of that novel.
5. Right after that I turned in the long-awaited sequel to Corruptor, titled Devastator. This is coming out in 11 days (Jan 12) so be ready. I was insanely thrilled about getting this one in, since I got to go back to The Warp and do crazy things that break the laws of physics and tease with something else going on in my electronic worlds.
6. Best of all, I closed the year off with a bang as my second Kakata Korps short story was picked up and published in The Good, The Bad, and The Merc, the third anthology in the 4HU. Keep the Home Fires Burning is about honor and duty, while keeping the family and tribe together as a whole. It’s also about a bit of becoming more than just a mercenary unit, and potentially becoming a savior to a people who have been forgotten as the world moved on.

This was a fairly productive year overall. Basketball continues to do well as last year’s returning players have helped the newcomers adjust to the frantic pace I demand, as well as how to properly run Havok and the offense. Win percentage is up over last year at this point, and I can see this team doing very well at the year end tournament.

So a pretty eventful year overall. No complaints from me here. I hope that 2018 can be even better.

…until Devastator is live. Not that I’m counting.

Yesterday I was going through Darkling before I started really cranking it out and finishing it up by New Year’s (that’s my goal) when I realized that I had an empty chapter placeholder just… sitting there. Like that puppy in the window that nobody wants, Chapter 11 was just staring at me. No notes, not /// marks to let me know I was working on something in there. I was a bit curious because I knew whose chapters were in 10 and 12 (Christine chapters, the lot of them) but I had no idea who was supposed to be 11. I even read the book and saw that there wasn’t a gap between character scenes that needed to be filled.

So who is it? Where did he come from?

So from the looks of things I’m going to have a 100K word novel with only 16 chapters in it. At least I didn’t pull a We Few. You know, the novel that John sent to David without a single chapter in it? That was an amusing story to hear from both sides of things.

January 1 I’ll be getting ready to finish my bender and knock out Obliterator, then finish off The Warp with Vindicator. Then back on over to the Kin Wars Saga to finish of the third book of the first trilogy, Deathlords. Two more unannounced books later and that should wrap up my 2018.

Oh, throw in a few short stories for friends and whatnot that I owe (sorry!). Forgot about those.