The Alien Chronicles has been published on Amazon and the reception has been wonderful! It's currently poised at #8 in Science Fiction Anthologies with 12 5-star reviews. The early mentions of my story, The Grove have been positive, which is very exciting, because The Grove is a prequel to another novel I hope to publish in late 2015 or early 2016 (after the sequel to Fluency has been published).

I recently shipped off a bunch of Fluency paperbacks to my new publisher in Germany, where Fluency will be translated and traditionally published. I'm not sure yet when that will go to market. The book has also been sold in Russia. Very exciting!

In a recent blog post I told you about how I was diversifying and putting Fluency up across platforms--iTunes, Nook, Google Play etc. Well, that flopped. I've taken the book down from those vendors and reinvested in exclusivity with Amazon, the people who made my career happen. I may try to go wide again when Remenance comes out.

So, I now have a link to share: 

This link to FLUENCY, which I've now engineered to take you to YOUR Amazon store in YOUR country. Technology is so cool!

I'm sorry if you're wanting to find links to other platforms, but I needed to make a business decision. I owe a lot to Amazon. It has been very good to me, as an organization. And I have my boys' college funds to save for and bills to pay just like everyone else.

In other news, IndieReader reviewed Fluency and gave it 5-stars! They said some lovely things like: 

So that's been pretty exciting!

The Hugo Award Winning SFSignal podcast recently interviewed Rachel Aaron and she mentioned how much she loved reading Fluency. This is a podcast with some great timely info. I'm going to try to listen to it more often. I just happened to be listening because I love Rachel's book, Fortune's Pawn, when all of a sudden she just mentioned me and my book. My jaw dropped and I started to hyperventilate. What a crazy moment!

There's probably lots more I could say but my dance card is full. I need to get back to writing! Oh, and one more thing--I'm re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, probably for the first time since high school and LOVING IT. Read on!

So, if you would like the more perfect version, please go to Amazon and click on "your account" in the upper right corner. Then, "Manage your content and devices." Once that page is open, you have three headings to choose from.

If you click on "Settings," and scroll down, you will have the option of "Automatic Book Update." If you have clicked that on, then you'll get updates to all of the books in your library when Amazon deems that improvements have been made. 

That's all I can do from my end. If Amazon doesn't deem the change I made to the document as an "improvement" then there's not much I can do. All new copies going out now are proper. ✔️

The paperback version is a smidge more difficult to wrangle. I'm still working on that one. It should be available in updated form soon.

I'll be doing another book signing at an amazing SFF bookstore in my state called Robots and Rogues New and Used Books on September 13 from 11 am to 1 pm. 

Here's the event's page on Facebook. Let us know if you're planning to attend! 

If you're in the area, stop in and check it out. I'll sign your book and you can explore this amazing shop dedicated to all things Science Fiction and Fantasy. There are very few independent bookstores in existence that are quite like this place. Let's keep it open by buying lots of books! It's worth a trip! Check! ✔️

That's all for now! The website is giving me fits. More soon!

FLUENCY has been out for about a month now. The response to this little scifi novel has been simply astonishing. 

A whirlwind. 

And for the most part I’ve just been speechless at the warm reception it has received. I’m grateful for the support the novel has gotten from scifi readers around the world. Questions are pouring into my inbox, so I decided I would take a moment to address them.

First and foremost on readers' minds seems to be: Is FLUENCY the first in a series? Will there be a sequel? When will that sequel be available?

YES.

FLUENCY is the first novel in what I’m tentatively calling THE CONFLUENCE SERIES. I have plans for at least 2 more books, possibly 3, in this series. So, yes, rest assured that Jane Holloway, Alan Bergen, and Ei’Brai will be back, searching for clues about who caused the genocide of the crew of the Speroancora as well as coming up against the Swarm. The next book in this series will be called CONFLUENCE and will describe Ei’Brai’s homecoming to Sectilia with Jane and Berg.

When will this novel be ready to read? That’s hard to say, because right now it’s just an outline. The actual writing hasn’t begun. My best guess is that it will be at least a year, perhaps 18 months, before I can get that book to market. It needs the time to be written, revised, edited and proofread. You’d be surprised at just how time consuming that can be.

Additionally, I have to finish that process on another book that is approximately forty percent written. DRUID is set in the same universe as FLUENCY, but with a different cast of characters and all new challenges. DRUID is a contemporary superhero origin story, centering on a young woman named Darcy Eberhardt, whose life is transformed by two unrelated but devastating coincidences, which unmask a secret she was unaware was dwelling within her.

Furthermore, I have a few other smaller projects cooking along. For example, my local SFF writing group, Working Title, is in the beginning stages of writing an episodic storyline that will be a series of short stories/novellas/novelettes, narratively functioning very much like a season of a television show. We are having “writers rooms” every Friday night and pitching ideas to our Showrunner: fellow blogger/SFF writer Brandon Stenger (Twitter: @BStenger Web: Typing As Fast As I Can. Soon we’ll be coming up with story arcs, character arcs, and then assigning episodes. As this project goes live, I’ll keep you well informed via this blog and social media (so follow me on Twitter, Facebook, G+--or sign up for email alerts now!). This project will demonstrate how talented the group I work with really is and I can't wait to dig my imagination into it.

Keep in mind that I’m a stay at home mom with laundry to do, dishes to wash, and toilets to scrub. My kids need me to watch over them. Summertime disrupts my writing schedule because they aren’t in school and need to be ferried around to various classes, camps, appointments and playdates. So, I’m always busy, busy, busy. I work from morning til bedtime every day. I push myself hard. I want to read the stories evolving in my head too!

Other things in the works include an audiobook for FLUENCY. I recently hired the lovely and talented Susanna Burney (IMDb: Susanna Burney Twitter: @susburney) to narrate the book. She started work today and in a couple of months it will be uploaded to Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. I can’t wait to hear her bring the story to life.

These are exciting times to be a writer!

Thank you so much for your continued interest and support. These last few weeks have been among the best of my life and made the last two years of hard work worthwhile. I'll try to be a better blogger from here on out, I promise.

ONWARD!