Okay, so what’s happening?
I finished Blackjack book 2 and after that I wanted to stretch my
legs. So I started a space opera that involved multiple points of view of a
coming interstellar conflict. Then I had the crazy idea to do it as a
serialized story. My writing partner and I brought in a new guy to give it a
final polish, and to BS-check us. If you’ve followed the Blackjack series, you
know I need industrial strength BS-checking.
1,200 pages later, no one can keep up with me. We can’t keep
the deadlines. My fault, I know. Too ambitious. Fine, put this sucker aside and let’s do Blackjack 3.
B3 comes out 10/15 and you guys were amazing. Thank you for
the incredible response.
But my legs, dammit…they need stretching. So I got this
funny idea to do the kind of book that anyone could read. What does that mean?
No alien warlords, no Arkalian battlecruisers coming out of warp on station
point, no super powers. Let’s take a shot at something the moms could read, you know?
The idea is to something simpler, shorter…wait, it’s me –
it’s 600 pages.
It’s done and in editing. I spent all last year and most of this year on it and I figure Patriots and Tyrants will
hit Amazon come the end of the year. It’s the best stuff I’ve done to date, and you guys
have been there to see the development. Again, I brought Joshua Hoade in to be
my partner on this. While the idea and the impetus was mine, he’s guided me
through some difficult times, come up with some killer stuff and now we’re rounding the final corner. I can't wait until you guys can get your hands on it.
Well, what about Blackjack? Yeah, that’s what I wanted to
talk about. Blackjack. Well, we’re going to work on that next. A new arc, where
our unfriendly neighborhood villain, turned hero tries to become established.
And you know he’s going to screw everything up along the way.
We’re going to see some old villains and heroes again, and
of course, we’re going to delve deeper into the mind of Dale “Blackjack”
McKeown, a guy who can’t seem to get a break.
But we’re going to try something different this time. We’re
going to publish as we go, we’re going to return to that thing we tried to do
with Interstellar Overdrive, a more serialized approach. This time, we’re going
to do it right (sure you are!). So you’ll have more Blackjack, and more of those
other crazy stories that we’re coming up with.
For example, we previewed something called Heart of the
Jungle a few years back, then had to throw it in the IO back burner. Well, it’s
coming back. So is IO. I’m going to finish IO if I have to kill someone (you hear me Hoade?). And,
really, the 1,200 pages of IO, when done, is only the first part of four big
fat novels.
Serialized. You’ll have more, more often, but shorter pieces
of a larger story. Think that’ll work? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Oh, and
don’t worry about us keeping the prices up to gouge you – we’ll drop the prices
to correspond so it’ll end up being about the same. Think we went with 99 cents
per episode for IO, and the plan was for 9 or 10 and 1600 pages overall
.
.
What’s changed from before, from when we tried it with IO
and fizzled out? Everything, to be honest, but most importantly, the workflow
between Josh and I is as well-oiled as ever.
Okay, fine, how’s it gonna work? We’re still working on that
right now, but the plan is to have Blackjack 4.1 (The Messiah Arc) ready to go by
the end of the year. There’s still debate as to what would be the other
properties we’d work on. Patriots and Tyrants kind of works as a novel, but
we’re going to test it in pieces as well, see if it can join Blackjack. We’re
also going to talk about Heart of the Jungle, Interstellar Overdrive, and some
others, including a side story about Ricochet and Templar from Battle (they go
to Vegas and all kind of chaos and mayhem ensues) and a new story we’re excited
about called Sunset Rollins, something inspired by the game series X-Com,
Hunger Games and the Blizzard game Overwatch.
There’s another, ancillary reason for doing this – Cons. As
in, conventions. We did a local con at the beginning of 2016 and it had a huge
impact on us. We had a blast standing around all day, for three days, pitching
Blackjack and his stories, and we made a ton of friends in the process.
Surprisingly, we almost sold out of books to sell (sold out of Blackjack
Villain late in day 2), and we learned a lot of what people like and what
people want from us.
All weekend long we kept commenting how cool it would be to
have more material, shorter works we could sell at a lower price. See, since
the Blackjack books are huge monsters, to print them out costs a bundle.
Selling them at near cost still brings the price per book to like 20 bucks. Now, I
know that those thick books are pretty impressive, $20 at a con is kind of
excessive. We’ve thought about it long and hard and decided to go back on the
con circuit, this time with more stuff to offer. Our booth was pretty nice for
first timers, too.
Oh, and we got to meet Darth Vader, Mr. David Prowse
himself. In the minutes before the convention started, he was going around the
place, taking a look at the displays, when he came by ours. I’m standing there
and see him coming when all the air leaves the room and I’m paralyzed. Then he
stops by our table and starts asking questions. I did my best, but I think I
probably embarrassed myself, and all my forbears. Anyway, he was so nice, so
charming – and it was funny how he didn’t like the prequels. I thought to take
a picture with him, once he was long gone. Then again, I don’t think I had full
frontal lobe function due to how star struck I was.
I do recall one exchange. “This is a book series about a
villain called Blackjack,” I said, when he asked what we were about. He smiled,
liking that. “Blackjack is a guy who’s very inspired by your work,” I added and
his smiled widened. I know, it was just talk. I was nervous, and he was
amazing.
I’ll try to scrounge up a picture of our booth so you get an
idea of what he saw.
Anyway, we hope you’ll give us a chance to bring you our fun
little stories in this new format. I think if we keep to the motto: “more is
better” and do our best to keep the deadlines, we can have you guys reading
throughout the year, rather than a massive book once every year and a half.
One last thing, this blog is going the way of the dodo.
We’re going to integrate everything into a single site that’ll be cooler and
better and awesomer. Info and link will come on the same Facebook page, and I'll make a post so you guys don't miss a thing.
More info soon!
