Book 6 – Taking Off – is being edited and will hopefully be out around the first week of May.
Still no main storyline for book 7 so at this stage I will be publishing something else after Taking Off is out. I refuse to push out some sort of cobbled together something to milk everybody’s money. (subject to change if I get sudden inspiration)
In other news I have had a short story accepted to be in Fantastic Schools Vol 3. The story is an excerpt from a full length Fantasy novel – one of 2 I have been slowly writing. I will put up a post here when it comes out.
Book sales have been good – thanks to all of you! I have really appreciated some of the nice things people have said about the books so thank you one and all for that.
Peter
rhodanblog 
Woot! 🙂
Well done, sir
and thanks for more enjoyable stories
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Happy to hear it. As I have mentioned before a series similar in length to the Richard Bolitho books by Alexander Kent would not be unacceptable. You already have the quality part down, now just need the stories. And I suspect that there are a lot of opportunities out there. Just sayn’
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Thank you for the kind words. Unfortunately Book 7 is in limbo at present. I have several side story ideas, about 4k written, but no main story. Some sort of writers block. rather than shove out something crap I have put Book 7 on hold for the moment until I get a you beaut idea… muse do your stuff!
In the meantime, after Taking Off (book 6) the next book I publish will be the first book in the Princess series, The Princess and the Privateer. Imperial Princesses can have space adventures too…
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Like everything else it will be done as soon as it is finished. I will look into your new series in the meantime
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I’m a new reader of your series. Just found it last week and read through all 5 books in record time. 🙂 I’m afraid your story is terribly addictive!
I am not sure why Arturo think it might be possible to get back to space in so short a time and ultimately even if it were possible why he would desire it. He left grown children and a wife and he didn’t leave them on purpose. If he were to go back, he’d be leaving I suppose a dead wife (or maybe even a new wife) and grown grandchildren by choice? I don’t read Arturo as selfish so I’m not sure that’s a reasonable path for him to take. And he’d be older too — 100 or more years older — and how would he know he’d land on his own time and not overshoot or not flung even further in time. 😀 I think he’d be crazy to take that risk?
I suppose a sort of fatigue would set in after awhile if all his friends died before him. He needs new friends! New vistas! New challenges 😀
On another vein, I sincerely hope he’ll transition them to less polluting energy source very soon.
Sorry if I am a rather irritating reader!!! I got totally engrossed in the stories and can’t help but think of them even after I finish reading all 5 books. Can’t wait for book 6! Thanks for all the fun (that we get because you’ve worked really hard writing)!
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The ‘return home’ things is like a fixation. In practice, even if his shuttle was working he would immensely difficult to do a precise reverse of the energy that brought him here. There are several variables that affect the distance, direction and time of the modified warp – I think it mentions in Book 1 that most ships who are accelerating or decelerating when entering a warp field are never heard from again – that is because they have been transported a long long way – the distance is logarithmic so Arturo’s shuttle gets nudged by the plasma blast and goes 5k light years – keep in mind that is variable as well, but a ship with say 1g acceleration might go 50k light years – a ship with 50g acceleration would wind up in Andromeda or even further….. and never be heard from again….
So it will not be like he is driving the Tardis and arrive back just after he left…. but he has the subconscious fixation about getting home so eventually he will try – probably not till after Morghanna dies though…. and of course where he does finish up is a whole different story…..
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That makes sense! I even discussed with my best friend on what you said about not going to be able to get back to his time because it’s all dependent on the right nudge etc and not even sure if he’ll go further back vs. to the future.
On another topic, I play Civilization VI (been a fan since Civ II) and reading Arturo is like seeing how a Civ grows with actual characters. I should set up a scenario like the one you have and see how it plays out. I’ve never won a domination game however. I tend to play very conservatively so I can win at King level on culture, diplomacy, science and religion (4 other ways of winning) but never world domination. 😀 I keep thinking I’m killing of real soldiers and I hate losing. So, I tend to fight only if I’m pressed or only if I have overwhelming tech and sufficient number of troops (a mixed troop is essential — so I do tend to rely on artillery, infantry and a small number of calvary. The funny is how I tend to shoot for a crossbow early on to win (my path is typically research archer, and then shoot for crossbow), then it’s possible to win (as I play defensively more or less).
I spent like 2 hours talking about Arturo’s adventures to two different friends this weekend. Can’t wait for the next book. Thanks for all your hard work and creativity!
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I am an avid reader and follower of your excellent compendum of an alternate history. May I suggest a curved ball… Artoro fails to develop electricity completely and the civilisation continues to rely on steam. A steampunk civilisation!
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sorry – good idea but I’ve already got valves in book 6 – soon to be released!
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thanks for your kind words ! 🙂
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I’m loving this whole series. Write faster! (LOL) You do need a better editor though. If your storytelling wasn’t so good I’d be mad at the small grammatical mistakes a decent editor would have eradicated by publishing time. Thank you for this wonderful series!
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The poor editor gets the script dumped on them with like “I want to get this out the first week of March. That okay?” in like the middle of February!!
It was taking me months to write a story of around 100-120k words part time… then another 6-9 weeks for me to go back and fix all the obvious errors – fill in the bits I forgot to write completely, the sentences with whole groups of words missing because the words were coming out of my head faster than I could type….. and so on. The I’d hand it to the editor and go “Is it done yet?”
The only reason I was able to get them out at roughly 3 monthly intervals was because I had the first drafts done for books 1 through 4 so only had to do the edit then for 1 through 3 I did a second edit myself of another 5-6 weeks. Which wasn’t very effective but with books sales in the double digits and low single hundreds I couldn’t justify spending $2-3k on a professional editor.
Book 4 I used a semi-professional editor although I pushed them and the result wasn’t perfect but it was still a lot better than the previous 3, going on the number of reported errors on Amazon. Check your “books on Kindle” list on your account page and you may find that most of mine are up-datable, by the way.
I thought book 5 was distinctly better. Again the editor was pressured. I took 8 weeks to do my edit – only did a single and handed it off to the editor who did the best job to date – Amazon errors are few and mostly not obvious.
Now, with the Dragon dictation software it is taking me less time to write the books – the current book I am writing I spent 9 weeks on so far and will be well over 90k by the end of my week on Sunday – so I expect this to be finished in 2-3 weeks so somewhere around 10-11 weeks for 110-130k words depending on much further the story goes. This is significantly aster than what I use to write but as I am still a art time graphic designer it does limit the amount of writing time I have somewhat. Next year I should be writing full time. Although even then you still get dud periods where it’s hard to get the words to flow.
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Books 4 and 5 are definitely edited better I noticed, and the story is so good that I don’t mind an occasional error. It’s like we can see the words pouring out of your brain! Amazing and I can’t wait for book 6. I have the utmost admiration for anyone who can write a book, and even more for stories that are so gripping and unexpected.
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them’s some damn fine words there, fella. Very much appreciated….
Still haven;t got a storyline for book 7 yet so The Princess and Privateer looks to be my next published work after Book 6: Taking Off
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