What's Going On?

So many updates, so little time!

I know I’m terribly inconsistent with this substack, so I appreciate all of you loyal fans who stick around and keep checking in for information about my writing.

The journey continues.

It has been a pretty big year for my career as an author. I signed with a small press, published all three Kid Comet books (the first book turned 1 year old in April!), and really launched into my author era.

It has felt good to lean into this whole thing. I love writing, talking about the craft, meeting other authors at the events I go to, and most of all, meeting the young people who are moved by my work. Because, let’s face it, that’s why I do this.

As I continue to go out there with the Kid Comet books, I continue to see a lot of interest in my first two titles, The Goodwin Chronicles and Harvest Season (more on those in a bit).

I’m also working on my next big project, a sports adventure book set in the near future that will be called Skybreaker. Stay tuned for more announcements, cover reveals, ARC opportunities, and launch information.

The Big News.

One of the biggest developments over the last few months is that I will be moving on from my indie publisher. I don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty, but it is an amicable departure, and they are making the transition as easy as possible. This really just impacts Kid Comet books at this point.

The publishing world is crazy. It is a wild business model and there are lots of different pathways to publishing. A lot of people think about traditional publishers versus self-publishing. I’d found this indie press that I thought was a middle ground, but life likes to throw you curve balls, so I was tossed back into the mix with the conundrum of what to do with the Kid Comet series.

And of course, I had to chart my own path.

The Bigger News.

I looked at the options.

I could self-publish. I could seek out an agent and try to find a trad press to pick me up. But anyone who knows me knows that that’s not how I do things.

My wife is an author and illustrator. I have a group of friends who are authors. And we all want to publish. We’ve all been looking at the different pathways and have, honestly, found them wanting. Publishing is broken. It doesn’t publish the best stuff. It is reactive to trends. Publishers don’t support the work they publish.

We can do better.

And as it turns out, from a very practical standpoint, there is some economy in scale. If I was going to self-publish, it made sense to go ahead and form an LLC so we could all publish under the same banner.

Thus was born Inbound Books.

What’s Next?

Great question!

We’re launching Inbound Books. We have a dozen or so titles that will be rolled out right away (existing things that are going to be re-launched under the Inbound Books banner). For me that includes the Kid Comet series and Harvest Season, pretty much as they are (with some tweaks and reformatting).

I've decided to do a complete revision on The Goodwin Chronicles. This was my very first serious novel, and I think I can do a better job with it. So that one will be a little bit of a delayed release, but the end product will be much better.

Later this year, as I mentioned, I hope to get out Skybreaker.

I also have Peter Starchaser in the works (if you follow me you may have read some of those chapters). I also have a non-fiction book that teaches kids how to be storytellers. It will be a functional storytelling guide.

But beyond my books, we have coming a mystery/thriller in the style of a Janet Evanovich, a Cyberpunk heist book, a couple of picture books, a he said/she said rom com, a sci fi post apocalypse story, a historical fiction set in Francoist Spain, a fantasy that explores magic and miracles, and much much more.

Buckle up! It’s going to be an exciting year!