Errors in Humanity – Tales from the MaRP is out on Amazon as of yesterday!

Quick link: Errors in Humanity
Kindle, paperback, and hardback.

From the jacket:
Deep within the unknowable universe is the vast Bootes Void, is an empty void of Brobdingnagian proportions. At over 330 million light-years across, the emptiness strikes fear into the heart of even the most stalwart. Near the center of this void sits the Tenebris Matter Reclamation Platform, or MaRP for short. It’s a matter reclamation platform sitting at the edge of a supermassive black hole.

Moon sized and built long ago in a far off past, it is inhabited by bots.

These are the dark tales of the bot’s existence: the struggle to give meaning to an artificial life lived on the MaRP, sitting on the edge of an endless death; the constant alien incursions, and the battle to repel them before they can steal ancient technology and perhaps even destroy the MaRP itself. Dark at times, yet also humorous, horror lurks around each corner as they go through each cycle, trying to survive in a place designed for death.

Join them out in the deepest black, where life and death are razor thin and the unfathomable fingers of twisted gravitation pull, mangle, and warp.

Finally! After two long years, the Quistavera is available on Amazon. Kindle and paperback.

From Amazon:

The Quistavera.

In the endless night that is space, a ghost ship lays the seeds for destruction. 
From the many beginnings to the one final end, it will begin again new. 
For the Archana, the Hum’ahns aboard the Quistavera, and even the ancient enemy, the Krek’Na.
Hurtling across the galactic plain, destroying all in her path. 

An oblivion of horror that can have no end.

• Passengers trapped with no escape.
• A piratical crew of half machine, half men.
• The mysterious Galindos that lurk in the dark.
• The ravenous Krek’Na intent on destroying all.

Welcome to the Quistavera.

“Science Fiction Horror with something else. If this doesn’t keep you up a night, then perhaps you are already dead.”

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So far, the novel (actually, as they all do) has a life of its own. When I sit down to write each day to get my one thousand word minimum, it takes me places I did not know it was going to go! There’s something about that which intrigues me. The idea that stories have a life of their own. As I start to write, I look at the piece of gaffer’s tape on the bottom of the screen that says, “I don’t know what happens next.” That’s because I don’t. I don’t know what they will do or with who (or what.) It’s like reading a really interesting book but being forced to pace yourself. You don’t want to get so far ahead that you run the well dry.

Or burnout.

I’m on chapter three. Errors in Humanity has chapter names the same way as the Mongruxx series does. Fun, interesting names. The creature above in the title image. That’s from Chapter 2, “I don’t belong here.” The imagery really does help and gives me so many ideas, I don’t know if I’ll have enough time in this life to write them all. But I will damn sure try, compadre.

Of that, you can be sure.

So, I’m ahead of schedule and looking forward to getting Quistavera – The Edge of Nowhere back from the editor and published. She is scheduled to start on June the third. Sara Kelly is my editor. She has edited all of my books. Does a damn good job as well.

It’s nice to work with the same person each time.

I plan to keep her busy by pushing out two books a year. That means I stick to my schedule (I am currently ahead!) each day, rain or shine. It kind of blows my mind that this is the eighth book I am writing. Write what you want to read, and you’ll always have something you like to read.

Gods Eye is the next planned book – starting in December of 2024 (yes, the apostrophe is missing on purpose as in plural – Grammarly is constantly telling me I’m wrong.) Errors in Humanity will overlap in interesting and dangerous ways. After that, I’ll be back in the neighborhood with my old friends, Sam and Golgoth from the Mongruxx, Taros and Ivan from Transport, and another EB the Rabbatine. They feel like old friends, and I genuinely miss them.

Maybe it’s because I’m spending so much time out in Bootes Void. Errors in Humanity is right in the middle of it, the moon-sized MaRP hovering slightly away from the black hole’s event horizon. It’s a dark place that tends to twist the mind a bit. Like sitting on the lip of a giant, deadly, monstrous being. You can almost feel the pressure within you. The hunger it emanates towards you.What that does to the bots there. How they live and survive in such a place.

A desperation that threatens everyone and everything at the edge of it all.

The end of time.

A black hole.

See you on the other side of the black, Pilgrim.

Bad Comrade

After doing all the grunt work to set up my next book, I actually started writing it today. It’s slated for the lofty goal of 140,000 words! That said, words came easily today, and I am already ahead of schedule. I plan to have this book finished by Dec 1, 2024. I’ve laid out a reasonable schedule and if I go faster, then great! It will get to the editor faster, then Amazon.

Book number eight!

This book will take us someplace we haven’t been before. To the event horizon of a black hole in Bootes Void. They say that Bootes Void is a billion light years across. With only sixty galaxies near the center. An amazing place that speaks of desolation beyond anything we can possibly begin to understand. (I don’t know if there is really a black hole there, but there could be. Possibly sixty of them, each at the center of the galaxies.)

Around the supermassive black hole, there is a sprinkling of MaRP/s (Matter Reclamation Platform, or MaRP for short) around multiple areas on the event horizon. It’s already begun, and I am enjoying it.

Stay tuned, more to follow, Pilgrim.

Well, the Quistavera is finally done! This book took far too long; all my fault, of course. The bad place I found myself while being gainfully employed took a major toll on me. That’s over now, and the last three months have been very productive.

The story is pre White Desert—the existence before that existence. The core arc of the story is buried and slowly revealed. That said, there are more than a few easter eggs within it. Enjoy finding them and how they tie into all the other books.

The cover below may not be the final one.

I expect it will be released in early July 2024 once it is back from the editor and all the lovely formatting niceties are added in. There will be some imagery with the book (in the chapter beginnings – a lesson given to me by an early reader). I am relieved that it is completed, as the bulk of it was written during some pretty stressful times. It puts an endcap to those times and allows me to move on, forgetting some of the bad stuff. I’ll see them in hell, and we’ll shout at the devil together. Or something like that, anyway.

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Now comes the next novel that is burning in my brain: Errors in Humanity.

This will be a set of loosely strung stories around some interesting mechanical characters. It will be setting the stage for the next novel after that, Gods Eye (assuming I write that one next).

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This should be fun. Stay tuned.

In case you did not know, I am an avid musician as well as a 3D object creator and printer. I have more printers than I have room for, and I use them often. Prusa is my printer of choice due to its ease of use, reliability, incredible quality, and open source (hardware and software).

I also publish models, many of them inspired by my novels.

All of them are free and licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution License. This means you can use them as you wish; you just have to credit me with creating them. Use them commercially (meaning print and sell them) – Check!

I’m a big lover of all things open source. Much fine software would not exist without it (Linux).

Have a look and enjoy!

PRINTABLES

I’m in Florida this week, and it’s been interesting so far. Yesterday and today, I’ve spent alone. Working on my current novel (Quistavera, The Edge of Nowhere), drinking DonJulio1942, and thinking. Letting go of the past is difficult, but clarity can be found in solitude. My wife is busy working (for the first two days), which has left me alone with my thoughts.

This has been good.

I’ve realized a few things. Letting go is really about moving on. My former workplace is gone, but my novels are here now and off into the future as long as I want them to be.

And I want them to be.

The Quistavera feels as clear as any novel I’ve ever written (this is my seventh novel). I am back working as I did before stumbling down this dark path I’ve been on for the last two and a half years. Perhaps I am finally moving on. When I started this novel, it was one thing. I thought I knew the direction it was going. As with all my novels, it had other plans.

So, I follow the dinosaur bones wherever they may lead me.

I am grateful to my readers. All of you that chose to join me in these other places so far away. Strangers no more, we find ourselves alone together in this great sand filled wilderness. Where beauty and love are found coexisting with death and worse.

And there is worse.

While the world around us seems to be trying to tear itself apart, the forces of evil do as they’ve always done across time and likely Everettian universes.

We too can fight back. At least in this one universe. Where the Mongruxx move across Planet X037.54501 with the Machina, Humans, Gaja, Drakons, Alabastro, and the dreaded Weaponeer 259 cadre. Within the deeps of Magna Invertitur Mons Reach, where hidden seas still flow. In low orbit aboard the Avem Vecto with Taros and Ivan. With EB and Valentine in Last Vegas, where the world never sleeps. Lastly, aboard the Quistavera, at the edge of nowhere. Where perhaps it is the end? Can there there be such a thing? In all likelihood, no. The end is the beginning, as the beginning is the end, and so on.

Fortunately, there are worlds without end. Places that we can go explore. Together and alone.

That’s what I think I will do.

See you on the other side, Pilgrim.

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I’ve always enjoyed flying. There is something about looking out through the windows and seeing the clouds for miles and miles. It always brings a peacefulness to me. Even watching these videos brings this back to me. Maybe we were meant for the stars…

It has been a long walk over the last couple of years.

As 2024 draws to a close, I think to myself, “I’ve made it this far! Damn, I’m surprised.”

A good surprise it is, too.

This novel I’ve been dragging on for the last two years is drawing to a close. It started out as something else, and as usual, it has morphed into something so much larger that it’s a bit difficult to get your arms around it. That said, it is perhaps the reason I enjoy doing it. Writing something that is evocative, that gets under your fingernails like a nasty splinter. Picking at something deep within you, a paper cut between your fingers that just won’t heal.

Yeah, something like that.

In other news, all the covers of my books have been updated. Using some new tools, I’ve finally found a way to create covers that are worth what’s written within. I own the imagery (copyrighted by me) and I love it! So much so that I am most likely going do another novel (I won’t give away the name) rather than War Rail next. Of the thousands of images I have created, I am deeply inspired in ways that continue to surprise me. I only hope I have enough time in this life to write all the novels that are burbling around inside my mind.

That said, the Mongruxx always pulls me back into their orbit. I love the characters and have difficulty staying away from them too long. So, another novel in the series is definitely in the near future.

Some imagery that may or may not be in a future book. (all images are copyrighted).