C...B: Blog

I expect to begin posting book five "Cut to the Quick" in the Make the Cut series here on SOL in April. Currently, an early version is up for sale on bookapy and I have one final beta reader sending in corrections.

When that person finishes and the corrections are integrated, I will update the listing on Bookapy and begin posting it here. The final part of John's story is a big one with each of the 28 chapters being almost 10,000 words.

I look forward to sharing the story with you and I thank you for your support, especially those who have supported my writing by leaving votes, comments, and by purchasing my stories on bookapy and in paperback on the big evil river seller.

https://bookapy.com/s/652/cut-to-the-quick

Also check out my "collections" as there are bargains if you buy the new book along with various groupings of the others.

Thank you for your readership and support!

What a year it was!

On Christmas morning, I typed the following sentence... At my sour expression, Jonathon laughed hard. Finally, he recovered enough to say, “Sucks to be you, Commodore!”

After that sentence, I wrote "The End". A few seconds later the wave of relief that rolled over me was palpable.

Thus wraps Book Five, Cut to the Quick, in my Make the Cut universe. What a present for myself!

Over seventeen months in the making (curse you real life!), the book rounds out at nearly twice the length of book four, Cut and Run, over five hundred pages of hard (mostly) science fiction.

Book five is a direct continuation of book four, literally continues on mere moments after the close of the previous. If you don't remember, John had just been informed that a representative of the enemy had arrived and wished to speak with him.

Now that the book is written, it needs to be proofed and edited. Two hard passes have already been done so the timeframe till release is not too far down the road. You probably have time to catch up on the series if you wish.

Thank you for your patience and support. Check in at Bookapy in the next week or two for an ARC of book five.

Have a happy and safe New Years and I wish you prosperity and happiness for 2023!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

I am polishing up the epilogue on a quarter-of-a-million word book five. While it won't be this year, it should be ready early in the next.

Thank you if you are enjoying John's story and best wishes to you and yours!

I've been jostled from my bunker of shame to provide a progress update. This request proves the you can't ignore a troubling topic and just hope no one notices.

So, here it is.

What's been happening? Slow progress continues. The bad news is that the book is taking much longer than I'd like to finish. The good news is that even though my progress is slow, its at least been steady. This means that eventually... baring something new occurring... it will be finished.

Describe the progress? Well, as of this morning Book 5 sits at 177K words. As a comparison, book 4, the previous longest, finished in at 144k words. So, while I can't gaurentee that book 5 will be a good meal of a read, at least it will be filling. From the remaining outline, I would guess it will round out around 220k.

Do you know how it ends? I think so? I have the plot to the end and just have to write it down.

Will this be the final book? Well, at this time yes... but book 3 was the previous final book so...

Anything else? Well, I've had the first 160k of book 5 proofed by my two main editor/proofers. I will have two more beta readers polish read it when its finished. So, the publication process should be faster then typical... maybe?

When the book is done, I'll list it on Bookapy and then start posting it on SOL soon after. The chapters currently average 7-8k words each, which is much longer then I've written in the past. This means that it will be a weekly post most likely, unless I break up the chapters.

When...? Sadly, I'm starting to doubt it will be finished by the end of 2022.

Thank you for your curiosity in the storyline. I hope you can stick around.