Weekly Update - 10/8/25

What a weird few months it's been. I know my output has been down, and I can only apologize for that so many times before it starts to feel hollow, but I'm really tryin', folks. I've gotten half-way through a bunch of chapters and then just run out of gas, so I'm trying to circle back to those and finish those off, but there's been a real sort of frustration about me lately, like everything I've been doing is crap.

I know it's not, and I know I'll push through it, but this one's been harder than most, partially because it's been complicated by some health issues and scares. So far, it seems like most things are either fine or correctible, but we'll know about the last one on Tuesday when I get my first ever colonoscopy. That means Monday will be spent shitting myself, figuratively and literally, ha ha. (Gallows humor!) Hopefully nothing's wrong, but I have this sort of innate fear of hospitals, which rational me knows is nonsense, but the paranoid me points out how frail and easily haywire our healthcare system is. And I live in California, with the best healthcare in the country, and yet, it's still a very dangerous precipice to find yourself on.

I did get the collectively You Decide! chapter of Captains' Days out there, and that was a surprise and a delight to me. I got to introduce Mercury, who's a character who's been gestating in my brain for some time. I'm like two-thirds of the way with commissioner's chapters of Pack and Unbroken Mold so I'll try and finish those up tomorrow and Sunday, as well as seeing if I can maybe bang out another QT2 chapter, since those still seem to come the most easily. I'm hoping Tuesday comes and goes and they say, "relax, it's fine, it's nothing to worry about," and then maybe I can stop worrying so much.

For those of you interested in physical works, you can now buy a physical copy of Neon Stonehenge from Amazon, or a copy for your Kindle, by following this link. Now, if you're interested in getting a signed copy, I should have those for sale within a week or two - I'm waiting on my shipment from Amazon to arrive before I put them up for listing. Also, for those of you who just want a nice complete .epub version of the book and don't want to support Amazon, what I'm going to do is post a semi-stripped version here for subscribers within the next few days. It will take out the Foreword to the Foreword, the Foreword itself, the dedication pages, the list of the other books and the Afterword, which is pretty much all new content, but isn't necessary if you're just in it for the story. I basically want to give you the option of double-dipping rather than make it so you have to, which I always thought seemed kind of cheap. The semi-stripped version will be both in .epub and as a .pdf, with most of the errors, typos, continuity flubs and mistakes removed, we hope. That's taken up a lot more time than I would've liked it to, but it's part of the process. That Subscribers Only Stripped Edition should hopefully go up this weekend. And, as stated, if you want a signed copy, just hang on a couple more weeks, and details will follow for those once they're ready.

Dramarama was fun, and Sleep Token is tonight in less than five hours, so I'm looking forward to that. I also took a bit of time yesterday to see Tron: Ares and I personally loved it, despite thinking Jared Leto was underplaying his character a bit. There's loads of wild throwbacks to the original, lots of big and hefty concepts, a ton of amazing visuals, the soundtrack is bar none of the best things I've heard in years and honestly, if any of my readers work for Disney development, have your people send me an email because I would love to pitch you on what the next movie should be. The movie zips along at a brisk 2 hours even, and probably could've used another 10-15 minutes to let some of the characters breathe a bit, but the fact is once the movie was done, I wanted to just sit back down and watch it again a second time, and that so rarely happens these days. That said, I'm also a big fan of both the original and Tron: Legacy and if you didn't like one or both of those films, some of this may not go down as well for you.

And let me wrap up with the public releases in coming weeks: 10/11 - Merlin's Gift 2; 10/18 - Pack 17; 10/25 - QT2:38; 11/1 - QTUM 8.

Again, my sincerest thanks for those of you sticking with me, and if some of you feel like you need to take a break until I get back onto a more regular schedule, believe me, I completely understand. I'm trying to rev back up, though, and we'll see how it goes.