I wrote this the other day on Facebook because people kept interrupting unrelated posts to ask so I spilled the beans. Posting it to the blog too-
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Because I can’t promote anything without people asking me “when’s the next Monster Hunter” (and I’m not a one trick pony, I’ve got a bunch of different series ongoing, so this is pretty much constant) I guess I need to throw something official out there to get people off my back.

MHI #9 and #10 are getting written back to back in 2026.

There is something very special planned for the release of these two, which I can’t talk about yet. Which is why I’ve not talked about it yet. Which is why it doesn’t do you any good to keep asking me about it.

And if you want to guess why these are special, #9 is tentatively titled Monster Hunter Trespass, and #10 is Monster Hunter Omega… Yes. Omega. Which for those you who’ve followed my career since the beginning, that means what you think it means.

Now do you get it?

So preemptive, FAQs-

No. I can’t tell you what I’m doing for the release yet. That’s for business reasons.

Why did I write three books in 2024 that weren’t in the series you in particular wanted, and why am I writing three more books in 2025 that also aren’t the one you in particular want? Well, this is a three part answer.

Artistically, because I felt like it. Most long series start to suck. You all thought of a different series when I said that. When authors flog the same horse over and over eventually the horse gets tired and dies. MHI has made it 8 books, 4 spin offs, 2 anthologies, (and has 2 more books, 4 more spin offs, and 2 more anthologies actively in the works) and not gotten lame because I go write other stuff, and then when I come back to the universe I’m excited to be there.

Business wise, normally MHI books have been spaced out about every 2-3 years. (they were closer at the beginning of my career because I only had a couple universes to bounce between. Now I’ve got a LOT) This time has been longer because other books moved ahead in the queue. First, I really wanted to finish Saga of the Forgotten warrior, so that the final book would come out about 10 years after book 1, and it could be a complete epic fantasy series, which is kind of a big deal right now.

Next, during that time frame three other publishing houses which operate in entirely different markets than I usually do approached me about doing stuff that is totally outside of my main publisher’s business plan, so I ended up writing a non-fiction book about a topic I’ve been passionate about for thirty years (gun rights). Then I wrote a progression fantasy for Aethon so I could try my hand at KU (which I believe is currently the biggest pot of money in the genre fiction market), and finally a brand new publishing house (Ark) really wanted me to be one of their flagship authors, and they’re doing all sorts of neat unique stuff, which I’d really like to try.

(for those of you who’ve followed me for a long time you might have noticed a trend, I really hate getting stagnant. If you’re not learning or improving, you’re dying. This is how I come at everything, shooting, painting, gaming, cooking, hell I started Jujitsu at 49, whatever business stuff. Writing is the same. I can’t stand when people stop learning and get set in their ways)

When publishers offer to throw bags of money at me to do something new which I think sounds awesome and has great potential, I’d be stupid not to try it. Sorry that means you have to wait the same amount of time between books as most normal writers make you wait, but at least the other stack of books I wrote in that time period are actually pretty good too.

And third, personally, I had some really trying things happen after Bloodlines came out which I have never talked about online, which killed my enthusiasm for a long while, but I got through it. And what that was is frankly none of your business (I came back from it and wrote a bunch more books since so quit yelling at me).

But anyways, next question. Is it really MH Omega? Yes. Does that mean it is the end of the series? Not the end of the MHI universe, but it is the end of the mainline OZP storyline which began in MHI. Which I’ve devoted a significant chunk of my life working on, so you can see why I want to make sure it’s good, and do something special for the release. There are still a bunch of other MHI stories I’d love to tell, but that main story arc has an end. This is the one I’ve been planning on since the beginning.

(Another reason I wanted to finish Saga first was to see if I could stick the landing on a big series. Which I did. I nailed it. That was a learning experience. Believe it or not, I’m actually kind of analytical about this stuff and good writing isn’t just a magic faucet that can get turned on and off at will)

Okay, that’s pretty much all I can tell you about that for now.

Next question, from the perpetual whiners (who probably aren’t fans anyway, but just want to derail every promotion posts to be dicks on the internet) but but but it’s been THREE AND A HALF YEARS since the last MHI (one and a half years since Fever, but I’m sure that won’t count with these guys) this makes you just like George R.R. Martin! REEEEEEE

First off, I’m sorry you don’t understand how math works, because one of these things is not like the other (seriously, I’ve written 28 books since his last one came out. Chill). Second off, cinch up your Depends, because as I explained above to the normal honest fans, it’s gonna be a bit longer. Third, I haven’t been leading anyone on that it is just around the corner. In fact, this post here is the first I’ve nailed down anything because I hate making promises when shit happens and tomorrow I could get run over by a truck.

Okay. That should about cover it I think. Now when I get asked this six times a day I’m just going to point them to this.

My friend, and WriterDojo guest, Rick Partlow has got a new series launching today! Check it out.

Archangel: Fallen

They pissed off the wrong soldier…

Brent Parthet just wanted to be left alone.A deadly supercommando in the Southwind War, Brent had retired a hero to a wildlife preserve as far from civilization as possible to enjoy the simple life with his wife and young son.

But when one of the Southwind, the massive, genetically-engineered slaves who’d rebelled against their human masters, shows up at Brent’s door, asking for help from an old enemy, Brent will find out that the war isn’t really over. And he may have been fighting for the wrong side.

Don’t miss the start of a new military science fiction series by Rick Partlow, bestselling author of Drop Trooper and Taken to the Stars. Filled with explosive and realistic military action as well as heroes you can’t help but root for, this is military Sci-Fi the way it’s meant to be!

Watching everybody I know on the left pontificating about the proper way to conduct audits, after getting their accounting degrees from the University of Internet this week, is absolute cringe for me.

Guys, listen, I say this with love… You don’t know dick about shit and it’s fucking embarrassing. Just stop. You sound like idiots.

So now, as a guy who used to be an auditor, who has defended companies from dozens of audits from different government agencies, I’ll try to correct some of your incredibly stupid NPC talking points you keep endlessly barfing up.

First off, you need to know there’s a difference between an outside audit and an internal audit. An outside audit is when somebody who isn’t part of your company comes in and checks your stuff. This could be one of the fifty something government agencies that audit people/businesses, or this could be an outside CPA firm making sure you are in compliance for some reason (like the company is publicly traded). I’ll talk more about what CPAs are in a minute.

Then there are internal audits, where the person in charge has his own people audit his company, looking for problems, hoping to have everything in order before those 3rd party outsiders show up to check, or searching for fraud, waste, and abuse… You know, those annoying things that tend to screw you over and put you out of business. That’s the kind of auditing I mostly did.

An internal audit is what Donald Trump (the man in charge) is doing now, by having his people (DOGE) audit the executive branch he runs. CEOs and owners do this all the time.

You do not need to be a Certified PUBLIC Accountant to be part of an internal audit team.

In fact, even most CPA firms, auditing the biggest corporations in the world, the majority of the auditors doing the grunt work are NOT CPAs. Most government auditors are not CPAs.

CPA is a particular certification required for a few particular types of accounting, and that isn’t even close to what DOGE is doing.

Also most of the auditors for those big firms are YOUNG. They are usually around 24, because those are the dudes that the big firms can work 80 hours a week and they won’t just keel over and die. They do this kind of work BEFORE taking the CPA exam if they want to go that route, and most of them don’t, because they end up going from auditing into some other form of specialty.

These young auditors make up a team which is usually supervised by an NCO type who has got 5-7 years of experience (and may or may not be a CPA depending on the industry) and they all answer to somebody higher up, who has got the 10-20 years of experience. This will of course vary on the size of the company.

You do NOT need to be an accountant to be an auditor. Anybody who says this is a total dumb ass with zero grasp of how any of this shit works in real life. The people who make up your audit team are recruited from whatever skill sets are necessary to audit that particular system. I (the accountant) have been on audit teams with IT guys, programmers, lawyers, and even machinists. (why machinists, because I was auditing a factory, and I could count the parts, but I couldn’t tell you if the parts were bullshit or not)

So if you are auditing a computer system, then your auditors would obviously require computer people. Fucking duh, morons. Holy shit. The reason most auditors come from an accounting background is because most fraud, waste, and abuse comes from fuckery on the books. But if the fuckery is taking place in the particular systems before they get to the financials, that’s where we bring in systems experts.

Next, you morons are acting like the entire organization is half a dozen 20 somethings, because that’s who got doxxed first and you fuckers are too stupid or dishonest to realize that’s not the entire team. Newsweek has compiled a list of known DOGE staff so far, and their ages are 33, 42, 28, 34, 67, 30, 33, 36, 33, 47, 25, 24, 43, 23, 25, 45, 19, 28, 21, 44, 39, 57, 45, 41, 32, 28, 22, 37, 37, 35, 24, 42, 36, and 36.

https://www.newsweek.com/doge-list-staff-revealed-2029965

Do I need to graph that for you, you dishonest fucks? The wiz kids you keep histrionically shitting your pants over aren’t even the average. Oh, and shocker, they also come from a wide variety of backgrounds, like everybody with a fucking clue about auditing had already assumed because we aren’t retards.

But but but Elon is posting things on Twitter that aren’t 100% perfectly accurate according to liberal fact checkers from liberal news organizations which up until recently have been receiving large amounts of tax payer money for phony baloney reasons!

So what?

The stuff that’s been made public so far is what’s called findings. Findings aren’t the final report. That takes time. And you’ll probably never see those final reports because again, say it with me, INTERNAL. The only way you’ll ever see the complete detailed final report for any given agency is Donald Trump feels like it. Same as any CEO can drop whatever internal company info he feels like.

But DOGE is going TOO FAST! Well no shit. They are on a tight time frame. The republicans control everything right now (barely, and many of them are every bit as corrupt as the dems) only the government is fucking huge, Trump got elected on cutting it, and mid terms are in two years.

But (insert sob story here about how some good necessary wonderful saint of a government employee or super awesome wonderful government program got cut here) REEEEE!!!! Except too bad that’s total bullshit.

The time for a gentle, caring, measured (slow), careful pruning of government to only remove the bad tissue with a scalpel was generations ago. We are now at the axe and TQ time before the patient dies. Yeah, that sucks, but that’s what happens when you procrastinate going to the doctors while a cancerous tumor the size of a fucking watermelon grows out your back.

Those last two NPC wails are basically the same thing, appeals for Trump to slow down and lose momentum so the process can stall out and die like all the previous times Americans have tried to cut the great federal leviathan and shut off the endless money faucet.

The government is huge. Our debt is insane. This is not sustainable. We know it. They know it. Everybody knows it. I don’t know why everybody keeps pretending otherwise.

Sure, this government program is an obvious scam to funnel tax dollars to bureaucrats and their NGO friends, so cat ladies in Arlington can collect $700k salaries at the “charity” run out of her multimillion dollar town home, but if we cut that a single puppy will die!

I feel bad for the Hostage Puppy. I really do. But don’t blame the auditors who are finding this shit, and don’t blame the tax payers who are tired of getting butt fucked. If you were honest you’d blame the bureaucrats and grifters who got us to this place.

Will government programs you like get cut? Absolutely. Will this suck for a lot of people? Yes. Will good hard working employees get cut along with the legions of useless fucking dregs? Yup. Is this still necessary so our entire nation doesn’t collapse into utter dog shit under the weight of the all consuming federal leviathan, where to survive we huddle in the ruins eating rats cooked over piles of burning dollar bills? Also yes.

They’re called budget cuts because they hurt. If they were pleasant they would be called budget tickles.

Next, Elon now has access to our personal data! REEEEEE! Which is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, because if Elon wanted all our personal data he could just buy it off the Communist Chinese, from one of the last seven times our incompetent and unaccountable federal government leaked all our data, for way cheaper. This is just idiotic obfuscation.

Then there’s this one where Elon dropped a finding to the tax payers that showed our Social Security data has a bunch of nonsensical garbage in it. Immediately some random dumbfuck on Twitter came up with an excuse. BUT WHAT ABOUT COBOL REEEEEEE!

Man, fuck your COBOL.

Because what happened next was hilarious and fascinating, because it didn’t matter how retarded and full of shit that COBOL excuse was, or how many hundreds of computer programmers went “that’s fucking bullshit that’s not how any of that works you idiots” the NPC lemming brigade immediately ran with it, repeating it over and over like a religious mantra. Because the validity of the excuse doesn’t matter. They just need an excuse. Any excuse will do. It’s like a holy symbol to ward off vampires, only this time they’re holding up a turd to ward off DOGE.

Back to auditing, just because the Social Security database is filled with garbage doesn’t mean that all that garbage is fraud. However, try that excuse when the government audits you. “Oh, I’m sorry my books are riddled with errors, it is no big deal, that’s just how we do things around here.” and see how that shakes out for you.

If a company’s records were full of broken bullshit, the government would assume the worst, fine the ever living fuck out of you, and possibly send you to jail. Because the government’s default assumption when a company’s books are all fucked up is that it is on purpose to hide fraud.

Except when our government’s books are filled with things like 30 million dollars to fund a Transsexual Peruvian Orchestra, and 99% of that money never made it out of northern Virginia, we’re supposed to assume that’s just nice fluffy goodness, and HOW DARE YOU assume there’s anything dishonest going on.

Oh yeah, the whole “but even if we fire Y% government employees” that’s only X% of the budget and there’s still all this other stuff.” Which is just pathetic obfuscation from people upset the endless money faucet is getting shut off, because all those millions add up and turn into billions, and all those billions add up and turn into trillions. This one was also more popular among the NPCs before they started poking at the entitlements which are the giant money holes and finding all sorts of wonky shit there too.

Am I missing any of the NPC wails? Point them out in the comments and I’ll add them and rip on them too.

Before he became a critic he was a novelist. Steve and I got the opportunity to interview The Critical Drinker for an episode of WriterDojo. We had a great time. That episode is now streaming everywhere you get your podcasts.

Today is the release day for the sixth and final book in the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series. Heart of the Mountain is out now in eBook and hardcover (audio is on the way).

Please tell your friends, and once you’ve read it post a review and let me know what you think. I’ve been working on toward this ending for ten years. 😀