Today I can announce the name of the new series I’m doing for Ark Press. American Paladin.

This is my take on that whole lone vigilante genre, only it’s also a contemporary fantasy with monsters and supernatural elements. It is set in the western US and the main story takes place in 2022.

What can I tell you about it so far? Well, imagine a country boy ends up as a Missing 411 case, survives, and decides to wage a one man war against the forces of extra-dimensional evil, except until he can find them again he might as well take out his anger on regular human bad guys who’d normally get away with. And when the monsters do show up again, we get to play cowboys vs. Aztecs. 😀

That series name works on multiple levels. I can’t wait for you guys to read this one.  

Ark is doing something unique for the launch. There will be regular online and bookstore distribution when it comes out, but they are also doing a Kickstarter in September that’s going to have a bunch of special stuff on it, including a graphic novel set in the same universe, written by me, and drawn by Alex Wisner (it looks incredible). Sign up for Ark’s mailing list to stay informed here: https://ark.press/pages/kickstarter2025correia

And the rough draft for Academy of Outcasts 2 is done. It’s really fun.  

I started on April 26th. So that’s basically two months. 104k. I’ve got a bunch of notes for things I need to go back and add during the editing process, so the final should be around 110k-120k, so really close to the first one (117k). I’ll start the first editing pass on Monday.

This is my second discovery written novel. I’m normally an outliner.

I’ll have to do a WriterDojo episode (yes, we’re coming back soon) about what I’ve learned about the differences in those methods, but one thing I’ll say is that discovery writing feels faster for me. Though that might even out with increased editing time.  

With twenty something outlined novels, I consider 40k a month really good productivity. With two discovery written, I’ve been closer to 50-60k. AOO1 would’ve been entirely done and edited in 3 months, but I got really sick during that one and lost basically the entire month of December so it took four.

Normally when I’m outlining I’ll have a week of just thinking and noting plot points and scenes, then putting them all in order, and filling in the blanks. My outlines are actually pretty loose, open to change as I think of things that are cooler, and written in a kind of bullet point short hand that wouldn’t make much sense to anyone other than me.

This I just go, sit down, and start writing. As I think of things I could have made better/cooler in the earlier bits, I just go back and change them, or I make notes for stuff to go back and add later. At some point a coherent overall story forms, so then there’s a sort of mental outline anyway, but each new scene I just run with whatever I’m feeling right then.

I don’t know if I could discovery write successfully if I didn’t already have a lot of practice with story telling. At this point hitting all the beats and character arcs is just kinda instinct. When something’s missing, I feel it, rather than recognizing it specifically like some kind of checklist.

Mentally there’s not a huge lot of difference between these two methods, as I’m not one of those hyper religious outliners where everything must fit and I must stick to the outline or die. Oh hell no. If I think of something that sounds funner as I go, I change the outline.

One thing I’ll say for outlining is that it works better for intricate, intertwined, plots. I could not have discovery wrote Saga of the Forgotten Warrior. Academy of Outcasts is progression fantasy, and that genre is all about fast, fun, action and adventure. However, I say that, but I’ve also got 10 full pages of world guide for it too. Main difference between this and my other stuff is that world guide would have existed first, and this one I built as I go.

And by world guide I mean a sort of master document where I put down all the little details I’ve put in print establishing how that world works, that way I don’t contradict myself. Once a book in a series is done I go back and update it, adding all the new characters, places, spells, items, history, culture, creatures, etc.

(this one ended up with a weird cultural aspect is the days of the week correspond to seven elemental realms, and 28 different locations-there’s 13 months, 28 days per month, 7 different realms- which means that I had to make a calendar for when the adventure takes place, so I know where the gate is pointed at that day… Man, I make this stuff way too complicated for myself) 😀
So do I like discovery more than outlining? Eh. I think it really depends on the genre and what I’m going for more than anything. All I know for sure is that I don’t want to be one of those writers who gets lazy and stagnant in my old age. I’m going to keep trying different things and experimenting, because that’s part of the fun of being a professional creative.

I am seeing a lot of confusion today about how the Political Violence Blame Game works. As a Professional Internet Zoologist, allow me to help educate you.

The 72 hour rule is still in effect for the Minnesota shooting, but with the facts available so far it’s not looking good for The Narrative. But from what I’ve seen this morning that sure isn’t holding liberal internet morons back from screaming about how “right wingers” have “legitimized political violence”, like violence is such a common right wing cultural thing, while the left are just out there showing kindness.

That’s a great theory, as long as you ignore lefties:

-shooting republican congressmen at a baseball game,

-trying to murder a Supreme Court Justice,

-trying to firebomb a democrat governor,

-shooting Israeli embassy employees,

-assassinating a health insurance CEO (and then the left glorifying that guy into a rock star sex symbol),

-setting Tesla stores on fire and screwing with random people’s cars in general,

-firebombing Jewish senior citizens,

-torching RNC HQs (ironically, googling this one to refresh my memory turned up a bunch of these that I’d not even heard of!).

-“globalizing the intifada”,

-beating up a republican senator,

-shooting a democrat mayor,

-running a republican legislator off the road because they’re upset about healthcare,

-attempting to stab a republican congressional candidate,

-swatting EVERYBODY, up to and including the FBI director(!),

-holding a few HUNDRED riots, with uncountable of acts of violence, arson, and looting. This one lumps in all the fun fire bombings, car flippings, bike lock beatings, and wacky political violence the left has turned into an art form.

-and not one, but two, assassination attempts on Donald Trump.

What’s funny is that listing some of those, I’m reminded it’s amazing how fast they dropped out of the news cycle. Some of these just barely happened, were incredibly violent, yet poof, 24 hours later they’re never mentioned again. You know if a racist white dude hit a bunch of elderly holocaust survivors with a Molotov cocktail that would be the biggest news story of the year and we’d never hear the end of it.

But in the spirit of moral equivalence, republicans have

-January 6th REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

-The FBI and a couple mentally handicapped guys plotted to kidnap a governor.

-a schizophrenic illegal immigrant leftist hit Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer. I’m not sure how we got assigned this weirdo, but it’s on every single list of political violence I googled.

-and an apolitical schizophrenic shot a democrat congress woman. Which again, has nothing to do with republicans, but I don’t make the rules.

Other than that republicans are responsible for all crimes committed by white men, regardless of political affiliation or motivation, but democrats are not responsible for any crimes committed by any other demographic and HOW DARE YOU?!? Every crime committed by a white man is political violence somehow, even if he’s a democrat. Every crime committed by someone else is not. This might be hard to grasp for normal sane people, but this is super obvious if you’re a journalist.

The left also thinks stuff like blocking traffic with their bodies is totally cool and not at all threatening to the poor bastards trapped in the vehicle now surrounded by several hundred screaming psychopaths, but God help you if you panic and try to escape.

But Mr. Internet Zoologist, what about the multitude of regular violent crimes that happen? Who gets blamed for those?

Don’t worry kids. You just need to remember the rules. If someone who can nominally be connected to the republicans commits a crime, then that’s a newsworthy hate crime. If they aren’t connected to the republicans at all, it is still the republicans fault for “raising the temperature” or “heated rhetoric”.

So for example, someone nominally connected to the right hits two protestors with a car, end of the world come apart time. A racist lunatic drives a car through an entire parade of innocent people, that’s Kyle Rittenhouse’s fault for having the gall to not get murdered politely months earlier.

So if there’s a shooting, and the killer is a racist white dude, that’s going to grab headlines and get talked about for the rest of your life. If the killer wrote a giant manifesto for lefty causes, then that’s not newsworthy at all, will get ignored and promptly forgotten, except for when they need to throw those stats on the pile to argue for more gun control. Oh, who am I kidding? They just make up the shooting stats as they go! (Hey, I wrote a book about that!)

If someone on the right uses a hurt-hurt or no-no word, that’s a hate crime, worthy of outrage. If there’s an entire hilarious subgenre of tens of thousands of Tik-Tok videos of insane, danger haired, nose ringed, leftists screeching for unrest, murder, arson, and assassination, while fapping it to shirtless pics of Luigi Mangione, that’s just free speech.

So in conclusion for every example of right wing political violence you can scrape up, you can probably find ten examples left wing political violence, but none of those ever count. Just remember, we’re always bad, and they’re always good, and then you’ll never get surprised reading the internet!

Quick Update Post –
I’m working on a lot of different things, and some of them have been made public recently, so I might as well list them all.
Being worked on right now in 2025 (note, this is being worked on, not released, I don’t control release dates so quit yelling at me)-

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• Gun Runner graphic novel. This is an adaptation of the novel by me and John Brown, by comic book legend Mike Baron through Hound Dog Media (the same people who did Ringo’s Black Tide graphic novel). It is in the early stages of crowd funding and test art now.
• MHI Memoirs (title not yet announced) cowritten with Les Johnson, for Baen. Les is almost done with the first pass and then will be kicking it over to me. I’ll be talking more about what this one is about shortly, but it is also about another character in a different time period, only this covers a wildly different area than most of MHI’s cases. The fact that I’m writing it with Les should be a clue as to the type of monsters we’re talking about. 🙂
• MHI Memoirs (2 of them) cowritten with Jason Cordova, so yes, the 1970s Chloe novels are a trilogy. The last one took place where Jason grew up, and the next one has a big section where I grew up. Jason’s working on #2 now, but keep in mind he’s been having a lot of health challenge so yelling at us ain’t gonna speed it up.
• Academy of Outcasts 2, I’m 60k words into it. The goal here is to have it done and ready for preorder by the time book 1 releases in October. This is the new progression fantasy series from Aethon, where I get to do fun adventure D&D style fantasy stuff (a nice change after wrapping up a dark and heavy 6 book series about genocide and caste systems!) I’m discovery writing this series, and that’s been a fun experiment so far (and fast!).
• (title not announced yet) of (series title is awesome, but not announcing that until we show off the next bullet point in public) the new contemporary fantasy series for Ark. 30k words in and fully outlined. This one is my take on the lone wandering hero/vigilante archetype style story. (strangely enough it’s probably more realistic and tactically grounded than Reacher, even though there’s supernatural monsters in it) It’s set in the American west, modern days, and is really bad ass. Think cowboy Repairman Jack meets Haunted Mesa, with Correia level violence. 😀
• The graphic novel tie in for (title not yet announced) of (new series). Ark wanted to try something with this release so there’s going to be a graphic novel that ties in with the series. This is being drawn now by Alex Wisner (he’s been sending me the art roughs as he goes, and it’s really friggin’ cool) and the script was written by me. This is the first and only time I’ve ever written a graphic script, so that was cool. (this was also why I had pictures of me posing in a plate carrier with a particular handgun the other day, for art reference).
• Monster Hunter Files 2 – My co-editor is Jason Cordova. I believe we have most of the stories in.

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In process now, and planned to do/start in 2026-
• THE BIG ONE- mainline MHI #9 and #10. Monster Hunter Trespass and Monster Hunter Omega. I’ve got a whole other giant post full of details about those, but yeah, the Owen storyline for MHI is heading into the final stretch. The plan is to have these released back to back.
• And because people keep asking if that’s the end of MHI books, no. But it is the wrap up for Owen’s arc. Creatively, there’s still plenty of other stories to be told in that universe. And, capitalistically, I’ve made a lot of money writing MHI. 😀
• Academy of Outcasts 3 (under contract)
• (Unnamed Ark project) 2 (under contract)
• Lost Planet Homicide continuation (this one may move up or down in the timeline depending, because being novellas they don’t take very much time to write so they get squeezed in between other projects). I love this universe though, and at some point I’ll have enough novellas to compile them into a print/ebook and they’ll no longer be an audio exclusive.

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Future writing projects –
• Too many to list. I’ve got so many friggin’ cool ideas.
• But because you specifically keep asking, yes, I do plan on doing another Grimnoir trilogy. But people keep throwing large sums of money at me to do other stuff for them.
• Servants of War 2, cowritten with Steve Diamond, but the delay on this is the same reason WriterDojo is on hiatus, as in Steve got a huge promotion and his corporate mega job and he’s slammed.
• We’ve talked about an “Old Man Lorenzo” and possibly returning to the Dead Six universe, but that’s back burner for now. The idea of that mean bastard as a senior citizen is hilarious to me though.
• Tom Stranger? Hard to say. I love Tom but Tom Stranger stories just kind of spring into existence when current events converge in a particularly silly way.

So there you go. My biggest issue is I am human, and if I write more than 10k words a week my brain starts to turn to mush. 🙂

Hey guys, we are crowd funding a Gun Runner graphic novel.

This is adapted from the book by me and John Brown. Comic book legend Mike Baron is writing it.

https://hounddog.media/product-category/gun-runner-volume-one/

You can order now and get special things like art pieces, or even get yourself a cameo drawn into the book. Since we’re crowd funding this, any help boosting the signal is greatly appreciated. Thanks!