Updates, Writing Projects, Mountain Fortresses, and More

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I’ve had a lack of blogging time lately, but that’s what I get for over committing to too many projects. There has been no shortage of fiskable silly articles, but that takes writing time, which I don’t currently have much extra of. So I’ll make this quick.

WRITING STUFF 

I have sent off Monster Hunter Siege to Toni. It is pretty awesome. This is #6 in the regular MHI series, and is back to the perspective of Owen Zastava Pitt. It is coming out in August.

The Monster Hunter Files anthology is completely done, and it is coming out in November. I’ll put up a post with a link to the preorder tomorrow. (if you preorder it through there, I get the advertising kickback, which is a nice little bonus). This one is awesome, and has stories from a whole bunch of fantastic authors.

Volume 1 of my short story collection is mostly done. (we were going to do one volume, but I’ve got so many, Toni just decided to break it in half and make 2) There is an original short story in it that I’m still working on. I am collaborating on a new MHI story with my oldest daughter. I do not have a release date for this one yet.

As for the name of the collection, that’s still up in the air. You guys came up with some awesome ones, and I just need to decide with Toni and the marketing people which is the best. Sadly my personal favorites are a little too inside joke for mass market. Regular bookstore traffic isn’t going to get Nigh Hoon, or Dark Side of the Hoon. 😀

They have officially announced an anthology that I wrote a short story for. I’ve talked about it a bit, but couldn’t say exactly what it was. Yes, that samurai story I was talking about, the “Oni of Aokigahara” is actually a Predator.

I am currently working on my part of Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints. I’ve been the hold up on that. Ringo was finished with his part months ago. I plan on having that turned in to Toni by the end of the March. I’m a relatively fast writer, but a slow editor. I don’t know the release date.

Sarah Hoyt is currently working on the rough of Monster Hunter Guardian, based on the outline I gave her. This is going to be a collaboration, and will be part of the main MHI timeline. It overlaps with the events of Monster Hunter Siege. I do not know the release date of this yet either.

After that I’ll be working on Tom Stranger 2. Which is called The Adventures of Tom Stranger: A Murder of Manatees. The plan is that it will be an Audible exclusive at first, like the last one. (which will be appearing in print for the first time in the upcoming short fiction collection).

Then for the rest of the year, it is getting back into the world I started with Son of the Black Sword. The next book is called House of Assassins. The plan right now, barring any other weirdness, is to write #2 and #3 (Destroyer of Worlds) back to back. But I usually skip between worlds from book to book, so we’ll see how I’m feeling at the end of HoA.

There’s a bunch of other stuff lined up after that, but at this point I can’t tell you the timeline for them exactly. I have another Grimnoir trilogy, a 3rd Malcontents (that’s a tough one, because they are my least well known books, I kind of squeeze them in as I can justify it), some pretty cool stand alones, and lots more MHI.

Also, as of this week, I’ve got plans for two new collaborations with other writers. Both of them are for new worlds. I pitched the idea to Toni and she liked them. You’ll recognize these author’s names, but I can’t say too much more about that because we don’t have the contracts signed yet. They are super bad ass ideas though. One fantasy, one sci-fi.

House Stuff

We are proceeding on developing Yard Moose Mountain 2. The challenge is that it is a really big project, and we’re in a rural county, so approvals for every step of the process are going to take a while (seriously, the county has like one poor overworked dude for all of that). Plus, we couldn’t do the site survey when the whole thing was under four feet of snow. We’ve hired an architect, a builder, and as soon as the survey is done we will be putting in our road. When it’s half a mile long, you can’t really call it a driveway anymore.

And no, I won’t be doing any of the work myself. Yes, I have worked construction jobs before, but that was a long time (and 30 pounds) ago. Every minute I’m working on my house is one minute I’m not writing books. So I’m just going to pay experts to do it right.

We hope to start building this year, but I’m not getting my hopes up for being done anytime soon. There is a lot of work to be done and lots of approvals to wait for. But on the bright side, we don’t have to do that annoying, sell a house to finance the new one, move into an apartment while you wait for the new house to get built, THEN move again, nonsense like we did when we built this one. Nope. This one is paid off, so I don’t have to move anywhere until I feel like it.

The design specs of the actual house have mostly been left to the CorreiaTech Domestic Command Authority (meaning the lovely Mrs. Correia).  However, the one thing I wanted is the most bad ass office/game room ever. You know how every now and then some picture circulates around the internet of somebody’s super amazing game room, and all the nerds oooh and aaaah… Yeah? I’m going to beat that guy. 😀

(and the other thing is the Gun Room, but that one… there ain’t going to ever be any pictures of it on the internet)

Other Stuff 

Now that the weather is warming up, I get to go shoot more (part of that putting in a road thing, while I’ve got heavy equipment up there, I’m putting in berms).  Get ready for some gun nut posts this summer. I’m putting in a bunch of steel targets, plate racks, spinners, stars, etc.

Also, I don’t have a date on the calendar yet, but I’ll be taking a long range precision rifle class (I’m taking the Cazador), and the people putting it on want to open it up to a bunch of my fans. It’ll be fun. I’ll post more details when I know them.

I’ve put up my book tour schedule, but I’ll be posting that again as it gets closer. I’m hitting a bunch of states, and I’m also doing DragonCon, GenCon, HonorCon, and Salt Lake City ComicCon. I’ve got FanX coming up next week. And I’ll be doing Book Expo America in New York City again.

I’m sticking this under Other rather than Books, mostly because I just thought of it, but there is going to be a new MHI Role Playing Game. I’ve got a lot more fans since we did the last one. I loved it, but it was using the Hero system, which is great, but challenging for new people to pick up. So this time the plan is to do a Savage World’s version, which is really simple to learn and use. I’ve made an agreement with an awesome game company, and I’ll give you guys more details as we get closer.