This one is going to be brief, because there’s a lot going on.

The new house is almost done. We’re putting the final touches and cleaning it up now. We have started packing our current house and moving. That’s sucking up most of my time, and probably will for the next couple of weeks.

We bought Yard Moose Mountain three years ago. This has been a giant project, but we are almost there.

Book Stuff

Monster Hunter Guardian will be out in August.

Target Rich Environment 2 will be out in December.

I just finished Tom Stranger 3 for Audible. Don’t know the release date yet.

After the move I’ll be going back to work on Destroyer of Worlds. Which I think is a 3rd quarter 2020 release.

Appearances 

I’m teaching a four hour World Building class at Fyrecon in Layton, June 21st.

I’m teaching a basic mini painting class, running a charity game of Gritty Cop Show, and doing a couple of panels at SpikeCon, 4th of July weekend.

Combat Frame XSeed
by Brian Niemeier

This isn’t a Book Bomb (I’m already way behind on the ones I’ve got scheduled) but a quick heads on a new book from a guy who wrote a previous BB that was really popular with my fans.

I’ve not read it yet, but I saw the other day that the author had run into some unexpected financial troubles, so plug time!

Noir Fatale is out now!

Noir Fatale

This is an anthology that I edited with Kacey Ezell featuring all new noir themed sci-fi and fantasy stories. It is amazing. There’s a bunch of details in the previous post about the stories.

Noir Fatale is out next week.

Noir Fatale

This is an anthology that I edited with Kacey Ezell featuring all new noir themed sci-fi and fantasy stories. And it came out awesome.

Some of the stories tie into existing franchisees. We’ve got a new Honor Harrington universe story from David Weber. There’s a new Anita Blake story by Laurell K. Hamilton. I wrote a Grimnoir story, set in 1954 to prep for the  next Grimnoir trilogy.

But then most of the stories are for new worlds you’ve not seen before.  And I enjoyed all of them.

Kacey Ezell writes about a post WW3 femme fatale. Christopher Smith and Michael Ferguson tell the story of a hard boiled PI solving a murder on a space station.  Griffin Barber takes a necromancer on a heist.

One that I was really excited about was Kuro, by Hinkley Correia, partly because she’s my daughter, but also because her story about a down on his luck, ghost hunting, detective in Tokyo was awesome. (and she’s working on a book in the setting).

Steve Diamond’s story is set in the fantasy world we are currently doing a novel collaboration in, and involves one of the Tzar’s secret policemen chasing after a golem smuggling ring.  Patrick Tracy’s story is great. Imagine playing in a D&D campaign where Raymond Chandler was the GM. That’s the world of Remnar.

Mike Massa gives you a look into his Genius Loci series with a really cool WW2 adventure story. Alistair Kimble has this atmospheric piece, crime story, that’s hard to explain but so good. Robert Buettner did a love story on the moon, and Sarah Hoyt’s missing person investigation takes some weird turns. I loved it.

Okay, I think I didn’t forget anybody.  But honestly, I had a great time editing this with Kacey, because all the stories were good from the get go, which really makes an editor’s life easy!

The Monster Hunter Guardian eARC is out now!

https://www.baen.com/monster-hunter-guardian-earc.html?fbclid=IwAR3xR55TQs0hhK4lPJMOv7Sj9NQIczQvnFsxOuea-ZsmDt8TVQRo9D95lT4

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Baen eARCs, that’s an Electronic Advanced Reader Copy. That’s an early version of the book that normally only gets sent to reviewers, but Baen also sells them to readers several months before the book comes out. (the official release for Guardian, hard cover, ebook, and audio, will be in August). eARCs are not copy edited so as a bonus you get to see all our typos. (on that note, my manuscripts are pretty clean so there isn’t usually much difference between the eARC and the final)

This is the next book in the regular MHI series and is about Julie Shackleford. It’s a collaboration between me and Sarah Hoyt, because I love the voice she came up with for Julie. It overlaps with Siege in the timeline.

Here’s the back cover blurb:

When Owen Pitt and the rest of the Monster Hunter International crew are called away to mount a month’s-long rescue mission in a monster-infested nightmare dimension, Julie Shackleford—Owen’s wife and descendant of MHI founder Bubba Shackelford—is left behind. Her task: hold down the fort and take care of her new baby son Ray. Julie’s devoted to the little guy, but the slow pace of office work and maternity leave are starting to get to her. But when a routine field call brings her face-to-face with an unspeakable evil calling itself Brother Death, she’ll get more excitement than she ever hoped for.

Julie is the Guardian of a powerful ancient artifact known as the Kamaresh Yar, and Brother Death wants it. In the wrong hands, it could destroy reality as we know it. Julie would die before giving it up.

Then Ray goes missing, taken by Brother Death. The price for his safe return: the Kamaresh Yar. If Julie doesn’t hand over the artifact it means death—or worse—for baby Ray. With no other choice left to her, Julie agrees to Brother Death’s demands. But when you’re dealing with an ancient evil, the devil is in the details.

To reclaim her son, Julie Shackleford will have to fight her way through necromantic death cults, child-stealing monsters, and worse. And she’ll have to do it all before Brother Death can unleash the Kamaresh Yar.

It’s one woman against an army of monsters. But Julie Shackelford is no ordinary woman—she’s one tough mother!