Just a general update. My arm has been getting better, so I don't think I tore a tendon, though I did tear the bicep. So it's looking like I won't need surgery. Which is a good thing.
I've been trying to work on a book for the Veil universe with Blaise and William, it's taking me a bit out of my comfort zone because I'm working in someone else's sandbox, but I think it's something I need to try and do because I think it will help me to be a better writer.
While dealing with that, I've been thinking on the next Portals of Infinity book some, and I've been thinking a LOT on how to handle all of the upcoming stuff in the Valens Legacy series.
The funny thing is, that on this series I originally planned it to be 18 books. Then for a while I was thinking I'd be lucky to get to 16. Now I just put out 14 last month and I'm looking at everything that's going on and right now at this moment, I'm not really sure how long it's going to take me to get to the end of it. I don't think getting to 18 is going to be much of a problem. I think trying to finish it by 18 probably isn't going to happen though.
Right now, the hardest thing I'm looking at is covering the timeline from where the last book ended (Mid April) to July 4th, which is when things really start to happen. I'm probably going to have to just 'gloss over' some of that time frame because other then dealing with the day to day stuff, not a lot is going to be happening that's any different conflict wise.
But July is when the main gate opens. July 4th actually. That's when the real war begins. (And no, I didn't plan that date, it just happened when I plugged the starting date into the spreadsheet I had to build to keep track of everything.)
I honestly never thought I'd get to this point in the story. Not and still have so many people still interested in it. It's very humbling. Now I just need to get the rest of it down on paper.
Glad you didn't need surgery Hope you have a speedy recovery Always looking forward to the next Valen's book and would enjoy getting the next Portal also. Thank You for your stories
ReplyDeleteGood to hear your injury is not as bad as first thought. I've torn tendons before and it sure isn't fun. I'm glad you've got plenty of books lined up for Valens, it's one of my favorite series.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the update.
ReplyDeleteSo which pantheon/mythos are you covering in your version of the Veilverse?
One thing I love about your writing is it never gets boring. Sure there is some down time in some of the books but you have kept me interested masterfully. Sometimes long running book series “feel” like the author forgot how to write a compelling and complete story. Not with valens. Its always interesting. I also got every audiobook as well. Thats how much i loved the story. I then got both my friend and brother into it.... Thank you for the great stories you have written.
ReplyDeleteGlad you are feeling better, surgery sucks. SPEAKING of things glossed over. Esti is still wearing her fae necklace right? The one that makes her invisible? So is Sean going to make THAT the supporting necklace for her silver tag? And can he replicate the effects of the invisibility necklace to give a copy to ohhh idk.....Cali?
ReplyDeleteCause having a invisible ninja dark elf assassin on page will pretty much guarantee awesome-ness.
Looking forward to your next few books!
ReplyDelete@Matthew - I personally think Sean should unleash more of the silver tag 'nukes' on the demons. He's already done it once. Just strap one to the end of a slingshot for crap sake and huck it through the portal, BOOM, oh look, the king is nuked, glory be the humans...erm... lycans! And then tell the assholes 'If you don't stop, we're going to bring genocide to your whole world, and you can't stop us, so you better run, far, and fast, because lions are sick of this sh*t'. Something like that. Mean, heck... iron bullets are a thing now, what about 30mm iron bullets from a GAU-8 from an A-10? BRRRRT! They don't like fire? Cool, we have /incendiary/ bombs. Drop thermite on their faces, see how they 'enjoy the fire'. So many ways to make them suffer, and mock them. I'm just hungry for more books.
ReplyDeleteOne suspects that inanimate objects don't cross the gates by themselves. Otherwise fired bullets would be slicing and dicing demons from Earth through the portal. That suggests that a tag-bomb needs a biological vehicle to carry it across the portal. That leaves how to send a spec ops crew over with a silver-tag-nuke or two so they can detonate them to destroy the King of Demons.
ReplyDeleteMy hope is that plot issues limit using tag-nukes immediately. Rather, Sean designs vehicles that are powered magically by silver-tag conversions to fired iron bullets as well as propel the vehicle. Then send those magical vehicles into the demon realm and destroy those demons forever. Not to mention studying those gate-machines.
I'm thinking of an APC mounting 1 or 2 .50 cal machine guns that run on the silver conversion as well as use the power to fire the machine guns. Of course, they should convert a few M1A1 tanks that can fire a silver tag nuke.
For a brute force approach, use the heat generated to fuel a Doble uniflow steam engine. To fire the shells, just include a packet of water behind the bullet instead of gun powder. Then use the silver conversion power to heat the water quickly enough to expand the liquid into steam to push the bullet at the desired speed. Sean just needs to create spells to harness that power into the different systems.
Played right, this can go into 20-25 books.
Before i start spending on single volumes any chance for omnibuses in the future still mad at William for dropping those when i bought 2 out of 3 now i usually wait
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I haven't given it any thought at all. I dropped the price of the first book by a dollar and am considering (as time goes on) dropping the price of the next few as well.
Deletejust a thought after rereading some omnis
DeleteYay! I just love Independence Day specials. About glossing over. Might be fun to have a "while everyone is waiting for the big nasty slice of life family day" scenario"...
ReplyDeleteAny idea when books 13 and 14 will make it to audible?
ReplyDeleteI think they're slated for July. I forget at the moment, but I know I mentioned it somewhere around here.
DeleteSo, just a quick comment: if you want to write about political entities outside the United States, you may want to do some actual research about them. The whole bit with Germany and the EU was so outrageously wrong that it could be considered insulting. The easy one: the EU has zero ability to censor anything in the way suggested in the book. There's a tremendously free press in Europe, and suggesting that the EU could suppress news is hysterically funny. Or, to put it in terms an American might understand, what would your reaction be if an author talked about how the governor of, oh, let's say Nevada ordered US Army troops into the field while banning any discussion of events in national papers and shutting down anyone from looking something up on the internet. Be pretty dumb, right?
ReplyDeleteima need u to remember we have magic in this universe that literally trumps tech sometimes in this world hes building and the main antagonists are wizards and demons who dont want this man to get support in the EU so yes could have been done better is it easily explainable with a throw away line yes
DeleteI have been to Europe. I have seen things censored there on the news. The EU does not have freedom of the press. No country in Europe has freedom of the press. Or free speech for that matter. Look it up. It's not in any of the laws anywhere.
DeleteNow, while the internet does make censorship significantly harder, it does take place. They have even done it here in the USA in recent history, but then the big news agencies were all onboard with it.
Also, this IS a fictional story with magic and lycanthropes and gateways to another realm where demons live.
People also seem to have overlooked that the demons were making inroads to the United States government, the one thing holding them off were the sigals built into certain buildings when they were built hundreds of years ago.
DeleteSo it would make a certain amount of sense that maybe the demons made inroads to other governments? Ones that perhaps had all of their old government buildings destroyed in a war, oh i don't know, 70 or so years ago? And the replacement buildings didn't get those protections because this is the modern world and who needs that stuff?
(BTW, the White House and the Congress building -really- do have those things built into them, because when they were built long ago, there were a lot of very superstitious people involved.)