Pretty awesome cover to "Snaked." I do believe Cohesion Press has some faith in the book and intends to do their best to promote it. (Partly because they can rightly take credit for the end product after putting me through a couple of rigorous rewrites.) It's scheduled to come out 4th Qt. 2017, and I think that means October.

Haven't heard what's going on with Tuskers IV from Ragnarok Press. It's supposed to come out in August, and I haven't heard differently.

So things are happening.

I have a major publisher who said he was ready to look at a thriller from me, so I've attempted "Deadfall Ridge." Don't know if I've hit the mark, but I think I'm close. I'll write another thriller if this one doesn't take, applying what I learned. Meanwhile, I think it's a good book so it will come out one way or the other.

This morning I queried the editor and I'm hoping he'll ask to see it. I'm risking rejection, but if I want to have a publisher, that's the game. If he turns it down, I'll try again. I'm guessing since he expressed interest in my writing("brilliant premise, beautifully written") that I'll have maybe three shots.

The last three books I've written have been a step up in a way. Mostly because of the work I did after I finished the first draft. I'm getting more of a sense of what is required, both in subject matter and technique. My earlier books are good, I think. (It took me so long to say outloud what I really thought, heh.) But they were written totally at my whim, without any attention to their commercial prospects.

Part of me loves the purity of that. Writing what I want when I want. But part of me wants wider readership, and that means being aware of what the market is asking for. It isn't too much of a compromise to do that, I think.

Even my whimsy books were always meant to be readable in a popular way. It was more that the subjects (love-lorn gargoyles, gangster golems, cyber-punk hobbits) weren't going to attract publishers.

To be read by a wider audience, I need either to go through publishers, the bigger the better, or really crack down on self promotion, or just accept that books I put out myself without any promotion aren't going to sell very well. I'm willing to try the first option as long as there are publishers open to me (which is a very fine thread easily broken), but I'm not really willing to do the second option of self-promotions. I hate it and it's self-demeaning as far as I'm concerned.

I'm willing to go to the third option if that ends up happening. Publishing what I want, when I want, to a few readers.

I've already gone way, way beyond my original intent. I'd hoped to finish just one more book, to self-publish it, just to prove I could do it. A few doors opened and I went through them and as long as there is a sliver of daylight coming through those doors, I'll continue. But if they shut, I'm not going to knock on those doors again.

Life is too short, folks.