Yeah, I don’t have a cover for Axtara yet (working on it), so the cover for A Dragon and Her Girl will work as the featured image for now. Especially as Axtara takes place in the same setting as A Game of Stakes, which featured in A Dragon and Her Girl. So the two do connect a little!

Anyway, got an exciting news update for you here, readers! Those of you who can read the title have already deduced it, but I’ll repeat it here anyway: Axtara – Banking and Finance is now in Alpha!

Yep! Invites to previous Alpha Readers went out and replied to. How’s it going so far? Well …

One Alpha Reader finished the book within 15 hours of getting their invite. Yeah. It was almost non-stop.

In other words, I think a lot of you readers are going to love this one.

Second, if you’re a prior Alpha Reader but have not received an invite, check your inbox and make sure it didn’t get sent to spam or promotions or some other folder.

Now, with the influx of Alpha Readers received on this title, there’s not really a need for more Alpha Readers at this point … However, they can’t hurt. If you’re interested in being an Alpha Reader, have Alpha’d before or know what it entails, or would like to do a trial run, get in touch with me and we’ll see what we can do.

Other than that, I’m going to keep working on getting this cover done, and once a few more Alpha Readers get through Axtara, start polishing for Beta! Right now I’m planning on a late summer release, and it looks like that window will be neatly open.

There is one other item of note, however, before we hit the jump. Just an FYI sort of bit, but Axtara is only 122,000 words. So standard novel size compared to my usual far. But this also makes it small enough (hah!) to get a print run.

Surprise! More on that as we move closer to a release date. Now, hit the jump for some news on Starforge.

I know. It’s not much of a teaser. But for all you UNSEC Space fans, this is the big one. Work on Starforge, the final book in the UNSEC Space Trilogy that began with Colony and continued with Jungle, is now actively being worked on. Yesterday I sat down and plotted the entire book out.

It’s gonna be good. It’s also going to be big. How big I can’t say as of yet. A plot outline doesn’t account for a lot of minutiae, but I’ll be aiming for around Colony‘s size. I don’t think it’ll hit Jungle‘s absolutely titanic size (beating Brandon’s largest Stormlight Archives book by 4000 words!), but then again I may be wrong. There’s a lot to unpack and take care of this book, between UNSEC, Pisces, the All …

What, you don’t know who/what the All are? Well that’s not my fault. Pick up Jungle already and get caught up! Starforge is already in development!

Anyway, the rest of this week (today, tomorrow, and probably some of my weekend) are going to be spent doing more pre-work for all the big elements of Starforge and rereading Colony and Jungle to get Jake, Anna, and Sweets fresh in my mind once more.

Next week, I’ll open a master file, and start the first chapter, with Jake waking up from … Well, that’d be spoilers.

But fans be assured: The Trio is back. And book 3 is going to be the most explosive part of their adventure yet. As well it will be the final part. There will not be a last second cheap twist going “OH NO, guess you’ll have to spend money again because this story isn’t over!” No, this book is definitely an ending. As for how it ends and what that ending is like, well, you’ll have to wait until it’s out.

Anyway, that’s the second half of this news update: Starforge is in development at last. The trilogy is coming to a close. And if you readers loved the action of the last two books …

Just. You. Wait.

All right, that’s it for news. There’ll probably be another post tomorrow. Possibly. Maybe. In the meantime, you can always catch up on Fireteam Freelance while waiting for more UNSEC Space goodness!

Max out!