Going Wide... Again: The Nod/Wells Timelines - Volume 1

A quick post to let everyone know that my first omnibus edition "The Nod/Wells Timelines - Volume 1" has been widely released as an e-book and a 6x9" paperback, just in time for the holidays!

The Nod/Wells Timelines - Volume 1

As I mentioned in my previous post, this is the first time e-books of "The Big Men" and "309" have been available anywhere other than Amazon since 2020, and the very first time "Shards" has been similarly offered. Additionally, several new subscription and library services, such as Kobo Plus, Everand, Borrow Box, and CloudLibrary, now have access to the books via this release!

It's taken a lot of time and effort to get to this point as an author, where making the investment to put together and publish these collected editions of my works made good sense, so I'm beyond thrilled to have been able to do that.

Before I go, a quick confirmation that "The Nod/Wells Timelines - Volume 2" will be released in mid-2026, after the initial standalone publication of "The Nemesis Legacy" in January, and "The Nod/Wells Timelines - Volume 3" will arrive in January of 2027. Finally, look forward to the release of the official compendium for The Timelines in March of 2027 to celebrate my ten-year anniversary as an author!

Until next time, happy reading, everybody!

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Coming Attractions: 2025, 2026, and Beyond!

When I published "The Spiral and The Threads" back in 2024, it was a huge weight off my shoulders, having completed the last of the original seven books I'd planned as the "core" volumes for The Nod/Wells Timelines speculative-fiction literary universe.

Oddly enough, because I'd already started work on the first expansions in the form of "8: Tales of The Big Men from The Nod/Wells Timelines" and "The Nemesis Legacy," I never really felt "done" in spite of the huge sense of accomplishment reaching that milestone provided for me.

In a similar manner, with "8" published, and work on "The Nemesis Legacy" winding down, I still find myself busy as ever, with all sorts of projects remaining in the pipeline.

The first of those, a re-release of the novelette "Mr. Perkins Goes to Hell" will be hitting Amazon on October 3rd, 2025, with a snazzy new cover that will hopefully attract a plethora of new readers to The Timelines. Of course, those of you who already experienced that tale via Kindle Vella or as part of "The Spiral and The Threads" may not be particularly excited about this development but I've always felt Mr. Perkins' origin story had a lot of untapped potential as an initial experience akin to "Academic Displacement," so I'm very curious to see what comes of it, and eager to see it take its place on The Nod/Wells Timelines "value menu."

Mr. Perkins Goes to Hell (Amazon)

Next up in November of 2025 will be an omnibus edition, containing "The Big Men," "309," and "Shards." This will be the first time an ebook of "Shards" arrives anywhere other than Amazon, and the first time ebooks of "The Big Men" and "309" will be similarly obtainable in over five years. Again, I'm very excited and eager to provide such options despite remaining committed to keeping the individual books in KDP Select and available via Kindle Unlimited for the foreseeable future.

Of course, "The Nod/Wells Timelines: Volume I" will be followed by various editions of "The Nemesis Legacy" in January and February of 2026. It's been absolutely thrilling putting that project together and I can hardly wait for everyone to experience it next year. I don't want to oversell it, but I honestly think it's one of the coolest and most fun things I've ever written. Moreover, I feel very confident that fans of The Timelines are almost certainly going to thoroughly enjoy it!

2026 will also see "The Nod/Wells Timelines: Volume II," which will include "The Nemesis Effect," "Big Man Down," and "500," and similarly make those ebooks more widely available for the first time ever.

Finally, in 2027, "The Nod/Wells Timelines: Volume III" will combine "The Spiral and The Threads," "8: Tales of The Big Men from The Nod/Wells Timelines," and "The Nemesis Legacy" to "complete" the omnibus editions. Later that year, I will be releasing an official compendium for The Timelines to mark my ten-year anniversary as an author. Needless to say, that is going to be a massive tome, containing extensive book and character profiles, "The Story Behind The Timelines," and several all-new Tales of The Big Men, as well as some other goodies and surprises.

All of that, and various other projects I'm not ready to talk about yet, are going to keep me very busy for the next few years but the good news is that there will be no shortage of content for fans of The Timelines, new and old, to experience.

Until next time, happy reading, everybody!

Visit my official website.

My Thoughts on Amazon's Virtual Voice Technology after a Year of Using it as an Author and Publisher

As many of you may already know, I've been participating in the beta program for Amazon's Virtual Voice technology via its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform for well over a year now. In that time, I've published seven novel-length books and four "story singles" using the tech, and have therefore gained a level of familiarity with the tool and its nuances that I'd say goes a fair bit beyond what a casual or average user of it might experience.

As with any new, in-development software, there have definitely been some growing pains with Virtual Voice from a user perspective. Lost data, poorly implemented or undesirable "features," and general struggles when attempting to report and resolve issues with the system have all reared their ugly heads and been "par for the course" throughout the beta but thus far, I'd have to say that my overall experience with Virtual Voice has been fairly positive.

A bit of context: I have a BA in journalism with an emphasis on publication production. I have been actively working as an author and publisher of speculative fiction for a little over eight years. Before that, and indeed throughout some of that time, I have worked as a software engineer for well over twenty years, using a variety of tech stacks in support of a variety of industries. I also published one traditional, self-narrated audiobook via Amazon's ACX platform just prior to my acceptance into the beta, which I suspect may have factored into my early inclusion in said program. All that to say that this is not my first rodeo when it comes to writing, publishing, and a plethora of technologies.

That said, let's address the elephant in the room as I did in my previous post about this subject. In my estimation, "no," Amazon's Virtual Voice technology is not "AI," either in the proper, traditional sense of the concept or the highly-questionable and suspect way it's thrown around in the tech industry at large these days. To put it simply, Virtual Voice is a natural evolution of the same synthetic voice technologies that have existed for decades. It is not a "push a button, get an audiobook" sort of thing, and in point of fact requires a significant amount of time and effort from anyone using it to produce valid and acceptable results. 

"How much time and effort?" I hear you asking. It can vary somewhat but in my experience, about three to six times as long as the audio of the finished product ends up being. So, a five-hour audiobook, something in the neighborhood of 40-50,000 words, will take between 15 and 30 hours of fairly diligent, detail-oriented work to complete. That's certainly no trivial task, however, comparing it to the time and effort associated with traditional audiobook recording, editing, and post-production, the potential advantages of Virtual Voice will quickly become apparent to anyone with sufficient experience to make such judgements.

But wait! Before you run off and fire up ye ol' KDP Dashboard, there are a few significant caveats to consider:

• Virtual Voice is still very much an "in-development" technology. That means changes to it, which are at times quite significant, occur on a regular basis. One of the most potentially-devastating can be updates to the virtual voices themselves. While those generally improve their potential to sound "better" in a variety of circumstances, they almost always require a full review of the published material and copious editing of it in the Virtual Voice Studio, not just to achieve those at times marginally-better results, but to correct any issues that may have been caused by the update. This has happened to me several times throughout the beta with various books, requiring me to effectively re-do all of the work on them to keep them sounding their best. That can be particularly brutal with longer books, featuring 10 hours of audio or more, as the 3-6X production time estimate applies to them as well. For example: My longest book, which is a bit over 134,000 words, had to be completely re-worked twice in the past year: once from scratch as a result of data loss triggered by a voice update, and again, with significant tweaks to that voice-training data required by a subsequent voice update.

Virtual Voice Studio allows authors and publishers to "teach" virtual voices to properly read their works. This involves adding data points that represent pauses, pronunciation and punctuation changes, voice speed alterations, and more. The process to achieve the best-possible result for a given publication is generally quite extensive and time-consuming.

• No matter how much effort you put into it, Virtual Voice is never going to sound like a top-tier human narrator. It can sound very good if proper care is taken to get the most out of the system that it's capable of producing but at best, it can deliver a solid, dry reading of the text, with occasional bits of emphasis to prevent things from sounding too monotonous. In fairness, certain types of listeners may enjoy, or even prefer, the consistent, predictable delivery Virtual Voice tends to provide, when the rough edges are smoothed out via editing in the studio, but I think it's highly unlikely that it will ever be able to approach the level of a dramatic reading from an author, or an experienced and talented narrator, or cast.
• Any audiobook work you do with Virtual Voice is tied to that system since it produces the audio for you. This means that if Amazon decides to pull the plug on the project at some point in the future, as it recently did with Kindle Vella for example, you may find yourself scrambling to salvage your investment, or simply out any work that you put into it, depending on how that hypothetical scenario might unfold.
• As alluded to previously, there is a lot of confusion and misinformation floating around the internet about what Virtual Voice is and what's involved in using it properly, which isn't helped by the fact that, in its typical fashion, Amazon has been fairly quiet about the tech throughout its development, relying on the authors and publishers such as myself using it to "take the lumps" and communicate the realities of it to potential readers without much in the way of assistance in that regard.

Still, even with all those considerations, I wouldn't discourage any interested author or publisher from investigating Virtual Voice for their own projects. For all its potential pitfalls, there are as many or more opportunities for benefit and success related to it in my opinion, assuming that it's used with caution and care, just like any other tool.

My audiobooks - both virtually voiced and traditionally narrated.

The Nod/Wells Timelines Expand

As I come to the end of my eighth year as an author and begin my ninth, I'm pleased to report that The Nod/Wells Timelines have officially begun to expand with the release of "8" earlier this year and the announcement of my next novel, "The Nemesis Legacy," which will make its debut in January of 2026!

At this point, The Timelines have become a real powerhouse in the world of speculative fiction, attracting new readers of sci-fi, horror, and thrillers of all sorts from around the world on a daily basis. I'm therefore certain that more than a few reading this are more than a little excited about the new books, so I'll be sure to talk more about "The Nemesis Legacy" in particular as its release approaches.

The Nemesis Legacy at Amazon (Kindle Edition Pre-Order)

That said, I'm also very aware that The Timelines have reached a level of intricacy and complexity that some readers may find at least somewhat daunting despite the standalone nature of each tale. I've therefore decided that my tenth book will be a compendium that I'll be releasing in 2027 to, among other things, thoroughly document the ins and outs of the universe as a whole and the relationships between its constituent parts. As you might imagine, that's a fairly significant task, which is why I'm giving myself quite a while to accomplish it, and in truth started that effort in earnest back in 2024.

Finally, I have a few additional "special projects" related to The Timelines in development that I'm not quite ready to talk about just yet, so I'll likely be posting about this subject at least once more this year.

All that to say that The Nod/Wells Timelines are indeed bigger and better than ever in 2025, and poised to be enhanced significantly over the next few years in ways that should be very interesting and compelling for fans of my various works set along them.

Until next time, happy reading, everybody!

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The Next Level

The toughest hurdle any author attempting to earn a living from their work has to clear is the creation of a "fandom," a group of readers who consistently care enough to show up, open their wallets, and engage with said works each time the author publishes something new. That's a feat far easier said than done and after nearly eight years of attempting such a thing, I believe I may finally be on the verge of accomplishing it.

That doesn't mean I'm "rich," or "loaded," or any of the things the average person tends to associate with "success" in the literary world but what it does mean is that I'm closer than I've ever been to being able to "pay the bills" and live a decent, modest, "normal" life as someone who exclusively focuses on writing and publishing works of fiction.

Still, that would make me an extremely rare person, a fact that I'm constantly very aware of, even as I continue to pursue that goal. It's a funny thing, really, because there were so many times over these past eight years where things almost fell apart, where the sales dried up, or attention for and interest in my works appeared to wane, but in all those cases, things bounced back and, eventually, grew stronger and more consistent. The end result is, when looking at the "big picture" in terms of year-over-year growth, there's been a noteworthy increase in all the metrics that matter, indicating that I have indeed attracted and retained a significant number of "fans."

That said, with the release of my next book looming, I find myself once again wondering if this will be the tipping point, where I make the jump from just eking by to being able to move forward with a new level of confidence and, for the first time since this all started, certainty.

I'd very much like that to be the case as the next two writing projects I have in mind are going to require a considerable amount of time and focus to pull off properly, which would certainly be easier to do if "8" does as well as I hope it might.

So, if you are a "fan" of my efforts as an author, please don't hesitate to throw your support behind this upcoming release, or any of my existing works, as ultimately, you all truly are the only ones who can help me reach the next level.

Thanks, everybody!

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My Thoughts on Amazon/Audible Virtual Voice Audiobooks as an Author and Publisher

As many of you are likely already aware, I have been participating in Amazon's Virtual Voice audiobook beta for the past several months.

Thus far, I've published three of my books via the system, and intend to publish several more over the next six to twelve months.

I have also recorded, produced, and published a traditional, self-narrated audiobook via Amazon's ACX platform, a task I completed shortly before being invited to participate in said beta, so I feel reasonably confident making direct comparisons between those two experiences, which I believe will be useful in articulating and validating some of the points I'd like to make here.

My first Virtual Voice audiobook, "309," as it appears on Audible's website.

To address the elephant in the room: "Is Amazon's Virtual Voice technology AI?" In my professional opinion, as someone who worked as a full-stack software engineer for over twenty years, I would say the answer to that question is a definitive "No." That said, I do understand why many people might make assumptions or have concerns about the product and its mechanisms given the current state of affairs in the technology industry at large, so I will do my best to expand on that "no" a bit in a way that I hope will be understandable and relatable to those of you out there reading this who may lack the technical expertise to make such determinations.

First and foremost, an important clarification: In recent years, the term "AI" has been increasingly misused and misinterpreted by a variety of entities as a sort of catch-all for algorithmic operations that can and should be more accurately described as advanced automation and data-driven prediction. A big part of this has been perpetuated by the technology industry's (in my opinion) foolish and misguided attempt to turn a technical term and theoretical premise into a marketing buzzword. The simple fact of the matter is that the fundamental technologies at the core of everything from chat bots, to automated image and video manipulation and generation, to "spontaneous" code creation, documentation, and modification have existed in various forms for decades. Yes, the ways those building blocks are being arranged and leveraged have enhanced and changed over the years, as has the computational capacity of the systems running such code, but the vast majority of what we're seeing pitched and reported on as "AI" these days is only a natural evolution of software development practices that have been "in play" for ages.

Another important distinction that is often overlooked, which I believe is of particular relevance with regard to Amazon's Virtual Voice tech is the amount of human intervention required for such "AI" tools to produce useful and acceptable results. I suspect that a big part of what allows people to make the leap of calling something "AI" is the lopsided ratio of input versus output that often occurs when using such tools. 

Historically, and indeed until fairly recently, it was necessary to provide a computer with an amount of time, effort, and data at least comparable, and more often than not far in excess of the end result or "finished product" one was attempting to have the computer help them produce. Programmers might spend days, or weeks, or months, or even years writing code to generate specialized results that might well only ever be used in a single context (i.e. to solve a single problem,) and creatives might spend as much time using such software to produce content, be it writing a book with a word processor, or producing a video with a non-linear video editor, or recording a song with a digital audio workstation. Now, systems exist that can produce at least somewhat convincing text, or audio, or even video as a result of a simple, one-line prompt delivered as conversational language (i.e. how humans typically speak to each other - not code.) It's no wonder why many people, particularly those who don't understand the fundamental technologies driving such systems, tend to view such things as "magical" or ascribe "intelligence" to them.

Of course, any reputable computer scientist can spot the difference between such "tricks" and true artificial intelligence (i.e. sentience) from a mile away but most people aren't computer scientists and therein lies the problem. If something appears to be intelligent and the people using it lack the ability to conclusively determine otherwise, it's very easy for the vast majority of users to simply shrug and say, "I guess we have AI now."

Take it from someone who knows. We do not. What the tech industry calls "AI" in 2024 is merely a result of the mind-boggling amounts of data and computing power that humanity has amassed over the past fifty or so years since computers became ubiquitous. All these things could have been done in the 1970s, or at the very least the 1990s as there were some important developments with regard to programming principles such as object-oriented design and multithreaded parallel processing in that era, if we'd had the data sets and CPUs/GPUs we do today.

And of course, that's not to mention all the outright theft and unauthorized use of human-generated content and intellectual property that's been so-often "leveraged" to "create" the essential data sets for most if not all of the "AI" systems currently being touted as "revolutionary innovations" by the industry.

But I digress...

My point is that Amazon's Virtual Voice tech, which to the best of my knowledge is not marketed as AI but is often assumed to be, is not a small-input/massive-output system akin to something like a chat bot. It's a tool wherein the person using it has to make a considerable effort to "teach" the system how to effectively read the individual book being produced. For each of the three books I've released with Virtual Voice, I had to spend dozens of hours listening to them repeatedly, tweaking the timing, pronunciation, and reading speed of hundreds of individual words, paragraph breaks, and phrases to produce the results a customer hears when listening to the completed audiobook. This is largely because the system (good and impressive as it is) is far from perfect and indeed contains shortcomings that I was unable to work around completely and had to "live with" in the same way I would when using any other creative tool. That said, I'm fairly confident that the tool will improve over time and I do firmly believe that the results it can produce (even now) are at the very least acceptable if sufficient effort is made to make them sound as good as possible, which is what I have done and why I feel good about using Virtual Voice to publish audio editions of my works.

The other (I imagine) obvious question many of you might have is: "Why are you using this tool when you have the ability to produce your own audio?" There are several answers to that:

1. Having worked in the technology industry for a long time, I'm very aware of the profound impacts that new tech can have on other industries. I'm therefore always keen to study and assess such things as quickly as possible to determine whether or not they might prove a help or hinderance to the things I'm attempting to do as a creator. That made participating in a beta such as this a no-brainer for me but there's admittedly a bit more to it.
2. Having just completed the work on the audiobook for my first novel, "The Big Men," just prior to the invite, I was very aware of how much time and effort such a tool might save me, and the possibilities it might open up, such as having a female voice read "309," a book featuring a female main character. That was something I wanted to experiment with and an opportunity I couldn't in good conscience let pass.
3. The bottom line is that, had I not been invited into the Virtual Voice beta, I would have simply gone on recording and producing my own audiobooks with my own voice, as I did my first, (admittedly at a much slower rate,) so I felt completely comfortable exercising that option, knowing that the only person I'd be taking any work from would be myself. 

All that said, I wouldn't begrudge anyone else with other options choosing to make use of a tool like Virtual Voice for any reason. If you are happy with the results you're able to produce with it and you firmly believe that your readers will be happy (or at least content) with those results as well then, by all means, do what you think is best with your work. I certainly don't have the budget to pay for anyone else to narrate my books, so if I were unable or unwilling to do so myself, a tech like this could absolutely be a godsend and, even if I could afford traditional narration, it would still be my right as the creator of the works to put them out into the world in whatever way, and using whatever tool(s,) I see fit.

To wrap things up, I've been largely happy with my Virtual Voice audiobook publishing experience so far and I see a lot of potential for things to improve considerably over the next few years as the technology and its capabilities mature and grow. There have definitely been some rough spots in terms of technical issues, negative customer reactions, and instances where I've wished for the system to be a bit more capable than it currently is but all things considered, I'd say it's absolutely worth a look for any author or publisher pondering audiobook production options.

My current audiobooks:

• The Big Men (self-narrated)
• 309 (female Virtual Voice)
• Shards (male Virtual Voice)
• The Nemesis Effect (male Virtual Voice)

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8: Tales of The Big Men from The Nod/Wells Timelines

It's been a few months since I published "The Spiral and The Threads," the book that "completes" The Nod/Wells Timelines as I originally conceived them, and it's been great getting to see people's reactions to it. I've been particularly pleased to learn that, as I'd hoped it might, it's also been serving as a unique and effective introduction point for some readers into the overarching universe.

Of course, as I've mentioned previously, there's much more that can, and likely will, be done with The Timelines, even as I begin to explore other writing-related projects. The first of these "expansions" already exists in the form of my upcoming short-story collection, "8: Tales of The Big Men from The Nod/Wells Timelines," which will make its debut in early 2025.

As some of you may already know, I've decided to release four of the twelve stories from the book as "story singles" throughout 2024. The first of these, "Paper or Plastic?," is already available and the second, "Office Hours," will be available on July 2nd.

As with all my other published works, "8" has been specifically crafted to tell its own self-contained stories that also work to support and enhance each other, and contribute to the speculative-fiction mythos established in my first seven books. Again, I'm hopeful this will make it a valid starting point for new readers as well as a satisfying extension for existing fans of The Timelines.

Until next time, happy reading, everybody!

Visit my Amazon Author Page

The Nod/Wells Timelines - A Retrospective

Having completed the seven books that comprise my original vision for the Nod/Wells Timelines literary universe, I thought now would be a good time to take a step back and talk a bit about each volume in the context of the overall "series." Of course, the books don't really follow the form of a traditional series, with their non-linear presentation of various story elements and their multidimensional settings and crossovers; however, with the seven "core" books available, it's much easier to look at the effort as a whole, and how the individual pieces contribute to and support it.

For the purposes of this retrospective, I'm going to number the books to match their order of publication but as I've said many times in the past, my intent was always that they should be able to stand alone (telling their own unique, self-contained stories,) or be consumed in any order a reader might prefer to give them an individualized reading experience. That said, the following is the order they were written in and could therefore be considered an "ideal" way to consume them.

Book 1 - The Big Men

This "paranormal thriller" tells the story of a young man who has a fascination with men of power, authority figures with a distinct and distinguished appearance whom he believes to be leading idyllic and covetous lives that he both admires and envies. Through a unique and unusual series of events, the young man comes to find that he has the ability to literally drain the life and "power" from such men and use it to his own advantage, but not without a cost. What becomes of him and the "big men" he encounters? You'll have to read the book to find out. "The Big Men" begins the "Wells" branch of The Timelines with the introduction of Alan Wells and, as the name implies, features the introduction of several prominent characters such as Albert Cox and Robert Cross.

Book 2 - 309

A classic science fiction first-contact narrative with several unique twists, "309" tells the story of Lisa Hudson, a young journalism student who finds herself unexpectedly transformed when she becomes one of a scant few survivors of a sudden and brutal alien invasion that proves to be much more than meets the eye. This book begins the "Nod" branch of The Timelines with the introduction of Alex Nod.

Book 3 - Shards

This collection of short, related works has a strong horror bent, with several of the stories veering into some fairly dark territory in terms of subjects and outcomes; however, it also maintains the sci-fi, paranormal, and fantastical elements established in the first two books and references or builds off of elements from them, even as it sets up various plot points that pay off in later books. Noteworthy new and recurring characters that make appearances in "Shards" include Roy Carter, Alan Wells, Robert Cross, Ortin Fleck, Walter Briggs, and most-importantly, Franklin Nod, with "The Field Journal of Dr. Franklin Nod" serving as the initial point of deviation between the "Nod" and "Wells" timelines.

Book 4 - The Nemesis Effect

Set in the near future, this somewhat-traditional science fiction tale puts the Nod/Wells Timelines spin on the classic "save the world" narrative and establishes the groundwork for my vision of what humanity's future might look like if the events depicted in the other six "core" books were to play out as written. Noteworthy characters include Tom Hallett, Jacob Westbrook, Muriel Westbrook, Sophia Fields, and the introduction of Albert Nodwell.

Book 5 - Big Man Down

A self-contained "sequel" to "The Big Men," this "paranormal thriller" continues the story of Alan Wells in the "Wells" timeline and heavily references characters and events from "The Big Men" and "Shards" while still telling its own unique standalone story.

Book 6 - 500

A continuation of "309," this science fiction "adventure" brings together many of the characters and events from the other six "core" books to extend the "Nod" timeline in some exciting ways that I wouldn't dare spoil. Needless to say, fans of the other books will find a lot to like in "500" but, as with the releases that preceded it, it has been specifically crafted to also work as a standalone.

Book 7 - The Spiral and The Threads

Without question, this collection of shorter, related works, which could certainly be seen as a continuation of "Shards," is my most-challenging release to date in terms of what it asks of its readers. With a strong emphasis on horror, heavy and thought-provoking themes, and its copious references to characters and events from the other six "core" books, it's perhaps the worst-possible starting point for certain types of readers despite being constructed as a standalone experience like its predecessors. As I mentioned in this previous post, while "The Spiral and The Threads" does represent "an" end to The Timelines, it almost certainly won't be "the" end of them as I have many more stories I'd like to tell in the universe I've established.

Well, there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. As you might imagine, it's been an absolutely wild ride getting to this point and I don't know if I could ever adequately describe what it feels like to have finally reached it after nearly seven years of painstaking effort. Obviously, I'm very proud of "The Nod/Wells Timelines" and what I believe it represents, a modern, unique, and compelling speculative fiction reading experience built to stand the test of time. Of course, it's up to all of you to decide if that's actually the case but for what it's worth, I gave it my best shot and I like my odds.

Until next time, happy reading, everybody!

Visit my Amazon Author Page