News and Notes - April 2026

 Hello, everybody!

May and June are shaping up to be very busy months, so I wanted to take a moment to update, remind, or inform you about a few things that might otherwise slip through the cracks:

The Nemesis Legacy

I really can't thank everyone enough for all their support of "The Nemesis Legacy" so far. Since its release in January, it's proven to be one of my fastest selling and best reviewed books, hitting #1 in the Metaphysical Science Fiction category on Amazon twice and holding a 4.5+ average rating on Goodreads.

It's been extremely fulfilling and satisfying, seeing the book embraced and enjoyed by so many readers so quickly, and I'm very excited to see what the rest of the year brings as word about it continues to spread.

The Nod/Wells Timelines - A Primer

Next, a reminder that this special-edition eBook/paperback will be available worldwide via all sorts of retailers starting on May 1st. If you've been searching for a great, inexpensive point of entry into The Timelines for yourself or a speculative-fiction reader in your life, this is a release you don't want to miss.

The Nod/Wells Timelines - Volume 2

On June 2nd, the long-awaited second omnibus edition arrives worldwide via a variety of retailers, featuring three more proven novel-length speculative-fiction juggernauts from The Timelines.

The Post Mortem Report

Ronald McGillvray and I will be getting together in June to record a brand-new episode of the podcast, which should be released by the end of June or the beginning of July.

StokerCon

A few people have asked if I'm planning to attend StokerCon in Pittsburgh this year. Sadly, the answer is most likely "no" but I appreciate folks asking and I will be sure to let everyone know if that changes.

The Nod/Wells Timelines - The Official Compendium

Work on this massive tome continues and I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am currently on schedule to have the bulk of the writing done by the end of May but that will still leave several months worth of refinement and publication production efforts to wrap up by the end of 2026 in anticipation of its release next year. At this point, I'm fairly certain that the compendium will prove to be my biggest and most intricate individual book to date, easily eclipsing even "309" in terms of size and scope, so look forward to that.

My current plan is to have pre-orders for the compendium live by the beginning of July but that may slip a bit depending on how things go in May and June.

Hey, wait a minute! Is this a newsletter?

Maybe.

Will I be doing more of them?

Maybe.

A lot of you may already know that I'm not a huge social media guy. I've always largely seen social media platforms as a means to promote my creative works and share the occasional personal insight I believe fans of them might find useful or interesting. As such, I'm always looking for ways to streamline that process, and free up more of my time to focus on other things, like writing more cool books!

Ideally, I'd like to reach a point where I only post once or twice a week, or even just a few times a month, and I suspect this sort of thing will aid that effort.

Until next time, happy reading, everybody!

Visit my official website.

The Nod/Wells Timelines - A Primer

The past six months or so have been very busy, with the standalone release of "Mr. Perkins Goes to Hell" back in October, the first Nod/Wells Timelines omnibus edition in November, "The Nemesis Legacy" launches in January, and most recently, the pre-orders for the two remaining omnibus editions going live.

Still, even with all that taken care of, I found myself wanting to address one more potential issue for readers interested in exploring the tales of The Nod/Wells Timelines.

While there have long been several great, low-cost options for doing so via Amazon, there really haven't been equivalent, or even comparable, offerings present elsewhere... until now!

The Nod/Wells Timelines - A Primer

 To address that, I'm pleased to present "The Nod/Wells Timelines - A Primer," which collects three of the most popular and well-regarded stories from The Timelines, and makes them available at a variety of retailers in addition to Amazon at an extremely value-oriented price.

Moreover, the standalone eBook edition of "Mr. Perkins Goes to Hell" is now available at many new stores in addition to Amazon, and still just $0.99!

Best of all, the primer will ship simultaneously as both an eBook and a 6x9" paperback, presented in the same style as the omnibus editions, which makes it a perfect point of entry for anyone who might be curious about The Timelines but not quite ready to commit to those beefier volumes, or the standalone novel-length books.

This is also a great opportunity for libraries and booksellers to test the waters and offer a high-quality Nod/Wells Timelines experience to their patrons with very little risk or cost to consider.

As a result, I'm very excited for the release of "The Nod/Wells Timelines - A Primer" on May 1st, 2026 and look forward to welcoming any and all new readers who come my way as a result of it.

Pre-order "The Nod/Wells Timelines - A Primer."

Visit my official website. 

The Nod/Wells Timelines Omnibus Editions and The Amazon Conundrum

I have a few things I'd like to cover that are somewhat related, so I'm combining them into this single post:

First, I'm pleased to report the official release dates for my previously-announced omnibus editions.

• "The Nod/Wells Timelines - Volume 2" - June 2, 2026
• "The Nod/Wells Timelines - Volume 3" - January 5, 2027

Volume 1 - Volume 2 - Volume 3

It's also worth noting that the eBook edition of "The Nod/Wells Timelines - Volume 1" is currently available for just $2.99 (US) worldwide from a variety of online stores until the end of March.

As expected, producing and publishing these omnibus editions has taken a fair amount of time and effort but I'm very happy with the results, and excited for a whole new wave of readers to experience The Timelines due to their increased availability.

Along those lines, I wanted to talk a little about Amazon and the complex relationship I have with it as an independent, self-published author. For those of you who aren't interested in the nuts-and-bolts behind-the-scenes aspects of writing and publishing, feel free to skip the rest of this post but there are a few things I've been wanting to say publicly on the subject and this strikes me as a perfect opportunity to do so.

To address the elephant in the room, I know it's become rather fashionable to paint Amazon with a wide brush, portraying it as a sort of irredeemable, monstrous entity for a variety of arguably-valid reasons; however, in the interest of being fair and honest, I believe it's important to not overlook or be completely dismissive of the good the company has done for authors such as myself over the years. The simple truth is that I owe a lot of my success to Amazon and the self-publishing infrastructure it's built and maintained for decades. Was a lot of that done by it for less-than-wholesome reasons? Perhaps, but at the end of the day, many authors who otherwise never would have had a comparable opportunity to have their works published, presented, and sold to a global audience unquestionably benefited from the arrangement, myself included.

That being said, I am very aware of the reasons why many people choose to not shop at Amazon these days, which is why I've done everything I realistically can to provide as many legitimate alternatives as possible for those interested in acquiring editions of my works, particularly where paperbacks and eBooks are concerned.

Still, I find myself lamenting the decline of Amazon as I believe it will ultimately harm newer and less popular authors, who will certainly struggle to reach potential readers in a way those of us who were present on Amazon during its heyday never did. I can't help feeling a bit sad and sorry for those people, knowing how long and hard I struggled to build an audience even with that advantage, and that no similarly-effective option currently exists to fill the void being created by Amazon's gradual but seemingly-inevitable collapse.

I do see some hope for the future with the rise of book marketplaces like Kobo and Bookshop.org, and alternatives to Goodreads like The Book Radar and The StoryGraph, however, even the best of those platforms still have a long way to go to achieve a significant fraction of the relevance those entities still have despite their diminishing influence. The thing is, Amazon and Goodreads aren't actually going anywhere any time soon, even if they continue to hemorrhage marketshare, because their brand recognition is simply too strong but that's only really useful for established authors and publishers, who already have similar brands and name recognition of their own. Thus, those places are increasingly akin to traditional bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble, where only the big names, and the occasional indie darling, have any real chance of success. What's really being lost by Amazon's implosion is the generally-level playing field that used to allow indies to start from scratch and build viable businesses with sufficient skill, effort, and a lot of luck.

Unfortunately, that's the reality, and the hidden cost of Amazon's decline, so don't be too excited or happy about it because a lot of authors and publishers have consequently begun to fall by the wayside, and will continue to do so should that persist. Worse yet, as I alluded to before, many more won't even get a chance to succeed until that void is filled, which is unlikely to happen for a while, assuming that another company with sufficient technical ability and resources manages to pick up the proverbial baton and run with it, and proves to be any better for all concerned than its predecessor.

Admittedly, the whole situation is rather disheartening because, for all Amazon's issues, I know better than to think it will be easily replaced or improved upon when all factors are considered. Still, we creatives are often a resilient bunch, so I remain confident that people will find ways to succeed even if the current trend continues; however, I certainly don't envy anyone attempting to begin a career in writing and publishing at the moment. This was already an extremely difficult and complex path to walk and I firmly believe these and other recent developments will make most aspects of it significantly more challenging for several years to come.

In any case, here's hoping that things work out for the best for all concerned. Also, rest assured that I will continue to make and keep my books available for all of you in as many different places and forms as possible, including those offered by Amazon.

Until next time, happy reading, everybody!

Visit my official website.

The Nod/Wells Timelines in 2026 - A Year of Celebration

One of the strangest phenomena associated with becoming a "successful" author is the realization that, with each book you write and release that connects with a significant number of readers, you inevitably join an ever-shrinking group of individuals participating in the profession who've managed to do as much or more.

Most people who aspire to will never write one commercially or critically successful book. Of those who do, few will go on to write one, or two, or three more.

Thus, having written and published nine novel-length books that, by the standards of the profession, have been at least somewhat successful, both critically and commercially, I find myself in a place where I feel comfortable taking a moment to pause and appreciate all of that.

Of course, me being me, I'm not about to rest on my laurels and sit around eating bonbons, even if that were financially viable, which it certainly is not; however, I can't help feeling a bit more, for lack of a better term, relaxed as 2026 unfolds and I continue my work on the official compendium for The Nod/Wells Timelines, and the two announced omnibus editions that have yet to be published.

For the first time since all of this started back in 2017, I feel confident about the way things are proceeding  in a way that I've only flirted with previously.

The fact is, I have largely become the noteworthy author of speculative fiction I set out to be all those years ago and that's a pretty great feeling. Would I like to do more and become even more successful? Absolutely, but I think it would be a mistake to not at least briefly acknowledge how far I've come from where I started , and how fortunate I've been to reach this point. As long and hard as I've worked to create my books and the positive reputation that's become associated with them over the years, I'm very aware that there are plenty of people out there who have done just as much, or more, but may never experience anything similar.

So, as is often the case, this post largely boils down to me being extremely thankful and grateful for all the support and assistance I've received throughout my career. With how crazy and unpredictable life, and the world in general, can be, there's no telling how things might play out moving forward but, if nothing else, I'm very proud and honored to be where I am, and able to continue my efforts as an author and publisher while writing these words.

Thanks again, and happy reading, everybody!

Visit my official website.

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!

Visit my official website.

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!

Visit my Official Website