To End the Silence
Work on the rough draft for this book continues. I have two more chapters before I’m into Act III (as of this time). This is a crazy story to write, and it’s going to be something on par with a season, finally. This one might take a little longer to write than the previous two.
Promotion
The new Dangerous Cargo is selling for 99 cents until Sunday night (4/19/2026). If you buy Kindle books, grab Dangerous Cargo, 2nd Edition while it’s cheap.
What’s Next?
So, of course, I have possible stories in the hopper. I spent a little time yesterday putting down some thoughts and notes for possible future books. I like to get things lined up ahead of time so I can order the covers and have everything pre-planned before I finish my current project.
I ordered the cover for the third Robot Whisperers book. That book will be titled The Mind Collector. I don’t even have the book plotted out yet. I have notes and ideas, and it’s going to be a crazy story. In fact, I’m not sure how I’ll be able to top that if I decide to write a fourth book (which is probably likely).
Right now, I’m running a cheap Facebook Ad on the two-book Robot Whisperer series as it stands. My purpose is to collect data to determine whether readers are interested in the series. So far, it’s difficult to tell. There are only two books, so many people just pass them by. I don’t want to sink a lot of money into advertising because I know it’s a losing venture. I’m willing to lose some money to get the data, but I won’t sink too much into it. I’ll probably have to run the Ads for the next month or two to get enough data to make a decision. Even with that, I’ll still write the third book, publish it, and continue to run Ads to see how it performs with three books.
I have a possible 10-book set idea for Roberta. She’s the gunslinger in Dangerous Cargo (and later shows up in RUSTY’s memories and The Missing Link). If you haven’t read RUSTY’s Memories or The Missing Link, you’re probably wondering how I can turn one secondary character into a 10-book set… Well, it’s like this: Roberta has a back story. So, the book set would be about her early years. If you’ve read The Missing Link (I won’t reveal any spoilers), you’ll be much more curious about her history. This series is still a maybe, but I’m leaning toward making it happen.
I also must write another 10-book Daphne series. I haven’t decided how this series will go. I already have another 10 book ideas in the can, and it would take little effort for me to come up with more if I tried. Let’s face it, there are so many crazy stories I could do with those characters. I have a lot of secondary characters and bad guys still roaming around. Plus, what would the next series be based on? Daphne, the later years? I’ve thought about her buying a larger cargo ship. That would give me more flexibility with stories where she has to do battle in space, though the small ship has a Firefly feel to it.
Anyway, a second 10-book Daphne series is definitely in the future. I’ll probably start with the first book later this year.
I just replaced Dangerous Cargo with a new release. That’s because the read-through from Novis Terminal to Dangerous Cargo was really bad. Read-through is author-speak for the number of people who read the next book compared to the previous one. For instance, if 100 people read the first book but only 50 read the second, the read-through is 50%. If you don’t know the history behind this, I’ll tell you that Novis Terminal was rewritten in 2025 with my improved writing skills. Dangerous Cargo was written back in 2022, along with The Nav Computer, Stolen Property, and Supercomputer. RUSTY’s Memories was written just before the second edition of Novis Terminal. A lot of readers picked up on the fact that there are some older books and newer books, and have skipped over from Novis Terminal to RUSTY’s Memories (which is cool). I decided to create a 2nd release of Dangerous Cargo to see if it would perform better than the old version (I’m sure it will, but how much better will it perform). I don’t have the numbers yet. In fact, I won’t know the official read-through numbers until mid-May at the earliest. Though it might get a lot of interest, I’ll get a good feel for how much readers love or hate it.
If Dangerous Cargo does spectacularly, I’ll be tempted to produce a 2nd edition for the remaining older books. I’m not holding my breath, but one never knows. Which is why I test things like this. In fact, the entire Daphne Blazefire series was saved by RUSTY’s Memories. That was a test book. I wanted to tie off all the loose ends from the first five books, and I decided to create that book to test how well my new skills were. The readers liked it. They liked it a lot, but most readers clicked the ads for that book, went to the old Novis Terminal, and dropped it like a hot rock. Once I saw what was happening, I further experimented by rewriting Novis Terminal. Normally, authors don’t rewrite a fiction genre book, but I thought I’d give it a try. Novis Terminal made the entire series viable, and that kicked off my endeavor to write the last four books of the series (well, I’m still working on book 10). Crazy how these things go.
Why am I ending the series at 10 books? Well, there’s that read-through problem. No matter how good a series of books is, there will be a read-through where the number of readers declines as readers go down the series, book by book. If enough readers come in for the first book of the series, it’ll perform well enough to warrant adding more books. It’s usually better to write a second and third series in the same universe. Ones that can be read independently of each other. Then readers who work their way through one series are more likely to read the next series. Those are readers that don’t cost Ad revenue, and that’s important because Ads cost an arm and a leg.
However, if the first book of a series pulls in a large number of readers to begin with, then the series could support a set of 12, 15, or 20 books. I’ve seen longer series as well, but I suspect the read-through drop-off is severe.
Well, back to my writing…