I set up a promotion for The Archons starting Monday (5/5/2025) to Friday (5/9). The eBook will be free all week. I also set AI Patch to be free for the same duration. I’m just promoting these two because I don’t have any Ads running right now, and I’m in the middle of writing the rough draft of a Daphne book and have my fifth Cozy Mystery being edited. In a few weeks, I’ll be publishing a Daphne book (if things go well) and the fifth Q Mystery book (under my pen name Elliot Droit).

Once Novis Terminal, second edition, has been published, I’ll move right on to writing Shadows in the Bloodline. While Shadows is in progress, I should be able to analyze the performance of the Q Mystery series. I will also be analyzing the Daphne Blazefire series, since Novis Terminal is the first book of the series. If you haven’t scoured all the blog posts here, you’re probably wondering what am I up to?

Here’s the quick history (so you don’t have to go through all the previous blog posts to catch up)…

I wrote the first five Daphne books back in 2022, as a series of books where I could practice my writing skills. I expected them to sell, but alas, my skills were not so hot (and I didn’t discover how bad my skills were until I got a few 1-star reviews and took some online classes). A couple of years later, after finishing two other series of books, I decided to compare my new skills against my old by writing a sixth Daphne book. RUSTY’s Memories. There is a huge difference in the reception of the new book vs. the old books. But, there is a problem. Even though the books are chronicles, most people (like me) like to start from the beginning. They get excited about the Ad for RUSTY’s Memories, go to Amazon, and pick up the first book (Novis Terminal), which is probably the weakest of the series because it was the first.

To extend my experiment to decide how much better my skills are from before, I came up with a better version of Novis Terminal. It’ll be a second release, which is rarely done in Sci-Fi. But I’m curious to see what happens. I expect Novis Terminal to take off. It’s a lot spicier than the original (like, a LOT spicier). There is a lot more depth as well, depth of scenes and characters. Though the story keeps the same elements (because otherwise the second through sixth books would be out of sync), the entire story is different. If you’ve read Novis Terminal in the past, then the new one will feel like a complete reimagining.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, because I’ve already been contemplating what happens next. Well, first, I need to collect stats with the new Novis Terminal. I expect Novis Terminal to do well, then the read-through will die on the second book (maybe, because Dangerous Cargo is a favorite among readers). If the read-through drops a little, I’ll freshen up Dangerous Cargo; if the read-through drops a lot, I’ll be tempted to do a second release of that book. I have contemplated how I could change the story itself to make it better. The third book, The Nav Computer, has good bones, but really needs a makeover. If the series is cruisin’ by the time I rewrite a second book, I’ll probably commit to rewriting the rest of the original series.

Of course, Novis Terminal could flop, and that would be that. No big deal.

On the flip side, I have the Q Mystery series written under my pen name. If that takes off, I’ll be torn between two series and probably alternate between them. That would be a tragic problem to have—Wink wink.

Well, back to my writing.