My readers are terrific. SILVER (Inverted Frontier #2) has been out for only a week, but already several readers have posted positive Amazon reviews. Thank you so much! Those reviews really do matter for the success of any title (and more are always welcome) — but I’m also truly happy to know people have enjoyed the book!

Reviews at other vendors, at Goodreads, on Twitter or Facebook, or in-person word-of-mouth recommendations are also critical. It all adds up to “BUZZ.” So if you enjoyed SILVER, I hope you’ll post about it, or talk about it with like-minded readers. THANK YOU!

Today marks the release of Silver, book #2 in the far-future series, Inverted Frontier. Both print and ebook editions are now available.

Find Silver at:

☆ Amazon

☆ Apple Books

☆ Barnes & Noble

☆ Kobo

You can also order the print edition from your favorite bookstore, or ask your local library to order a copy.

But maybe you’re not familiar with the story world of Inverted Frontier? Then please let me entice you…

This is a story world in which radically advanced nano- and bio-technologies have long since become an accepted part of everyday life. Indeterminate lifespans are taken for granted. Innate repair mechanisms clean up damage due to cosmic radiation. Materials can be grown at need or dissolved back into raw substrate. People can exist as physical or virtual beings. And over time, starships can evolve. People can too, though most are culturally inclined to hold on tightly to their humanity.

But molecular technologies cannot collapse the vast distances between stars or open mythical gates or wormholes to shorten the journey, and they cannot speed the flow of information, which remains limited by the speed of light.

Over the past millennia, human civilization spread from stellar system to stellar system — and then collapsed for reasons unknown to those few surviving settlements at the far reaches of the human frontier.

Inverted Frontier is the story of the recovery. It’s told through a ship’s company of explorers and scientists who leave the frontier, undertaking a voyage of re-discovery. They are the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration.

If you haven’t read book #1, Edges, start there! Silver completes the story arc that began with Edges.

There’s no need to wait for a third volume, because Inverted Frontier is not a trilogy. It’s an open-ended series that will continue if there is enough reader interest. I hope there will be! These books were a challenge to write, but there is so much left of the galaxy to explore.

If you’ve preordered Silver, THANK YOU!! If not, I hope you’ll get a chance to purchase it soon. Writers don’t exist without reader support. All of you have my continuing gratitude.

Amazon finally has the print edition of Silver available to order.

Here’s the link: https://amzn.to/3309Vdi

My apologies, again, for the lateness of the print book. I miscalculated the time it would take for me to receive a physical proof. But the proof has arrived and the book looks good! I hope you enjoy it.

The ebook releases tomorrow! (Or today if you’re in Australia… 🙂 )

You can now preorder a print copy of Silver from Barnes & Noble!

So if you’re in the USA, check it out here.

I’ll post again when print preorders go live at Amazon.

Just one week to go until the release of Silver!

Silver completes the immediate story that began with book #1, Edges. So please dive in now! Don’t wait! Because INVERTED FRONTIER is not a trilogy. It’s an open-ended series, whose future existence is up to the collective YOU. 🚀💫

But where is the print edition?!
It’s on the way. I promise!

When I was calculating whether or not I could publish Silver this year — or if I would have to wait until 2020 — I forgot to account for the time it takes for me, here in Hawaii, to receive a proof copy of a new book. I always like to see the physical proof before releasing a print edition for preorder/publication. The proof was supposed to arrive by overnight mail, but when a three-day weekend gets in the way, things really slow down. In theory I should have the proof tomorrow. That means there won’t be much of a preorder period for the print edition, but it should certainly be available by next Tuesday, when the ebook is scheduled to release.

Don’t forget, you can preorder the ebook now! Here are the vendor links:

☆ Amazon†

☆ Apple Books

☆ Barnes & Noble

☆ Kobo

And if you want to get started early, you can read the opening chapters here.

Update:
A few hours after this post went up, I received the proofs from KDP Print (Amazon’s printing company). They look great! Tomorrow I’m supposed to receive the proof copy from Ingram. Once I have that in hand, I can authorize preorders.

Just a quick post to let you know that Kobo preorders of Silver (Inverted Frontier #2) are now available!

HERE’S THE KOBO LINK.

Silver is also available for preorder at:

☆ Amazon†

☆ Apple Books

☆ Barnes & Noble

A print edition is on the way! The layout work is done. I’m just waiting to review proof copies.

For more information on Silver or to read the opening chapters, click here.

Introducing

Silver

Inverted Frontier #2

Click to see a larger image with all the beautiful details…

Here’s the cover copy:

A Lost Ship — A New World
Urban is no longer master of the fearsome starship Dragon. Driven out by the hostile, godlike entity, Lezuri, he has taken refuge aboard the most distant vessel in his outrider fleet.

Though Lezuri remains formidable, he is a broken god, commanding only a fragment of the knowledge that once was his. He is desperate to return home to the ring-shaped artificial world he created at the height of his power, where he can recover the memory of forgotten technologies.

Urban is desperate to stop him. He races to reach the ring-shaped world first, only to find himself stranded in a remote desert, imperiled by a strange flood of glowing silver that rises in the night like fog—a lethal fog that randomly rewrites the austere, Earthlike landscape. He has only a little time to decipher the mystery of the silver and to master its secrets. Lezuri is coming—and Urban must level up before he can hope to vanquish the broken god.

With some tips on revising a novel
September was an incredibly busy month, entirely focused on finishing the revisions to Silver. I addressed almost all of the comments made by my freelance editor, Judith Tarr, which I think has helped significantly to clarify the story. I rejected a few suggestions for various reasons.

For those of you who are writers, you don’t have to follow every bit of advice your editor gives you. It’s your story. You know what you’re trying to achieve, and it’s your name that goes on the work. So weigh the advice, but if it doesn’t feel right to you, move on. (And don’t argue with your editor about it. 🙂 )

Silver is a fairly complex story. There’s a lot of world-building, along with unusual concepts. It’s not a book you can pick up and understand, without having read Edges first. That said, “complex” should not also mean “confusing” or “redundant.” Part of the revision process involves working toward that goal.

So after finishing the suggested revisions, I began a “read through” aimed at looking at the story as a whole. Starting from page one, I read the entire novel out loud to myself, going through it as quickly as I could while still making corrections. The idea behind a quick read is that I’m more likely to perceive the inconsistencies, while reading aloud lets me hear awkward wording and repeated words. And yes, I found a number of inconsistencies and awkward passages, so that exercise was definitely worth it. I’ll read it at least one more time before calling it “final.”

Several times, when pondering how to deal with an awkward passage, I found the best solution was to shorten it — simply cut back on the explanation. Sometimes, less is more — or anyway, it’s less confusing. 😉

Other than my freelance editor, no one has read Silver. Judy described the novel as “an immersive and absorbing read,” which was wonderful to hear, but doubt is always near the surface for most writers. I needed more feedback. So I recruited three “proofreaders” and sent the manuscript off to them on October 2. I’m anxiously awaiting their thoughts. I don’t see myself doing major revisions at this point — the story is what it is — but if there are tweaks that will further improve the storytelling, I’d like to undertake them. Presuming the feedback is mostly positive, I want to try to publish Silver before the end of November. Wish me luck!

Oh, and sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already. The signup form is over there in the right-hand column. You’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. (You won’t be subscribed until you confirm.) If you don’t receive that email, check your spam/promotion folder — and whitelist me!

Whoops. I see it’s been nearly a month since I posted here, but that’s because I’ve been working hard…

Here’s a quick update on Silver:
I received the editorial letter on it at the start of the month, and I just finished my first pass through the edits. Only the hard stuff is left! 🙂 🤔🚀

September 5 Newsletter
My latest newsletter went out last Thursday. If you haven’t subscribed to it yet, please do! Use that form over there in the righthand column of this blog.

Here’s one of the items included in the newsletter:

A Ring-Shaped World

I’ll speak cautiously to avoid any significant spoiler, but towards the end of Edges there is mention of a ring-shaped world, planetary in scale. A few of my longtime readers have already made the connection. This world is the same world featured in my novel Memory.

When I wrote Memory, I thought of it as being apart from the Nanotech books – a separate story world. But as I worked on the new Inverted Frontier series, I realized these two story worlds could overlap in a very interesting way.

Silver is a direct sequel to Edges, but it also works as a sequel to Memory. You don’t need to read Memory to enjoy Silver, but if you like the idea of exploring in this evolving story world, you can drop by my website to learn more about this earlier novel.

In response to my last progress report, Tasha, over at Goodreads, asked “Does this mean that the series concludes with Silver?”

Maybe? Though I hope not!

Silver gives a proper conclusion to the initial story arc of what might still become a longer series. From the beginning I planned to do two books in the Inverted Frontier series, and then switch to something else. If book sales are enough to support a third or even fourth book in the series, I’d like to come back to it in a year or two — and I do have a few notes on where to go next.

If you’re waiting for the whole series to be out before reading Edges…well, don’t! Because the length of the series is still to be determined. Right now I see it as open-ended. How long it goes on is up to the collective-you. 😉