You all have been very patient with me since the release of Transcendence, and I thank you. Now I have ALL the news to share.

• New blog post today: A Confession, A Reveal and A Promise. Even if you’ve never read one of my blog posts, if you have any interest in what’s coming next after Aurora Rising you want to read this one.

  • You’ll notice that all the word meters in the sidebar now have titles. Most importantly, this includes Sidespace, Book One in Aurora Renegades and Book Four in the larger Aurora Rhapsody saga. Want to know what all that means? Go read the blog post.

  • I’ve also released the titles and cover art for the next SIX books. Want to see them? BLOG. POST.

• [Update]: AURORA RISING: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION is now live and can be purchased on Amazon! Subscribers will receive an email today with links to download Restless Vol. II or read it online.

  • AURORA RISING: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION is available for pre-order on Amazon for the special, pre-order-only price of $0.99. It will be released next Monday, June 23, and will retail for $6.99. The Complete Collection bundles together the three books in the Aurora Rising trilogy, as well as the Restless short story prequel and a new short story, Restless Vol. II, which takes place after the end of Transcendence. The character interviews previously posted on the blog are also included.

  • Restless Vol. II will not be available for separate purchase, but it WILL be available as a free download (or website read) for subscribers when the Collection is released next week. So subscribers who own the trilogy novels will not need to purchase the Collection to have access to all the content. But you might want to anyway, because….

• Cover reveal for Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection:

• The background is again by Josef Bartŏn (aka "Joey Jazz"), and the Alex and Caleb models are by the fabulously talented and generally amazing Taylor Thompson (aka "theant4"). You can see more of her work here: theant4.deviantart.com. I commissioned them last year, and Taylor and I have both been dying to share them with the world for many months.

  • In conjunction with the new cover, I’ve got a new banner you’ll be seeing around, on Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else I can find to put it.

• Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection also includes a new, previously unreleased chapter in Starshine—a chapter I didn’t know I was missing until I finished writing Transcendence. It takes place in Part I, and grounds the reader more firmly in Alex and Caleb’s stories earlier than they might otherwise be. And because subscribers who own the trilogy novels shouldn’t need to purchase the Collection to have access to all the content, you can read the new chapter right here on the website.

• Once The Complete Collection is live (you can't review pre-orders), anyone who copies their previous reviews over to its Amazon page will have my undying gratitude (again). If you've posted reviews for any of Starshine, Vertigo or Transcendence, feel free to simply combine them, or edit them into a new review. But it's going to take a while for new readers to get through the whole Collection, so a couple of early reviews will help a great deal.

• I’m excited to announce I’ll have a short story in the upcoming Future Chronicles anthology The Galaxy Chronicles. My contribution, APOGEE, tells the story of the opening hours of the 1st Crux War between the Earth Alliance and the Senecan Federation, as lived by the Senecans who started it. It’s a self-contained story that doesn’t require readers to be familiar with Aurora Rising, but it does have a number of treats for all of you who HAVE read Aurora Rising.

  • If you’re not familiar with the Future Chronicles anthologies, they feature some of the most talented and successful SFF authors writing today. And they have stunning covers, which pleases me :). You can check out previous editions here. The Galaxy Chronicles is scheduled to be released in late summer/early fall.

• I’ll be at Magic City Con in Birmingham, AL, July 24th-26th. If you live in the area, I’d love to have you drop by—hear me talk on a panel or two or stop by my booth. I promise swag, books, signatures and conversation.

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My book recommendation today is all the books in the Beyond the Wall series by Lucas Bale. His writing is as much literature as it is science fiction. This gripping space opera, hard sci-fi, post-apocalyptic epic represents some of the finest work in the genre recently. Here's Book One:

The Heretic: Earth is gone. Centuries have passed since life ended on the blue planet. Humanity's survivors are now dispersed among distant colonies, thousands of light years from the barren, frozen rock that was once their home. At a time when power means everything, the ultimate power rests with the Consulate Magistratus. In return for its protection, citizens must concede their rights absolutely. The Magistratus controls interstellar travel, access to technology, even procreation. Freedom, religion and self-determination are anachronisms. Humanity's true history survives only in whispers of a secret archive. But a revolution is coming.

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