In the US and Canada, the 3-day holiday weekend marking an unofficial end to summer brings with it last trips to the beach or the lake, cookouts and other outdoor festivities. Or, it brings extra reading time. It brings BOOKS. If that's more your style, then peruse this epicness: 100 SFF books, all $0.99 each this weekend.

The Space Opera category alone is packed with great books, including one of my favorites, Betrayal: The 1000 Revolution Book One by Pippa DaCosta, as well as the excellent Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker and Translucid: Dragonfire Station Book One by Zen DiPietro (also a little tale called Starshine....). And that's just the first category!

I'm having my own sale this weekend: the Aurora Rising trilogy novels, plus Sidespace (Aurora Renegades Book One), are on sale for $0.99 each through Monday:

I've pulled out all the stops for this one, because I want everyone I can reach to discover Aurora Rhapsody before Requiem releases later this year (more on that in a second). The promotion is already succeeding beyond my wildest expectations; on Thursday, Starshine cracked the Top 100 on Amazon and hit #1 in Space Opera as well as a number of other sci-fi categories. I'm thrilled at the prospect of thousands of new readers joining Alex, Caleb and crew on their epic adventure.

I realize most of you already own and have read the first four books, and the next four. But this is the perfect time to introduce other sci-fi readers to the series....

...Because Requiem is coming. You know this. You've read the blog post, “A Word About A Word” (or you can read it now - I won't keep track). You've seen the final cover, because I'm terrible at keeping things under wraps (unless it concerns what happens between the first page and the last).

Midway-through the 2nd draft, Requiem is bumping up against 100K words - and this is before all the really juicy words get added. I'm quite happy with how the story has come together, and despite some distractions like big promotions to organize and other matters I will keep under wraps, dammit, the book remains solidly on schedule for a Winter 2017 release. Which, as the arrival of the Labor Day holiday reminds us, isn't too very far off now.

You can follow Requiem's progress via the word/editing meter in the right sidebar of the website, and for informal, at times amusing updates along the way, check in with my Facebook page from time to time.

Be back with more news soon. First, more words.