the website of author and local favorite blake michael nelson | about | contact: theblakeshow@gmail.com
|
NEWS AND VIEWS - MAY 2026
I finally finished writing Hardcore this month. This started out as a side project -- I thought it might be fun to write a LitRPG, and this zombie idea I'd been playing around with seemed like a good fit for it -- but it got out of hand and somehow turned into this nine-month-long ordeal. Seventy-six chapters, plus an epilogue. 172,000 words. It's almost as long as Lillandra. Good grief. I wrote last month that I'd be splitting the book in half and releasing it as two volumes, but after reading through the whole thing last week, I've changed my mind about that. I'd have to rewrite a bunch of stuff in a second volume, in order to catch new readers up on what was going on, and frankly I feel like I've spent enough time on this story. So it's just going to be this single huge volume. The completed ebook should be available on my Patreon in a few days, and on Amazon whenever I get around to it (probably a couple months). I'm also planning on deleting the individual chapters I posted to my Patreon, just to get rid of the clutter; none of those posts received any comments or anything, so I don't see any reason to keep them around. I also finished writing a new short story this month, set in the Signalverse, called "Popularity Contest." This one's about the superheroine Protectress and the trouble she gets into when she turns to the evil witch Necromancia for help in solving a certain magical problem. The story will be released as part of a collection of seven Signalverse shorts which I plan to release soon. Again, paid subscribers will get it first, and then I'll make it available on Amazon a little later. So now that I'm done with these, I'll be focusing on a new Signalverse novel, Masters of Million Stars. Should take three or four months to write, if all goes well. Signalverse books tend to be pretty short. |