New Paperbacks and Audiobooks Incoming

Some big news this week.  As you can see from the photo above, the paperbacks for Kill or Capture and the redesigned cover for Fury in the Gulf came on Friday, so signed copies are now available in the store.

In bigger news, back in August I signed a contract with Tantor Media for audiobook versions of the Maelstrom Rising series.  Production is now in full swing, and they’re being narrated by Steve Marvel, who has also done audiobooks for my friend JT Patten, author of the Safe Havens and Task Force Orange series.  I’ve been talking with Steve in some detail, and I think they’re going to come out well.

Escalation is due out on audio on November 12th, and Holding Action on December 10th.  So, mark your calendars, especially those who prefer audiobooks.

Now, I don’t have a contract for Crimson Star yet.  The official word I’ve gotten from Tantor is that they’ll have to see just how well the first two books do before they commit to further volumes.  So, if you’ll all spread the word when they come out, I’d appreciate it, since that will go a long way toward ensuring that the rest of the series gets audio versions, too.  (This has been a long-standing problem with audio for indies, in general; the two I’ve already had done have been through ACX’s royalty share agreement, which can undercut the narrator’s income for the amount of work they put in.  It’s a lot of work, too; I’ve seen estimates of six hours of work per completed hour of audiobook.  For a 13-hour audiobook, well…I’ll let you do the math.)

As for Crimson Star itself, it’s in-progress, and just about to the 20k word mark.  It’s a bit of a change; we’re shifting the Area of Operations from Europe to CONUS, which means a new set of characters to explore another facet of the war.  Don’t worry; we’ll be getting back to Matt and Grex Luporum Team X, but there’s just too much going on in the series to stick to just Matt.

Now, back to the word mines…