J.R. Andrews's Blog

Well, it’s finally here. Fury, Part I: Tempers Rising is out in the world, ready to be consumed by anyone who has been dying to find out what happens with Tom, Ana, and Lindsey since 2020, when Famine was published. I would, of course, be remiss in my duties as an author and publisher were I not to harangue you with base pleadings to go ye forth to Amazon and buy my (new) novella! And I’ll get there, I promise. Have little fear that the next three months will be filled with a seemingly ceaseless litany of me begging you lovely readers to give over some small measure of your hard-earned coin in exchange for stories that may or may not have been concocted in a restroom.

But today is not that day. Today, I thought I should share something even more precious than new stories.

Today is about pizza. Specifically, cast iron pan pizza.

Since today is, as mentioned above, new release day, I figured that for dinner last night we should do something special. Normally I’d suggest a family trip out to local food and beverage establishment for that sort of thing, but Old Man Winter finally rolled into town last week, and he’s not messing around. We haven’t gotten the dumpsters full of snow that appear to have ensnared much of the rest of the United States, but when I looked at my phone for the local temperature yesterday, the weather app stubbornly refused to provide a second digit.

Nobody wants to warm up the car and go out in 8°F just for a Bloomin’ Onion.

Instead I thought it might be fun to channel the nostalgia of mid-80’s family trip to Pizza Hut. Luckily, sometime last year I read this recipe for foolproof pan pizza from Serious Eats (written by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt).

Look, the title of that article isn’t over-promising. This recipe is so easy even a slightly anxious, relatively unknown author can’t screw it up.

So, here’s what you do for an incredible January pizza night:

Oh, and of course, post pictures of the entire project.

The first image shows what the dough looked like after I spent literally 7 minutes mixing it together on Sunday (manually, no specially equipment needed). Then, yesterday afternoon, I just had to separate it into two balls and set them in pans to proof. Two hours later, I whacked my oven up to 550—because that’s as high as it goes—and set about to actually construct said pizzas.

Under the watchful gaze of my management team (that is, Bandit, the Lab/Great Pyrenees mix seen in the background), I spread the dough out, then sauced and topped it. I briefly considered adding some vegetation to the affair, but remembered I was making Special Pre-Release Day Pizza. Mushrooms and green peppers need not apply.

The pans went into the preheated oven.

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled the two scorching beauties out, dropped them onto my very best cutting board, got out one of eight the pizza wheels we seem to have acquired over the last twenty years, and cut them into proper slices. There was nothing left then but the unceremonious stuffing of my face.

I may or may not have burned the roof of my mouth taking that impatient and wholly ill-advised reckless first bite. Sources are unclear, but the expectation is high.

Either way, it was 100% worth it.

Now then, what does this have to do with the release of my new novella, Tempers Rising, the first part of Fury, the complete novel? Nothing really. Except I thought maybe it might be fun to start making this blog a little more like an actual blog rather than just a place I shout at visitors to buy my books. In that spirit, I offer you a little slice1 of this writer’s life, on a day that’s not exactly just like every other day.

I hope you get yourself a little pizza soon, because everyone deserves a slice, no matter what today means to you.

Oh, and if you have a moment or two, why not check out Fury, Part I: Tempers Rising? I’d really appreciate it.

–JR

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I find myself drifting in that nebulous time between Christmas and New Year’s this week, unsure of the day of the week and too full of leftovers and snacks, yet charged with the knowledge that something else, something important, lay ahead.

Of course, I’m not really talking about New Year’s Eve.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see 2023 to the door. Conflict everywhere you look, people just generally being mean, friends and family going through some stuff, car repairs, leaky toilets, etc. You know what I mean. You know what you did, 2023.

Of course, it’s not fair to say that the past year was all bad. It could have been a little friendlier a good portion of the time, but I’d be remiss in not celebrating that the first book I’ve released since 2020 hit the shelves in October. And while I might have previously complained about the difficulty writing Fury, 2023 was the year I finally got through it.

So, okay, fine, it wasn’t the absolute worst. It wasn’t a 2020, amirite?

But again, something really important lays ahead, and it’s not just a new year. In fact, it’s a big new year with big new plans. I’ll be releasing three new novels in the coming year: Fury, a new middle grade adventure (sci-fi, anyone?), and the sequel to Goldenshield. I can’t wait to share it all with you!

(Oh, and did I mention that all three parts of Fury (Tempers Rising, Savage Storm, and Reckoning), as well as the complete digital novel, are now available for pre-order? Order your copy today and make sure to start 2024 off with a vampire-filled bang!)

Something else I’m planning to do in 2024 is build up my inner circle, or what they call a “street team” in the industry. Personally, I think the term is dumb, but no one asked me, I guess.

I have a handful of friends who get early access to everything I release weeks beforehand. The smart people on the internet say a successful author should have a dozen or two members of their support team. With that in mind, I’d love to add a few more readers who would like to get in early and help me out with release ratings and reviews. I would never ask for anything more than someone’s honest opinion, of course, so if you enjoy my work and would like to join the team, reach out on social media, leave me a comment, or send an email and let me know!

At any rate, I hope your holidays—or, heck, your waning days of December, if you don’t holiday at all—have been wonderful. May your 2024 be filled with good times, good luck, and good stories.

Now, I believe it’s time I had another eggnog.

Happy Holidays!

—JR

By the time you read this, one thousand, three hundred and eight-four entire days will have past since the release of my first novel, Famine. That’s three years, nine months, and fourteen days, or 45 months and 14 days, if you’d rather. It’s a lot of days, no matter how you look at it.

Even worse, it seems like a lot more when you consider that its sequel and the next book in the Charon Chronicles series still hasn’t be published.

Well, at least it hasn’t been yet.

I started work on the planned sequel, Fury, even before Famine was published, in the spring of 2020. And work on it went well for a month or two. But as anyone who’s presently older than the age of six knows, 2020 wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Sure, Taylor Swift spent lockdown churning out roughly 1762 new albums. Unfortunately, as the pandemic progressed, I didn’t fare quite so well in the creativity department.

In my defense, Taylor wasn’t responsible for a houseful of mopey teenagers suddenly trying to find the motivation to get out of bed in the morning or take classes seriously through a computer monitor.

Now, I suppose one could argue that I reaped what I sowed for publishing a novel about a post-pandemic apocalypse days before we were all shut in. Considering that I started writing Famine in 2010, though, that has to be one of the more startling coincidences of my life.

Regardless, at some point, after writing about a third of what I had planned for Fury, I realized it wasn’t working. Even worse, for the first time since I’d started writing seriously, I went to the Well of Ideas to pull up a frothy bucket, but the damned thing was bone dry.

I knew what I had didn’t work, but I didn’t know how to fix it.

So I took a week off.

And then another.

Weeks became months that turned into actual years of nail-biting, knuckle-chewing, eye-rolling, how-do-I-make-this-story-work, hair-pulling frustration. By this past summer, it had become, to me, at least, embarrassing. I’d begun two separate series in 2020, and neither was moving. Readers would occasionally ping me on the socials and ask if I’d abandoned them. I’ll let you decide if that intentionally dangling pronoun refers to the readers or the series themselves.

In the middle of this year, then, I decided I had to get back on the horse and lead it, well, somewhere. Preferably to the bar, where all good stories begin.

So I decided to try a different tack. I dusted off a manuscript I had in the trunk, a middle grade novel I’d written back in the day when my kids were still young enough to wonder why I didn’t write books for their age. Publishing the The Secret of Commander’s Mansion reminded me that there was still joy in putting stories out for the world to share.

The problems with Fury were still there, though. It didn’t really work the way the existing plot was outlined.

But. Parts of it did work.

What it required was a little surgery, and, although I didn’t know it yet, a leap of faith. So I opened up the draft, spent about a week copying, pasting, and (especially) cutting chunks of text until I had a beginning I was happy with and a whole lot of question marks. That’s when the Big Idea hit me. What if I didn’t plan Fury as one thing? Why not write it as a few separate shorts, each focusing on different characters? Give them agency to tell their story and trust I could bring them home in the end.

After all, that is how Famine was written.

And I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.

It is, then, with immeasurable delight (and relief), that I am proud to announce that Fury is finally complete and scheduled for release.

Part I, Tempers Rising, will be available on January 16th, 2024. Part II, Savage Storm, drops on February 20th, and Part III, Reckoning, the climactic finale, hits on March 12th. The three-part novellas will only be available in digital form, and they’re all available for pre-order today!

“But, wait, JR,” you say, “what if I don’t like to read eBooks?” Or! “What if I refuse to watch Netflix series that have adopted the maddeningly irritating practice of dropping only one new episode every week after they basically spent years training us, Pavlov-style, to want to binge a series from start to finish while ignoring basic hygiene and housekeeping obligations?” Fear not, faithful reader! I understand you completely.

No, seriously. A lot of times these days I actually put off watching a new show until I’ve waited out the entire season so I can hit it at my leisure. I’m more than happy to provide you the same opportunity. Which is to say, after all three parts of Fury have been released, the full complied novel will be available in eBook, paperback, and hard-cover one week later, on March 19th, 2024*.

Again, I can’t begin to describe how excited I am to finally be bringing the next chapter in Tom, Ana, and Lindsey’s story to the world. Not unlike Tom’s, the road was long, windy, and full of perils—although maybe not bloodthirsty plaguers—but despite thinking this story might kill me before I ever finished it, here we are.

I do hope you enjoy it!

*As of this writing, only the eBook is available for pre-order, but paperback should be up next week

Have you ever needed to respond to someone, but you forget to do it one day, and the next, and the one after that? More and more days pile up while every night before you drift off to whatever nonsense your subconscious has lined up for you in dreamland (likely including the band Garbage, a car chase through a vaguely European city, and a fresh mackerel) you think, “Aw, damn, I really need to send that reply tomorrow.” But somehow, on every tomorrow, the actually sending of the thing escapes you? And then one day you realize it’s been six months since you should have to send that reply, at which point the entirety of the time elapsed grows into a giant, festering embarrassment.

So now you still need to send the message, but in doing so you’re also going to have to acknowledge the Grand Canyon-sized gap in time between when you ought to have sent it and the present day. Well, no one wants to acknowledge either their own failings, especially when those include procrastination and personal embarrassment. Just ask the closest teenager.

Time, then, as it tends to do, continues to slide past like expressway-side trees on a road trip. More months join the pile until the accumulation of delay can be measured in years, and still you haven’t sent that reply. At that point, you kind of hope the whole thing will go away forever, forgotten. You may aslo consider creating a new identity.

Well, here we are. The last time I wrote a blog post here was in the Way-Back, the Time That Came Before. It was Spring 2021, and I believe I promised that Fury, the sequel to Famine would be out in time for Halloween that year.

Things… didn’t quite turn out. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that living through a modern pandemic eroded my creativity. And then, well, the world has been a lot the past few years.

I admit that at points, yes, I did briefly consider creating an new identity. But I’m pretty lazy, and that seemed like a lot of work, especially in comparison to just, you know, writing a new post and acknowledging the pink elephant in the corner.

So here I am, hat in hand, glaring at Dumbo’s Pepto-hued bigger sister.

It has, indeed, been a minute, as the kids would say. But it’s time we put that behind us, and by putting that behind us, I mean it’s time for new stories.

The Secret of Commander’s Mansion

I maybe didn’t get Fury out by Halloween, 2021, but two years later, I do have a new spooky new book for you, The Secret of Commander’s Mansion. It’s been a some time in the making, and I’m exciting to be sharing it with you this year, just in time for that night when the veil between the lands of the living and the dead grows thin. It will drop on 10/24/2023 on all your favorite digital retailers, and is available for pre-order now. I hope you’ll check it out!

Fury

I also hope you weren’t thinking believing me so mercenary that I’d ask you to buy my new book and then leave you hanging with regard to Famine’s highly anticipated sequel? Well, if you were, I’m happy to overdeliver here with good news. Fury is coming!

We’re decided to try something new with Fury, though. Partially because, see eroded creativity, but also because so many of you have been waiting patiently for it for so long, I figured I should give you some of it sooner rather than later. With in mind, we’re going to release Fury as serial eBooks, in three parts. The first should be available in early January, with the next two parts dropping in February and March. More information will be coming soon, so watch my website for more news, or join my mailing list to be the first to know!

Plans for 2024 And Beyond

I can’t wait to see how the release of Fury works, and, creatively, I’m really am enjoying working on these stories as smaller pieces of a larger whole. For the coming year we’re going to continue experimenting with this type of release cycle, and hope to be able to release something new each month. I can’t quite tell you what’s going to be coming down the pipe in the 2nd and 3rd quarters yet, but we’re getting really excited as the plans come together. Like I said, stay tuned here for more information, or join the mailing list to get all the freshest JR Andrews news deposited directly to your inbox.

It’s going to be a fun ride this year, and we hope you’ll join us on the trip.

As I look at the correspondence I’ve shared with readers since Goldenshield released at the end of last year, I supposed one could conceivably argue that I’ve been entirely too quiet about sending out updates, etc, or even writing blog posts in recent months. And by “conceivably argue”, I mean that only would a fool would not immediately accept the notion as objective fact. Admittedly, I have, without question, been a fool on more than one occasion in my life — and undoubtedly will be again, all too soon — but I am not about to play one in this case.

Point being, it’s far past time to fill everyone in on what’s coming up soon!

First and foremost, I’m delighted to announce that Famine is now available as an audiobook at Audible, Apple Audiobooks, and other audiobook retailers.

If you’ve read Goldenshield, but haven’t found the time to sit down with a nice beverage and the thrilling tale of the last man alive trying to survive a world filled with starving, bloodthirsty monster, the audiobook version is your perfect solution. Produced and voiced by the warm, soothing tones of Michael Beckett, what better way to turn your commute into story time, while letting someone else deal with the horrors of traffic while you relax with the horrors of a post-pandemic apocalypse.

Oh, and to celebrate, the Kindle version of Famine is on sale until May 15th!

Speaking of Famine, if you’re waiting anxiously to find out what happens next, after a brief delay, I’m hard at work on Fury, and expect it to release before the end of the year.

With luck, it’ll hit the store shelves and your e-readers in time for Halloween 2021. Nothing is definite just yet, though, so keep watching for updates here and on my social media!

Finally, would you be interested in story episodes from a whole new fantasy world?

I’ve been invited to participate in the rollout of brand new style of Kindle storytelling, and I’ve got a story idea I’ve been plotting for years that would be perfect for a short, episode-based format where new episodes release every few weeks. Let me know what you think in the comments, or by taking the quick survey below.

That’s all I have for now. Don’t be strangers, though! I’d love to hear from you all, so hit me up on social me, leave a comment, or send me a email if there’s something on your mind. Until next time,  keep your blades sharp, your powder dry, and your wits about you!

I’m excited to say we’ve rounded the corner and are charging down the stretch towards the big release of Goldenshield at the end of this month. It hits the street on December 29th, just in time to fill the annual holiday lull between Christmas and New Year’s. To say that I’m elated to be soon sharing the first chapter of my RPG fantasy epic is possibly the most understated thing I’ve said in 2020.

No, seriously, I’m happy as a nerd with a brand new set of 2500-count LEGO.

We’ve got a few more weeks to go, though, and I still have a list of things I need to do before we get to the 29th almost as long as Santa’s. Funny, you never realized how many times you’re going to have to read your own novel until you get it published. While I’m making sure the i’s are crossed and the t’s are dotted, though, I have an exciting opportunity for you… the opportunity to read Goldenshield before anybody else!

Starting today, we’re giving away 20 copies of the eBook version of Goldenshield — in whatever format you prefer — on a first come, first served basis. All we ask is that after you finish reading it, you leave an honest rating or review on one of several online book sites.

So what do you need to do to get in on the early access and join my team of advanced readers? Simply click this link to the download page and follow the instructions. That’s it!

We hope you’re as excited as we are to finally see Goldenshield out in the world, and would love for you to take this opportunity to get it early by joining my team of advanced readers. There’s a limited number of copies available, so don’t wait!

Here in the United States it’s the week of Thanksgiving, a time when we typically gather with our friends and family and then consume copious, regretful portions of food. This often consists of some form of turkey and then roughly 700 side dishes, most of which contain enough carbs to put a fully-grown mammoth to sleep faster than a high-capacity tranquilizer.

Of course, this year is a little different than most, obviously, what with all this *waves arms* pandemic and what not. For many, gatherings will be far more limited than as usual, if there’s any gathering at all. I certainly wouldn’t argue that choose to not get together with your 14 cousins and 3 drunk uncles is a responsible move. That said, I’m a little concerned that I’m going to make as much food as I typically would for a year when we’d host close to 30 people, except this year, there won’t be anyone here to eat it but my wife, four kids, and, well, probably safe to assume the two dogs get a little spoiling, too.

All of which has me looking at the holiday on Thursday with more than just a twinge of hesitation. No family, too much food, and no ready excuse for day drinking while the turkey does its thing.

The thing is, though, as trite and cliched as it is a sentiment, what matters here is that Thanksgiving is supposed to be about being thankful, not just shoving pie down your gullet like it’s a éclair you have to stuff. Admittedly, 2020 has been quite something of a s$%*show, and we all know it. Coming up with things to be thankful for in the middle of a global dumpster fire that has pretty much turned all our societal, cultural, and even political norms on their respective ears can be… challenging, to say the least.

But, even with things being as messed up as Cousin Eddie emptying the RV waste line into the storm drain, I’m fortunate to still have many things to be thankful for.

We still have a roof over our heads and are generally in good health.

I was able fulfill a lifelong dream of mine this year with the release of Famine, and it’s been doing as well as I could have hoped.

Incidentally, I’ve been lucky enough to build a small but growing base of fans that seem to enjoy the crazy things in my head.

I finally know what’s going to happen in Fury1.

There’s still bourbon in the world.

Which is all fantastic, and a reminder that I do have Very Much To Be Thankful for. But! That’s not all. I’m also exceedingly thankful, as well as positively thrilled, to announce that of this posting, my second novel, Goldenshield, is available for pre-order, and will be released on December 29th, 2020.

What’s Goldenshield, you ask? It’s the first chapter in an epic fantasy RPG saga, and it has an absolutely killer cover. Don’t believe me? Check it out!

As you can probably tell from the cover, Goldenshield is definitely a different kind of fantasy than Famine. Less dark horror, more epic adventure. It’s more Lord of the Rings than The Stand, but there’s room for all kinds of fantasy worlds in my head. If you like more traditional fantasy, I think you’ll really love it. And did I mention that it’s available now for pre-order?

That’s it from me, for now. I hope you’ll check out Goldenshield, and stay tuned for news about Fury, coming soon! Have a great week, and for those that have a holiday to celebrate, I hope you find a way to enjoy it to its very fullest, however that works for you and yours.

As always, thank you for you support. I look forward to hearing from you!

-JR

1: More news coming soon!

Hey everyone, JR here. Just wanted to let you know that for a limited time, FAMINE is available from all e-book stores for just $0.99! If you’ve been thinking about giving it a read but are afraid maybe post-apocalyptic survival horror isn’t your thing, now is the perfect time to pick it up.

Or if you need that last minute gift for Father’s Day, nothing says, “You’re the best, Dad,” like a shiny new e-book and giving the old man a few hours to himself to read. Trust me, I say that as an old man with a bunch of kids who’d love some time to myself to read!

Anyway, FAMINE is $0.99. Don’t miss out on this special deal. Make sure to get your copy today!

I couldn’t be happier. What do you all think?

I am thrilled to announce that Famine will officially be released on March 10, 2020! As the culmination of nearly a decade of work and waiting, I’m obviously right chuffed to be able to share it all of you. Look for it at you favorite online retailer on Tuesday!

Stay tuned for addition Famine news and notices!