Anthony Dean's Blog: The Voided Man

Greetings, everyone.

It’s almost time for a new Voided Man tale - The Signal and the Ribbon comes out on Sunday. This will be book 10, which seems wild to me, because when I was writing the original I didn’t know it would be a series at all.

Persius narrates the new story, and we learn a great deal about the mild-mannered genius. The Good King Johns – both the biological and the virtual version – also feature in the new book.

I like the villain this time. His name is Erom, and he’s managed to get himself from one of the early galaxies that formed in the aftermath of the Big Bang to the present. If you liked the concept of Prisoner Number One crossing hundreds of millions of years in cryosleep, you’ll like the entirely different method by which Erom crosses ten billion years.

I’m going to be slowing down the rate of new releases for a bit. I’ve been blasting out books every seven or eight weeks, and that just isn’t sustainable. I’m going to switch to a cycle of about twelve weeks, and that should get my work/life balance back into balance.

So, Book 10 will be out this weekend. Book 11 (The Prodigal Rogue) with Lord Jeffrey as narrator will come out a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, and that one will be available for pre-order as soon as Book 10 launches.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.

Greetings, everyone.

‘Tis almost time for the next installment of the Voided Man to go out into the world and play. Book 9 - The Fields of Glass Next Door - comes out on Sunday.

The first third of the book goes back to the beginning and tells the story of how John and Annabelle Dawson got together in the first place. It starts on the night they met, goes through the speech and the arrest that started the series, and continues from Annabelle’s point of view through the years she is incarcerated, gives birth to Cassie, and ultimately escapes the Kinetic War in the Valkyrie-198.

The last two thirds of the book pick up with the discovery I won’t name (no spoilers here for anyone who hasn’t read as far in the series as book 8) that ended the last installment. I kind of cliff-hangered everyone with that, I know, but book 9 fully resolves that storyline and uses it to start a new adventure featuring a new villain and much on probabilities and parallel universes and unusual intelligences.

Book 10 – The Signal and the Ribbon - will be available for preorder on Sunday as well, and even if you don’t usually preorder, you can still see the debut of the new cover on Amazon. It’s a space station in the vicinity of a pulsar, and it turned out great.

Here at Voided Man headquarters, I’ve just finished the draft of Book 11, and I’m taking most of a week off from writing new material to do editing and also to sketch out the basic plan for book 12. Those will both be out before Christmas.

A last note – Amazon selected the original book to be featured in an online event on July 8. It will be $0.99 in the US that day, and if you know anyone who might enjoy the series but hasn’t started it yet, please consider letting them know about the discount on the 8th.

I hope your summer is going well.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.

Tomorrow will be one year since I launched The Voided Man. Last May 29, I liked the story of Prisoner Number One, but I had no idea whether an independent new author could find an audience.

It turns out that you can.

I can’t thank you enough if you’ve offered feedback or been a regular reader, and I want to take a moment to talk to any of you who are like I was a year ago and who think of self-publishing a novel. I suspect that most people who read a lot at least harbor the thought they could write a good book. I certainly had the notion in the back of my head for decades.

If you feel that way, I would encourage you to sit down at a keyboard and just get started. I have found it more than surprising how a series has come out of a six page science article I read about cosmic voids in deep space (which are real things) and my own follow up question, “Good grief – what would you do if you found yourself in the middle of something like that?!”

I figured that if you had an internet connection, you might try to start a bank. That’s the first thing Prisoner Number One did as I thought him up while taking walks around my neighborhood early last year. The Valkyrie-84, and Al, and Annabelle’s letters, and the Potato, and the Thirty Families, and the locket, and everything else in the series has flowed from very simple beginnings. You don’t need to have the whole story in mind to get started; I think it’s actually better if you don’t.

If you decide to go for it, the other novel-writing thing I’m absolutely certain about after the last year is this: write every day. My sessions are sometimes as short as a single hour, but I write every day.

Anyway, as for the Voided Man, the plan is to be publishing book 15 or so by this time next year. Between now and then, I hope you’ll stay a fan of the series, and that the books allow you to pass a pleasant hour from time to time.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.

Greetings, all.

Book 8 of the Voided Man (The Eight Colors of the Moonbow) launches overnight. Book 9 (The Fields of Glass Next Door) will be available for pre-order tomorrow.

I'm finished with book 10, and to reveal the title for the first time outside my immediate family and friends, it will be called The Signal and the Ribbon. Persius is the narrator, and it will launch in mid-August. I'm drafting book 11 now, and we get Lord Jeffrey's point of view for that one.

Something new for all the books: I've been working with Amazon's new computer generated narrator and have put all of my released titles out as audio books. They're four bucks, two if you are adding the narration to an eBook you already own. I've been pleasantly surprised with the project - they sound good.

I'll be posting again on the 29th. That day will mark one year since I released The Voided Man, and it's been an amazing ride. I'll recap the year and talk about what I aspire to do during Year 2.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.

Greetings, everyone.

The Voided Man #7 – The Override System – comes out a week from Sunday. When the Valkyrie Program was established in the 22nd and 23rd Centuries, a back door may or may not have been created that allows control of all of the starships, wherever they may be. If such a system exists, it might open up all kinds of possibilities, or problems, or both. Jack narrates the story.

Book 8 – The Eight Colors of the Moonbow - will be out on May 11. It’s finished, and it will be available for pre-order as soon as Book 7 launches. Maestro narrates, and it’s back to the Potato for a significant part of that story.

Book 9 is drafted, and I’m about halfway through editing. It will be out in late June, and to reveal the title for the first time outside of my family and my writing group, it will be called The Fields of Glass Next Door. Annabelle narrates, and there is a lot of backstory on John and Annabelle in the days before John became Prisoner Number One, and then the book turns to a new adventure.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time writing about the distant future lately, and Book 10 will look at the universe’s distant past. That’s what I’m working on now, and I just finished a good chapter that features a strange bicycle race on a strange planet yesterday.

Before I go, a quick note for fans of The Clock and the Candles. I haven’t retired that series, but I will probably not expand it in 2025. My current plan is to work on a new story for Gwen, Roland, Xerx, and all the rest sometime in ’26 or ’27.

That’s it for this time.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.

Greetings, all.

The next Voided Man book comes out on Sunday. It is called A Frozen Equilibrium, and Al is the narrator.

Al has turned out to be one of my most popular characters, and I've taken a deep dive into his inner world in the book. There is also a great new adventure - Al and Number One return to deep space, this time with Annabelle along. If you've enjoyed the series so far, I'm confident you'll like the story.

I'm kind of settling into a seven week cycle with this series, and I'm always two or three books ahead. So, to give a few details on the next books with their projected release dates and status.

March 23 - Book 7 - The Override System - Jack narrates. This one is completely finished and will be available for preorder on Sunday as soon as Book 6 launches.

May 11 - Book 8 - The Eight Colors of the Moonbow - Maestro narrates. I'm editing this one now, and the draft is complete.

June 29 - Book 9 - Title to be Determined - Annabelle narrates. The draft is about half finished, and there is a new kind of villain in this one. Really. I'm having a lot of fun with him. It, actually. You'll see.

I hope your 2025 is off to a good start.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.

Greetings, friends.

This will probably be my last post for 2024, and it has been some kind of year. I launched The Voided Man on May 29, and three days ago, the original book hit #1 on Amazon’s “Humorous Science Fiction” bestseller list. I’m not quitting my day job (I’ve been working there forever, and honestly, it’s part of my identity), but writing fiction has definitely become something more than a hobby. Thanks to everyone who has read any of my books or given me feedback or encouragement this year.

The Voided Man 5 (The Valkyrie-200) comes out on Sunday, and it picks up where Navigating Yesterday left off. Alexis narrates this episode, and we get a lot on her rise through the ranks at the Valkyrie School, and then we see what kinds of things the Independent Order of Valkyries does in a combat situation. Lord Jeffrey is causing problems in the Borderlands, and someone has to confront him...

The new book also picks up to some degree where Beyond the Lemon Tree Moon left off. Banner rejoins the story, as do Number One and many of the rest of the residents of the Potato, and they begin the process of integrating themselves into the low tech Realm.

What else? More on Jack and Laura’s romance, more Farmer Michael and Molly, more Bucky. And a lot on the long-lost Valkyrie-200 and on Floyd, the ship’s command AI.

It’s a good tale.

Coming up in 2025, I’m hoping to release another seven Voided Man books. I seem to be able to keep up with releasing a new one every seven or eight weeks, and so that’s my tentative plan. Book 6 is called A Frozen Equilibrium. It will be available for preorder as soon as book 5 releases on Sunday.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.

Greetings, everyone.

I hope you’ve had a nice Thanksgiving. My leftovers are hanging in there at this hour, but I expect that by the end of today’s college football tripleheader, they’ll have been finished off.

This is a quick post about my release tomorrow. The final book (The Clock and the Crown) in my Clock Trilogy will be out at midnight. It’s always tricky to write about sequels without including spoilers, but to make an attempt, in this volume...

The Clock is back, and it has a lot of new tricks.

This Talisman is back, and it has a lot of new uses.

Gwen and Roland are back, and their love story continues in the midst of the conflict all around them.

Xerx and the elves we know return, and King Esallondo and Queen Elindell make their way to the Lands.

King Adolphus, Commissar Oliver, and the rest of the villains are back as well. Will they get what they have coming to them, and whether they do or not, who will survive the war?

Find out in The Clock and the Crown.

Now, for my science fiction fans, Book 5 (The Valkyrie-200) in the Voided Man series will be out on December 15, and Book 6 (A Frozen Equilibrium) will be out on February 2. I’ll post about them in mid December.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.

This is the last in a series of three posts that cover ten things I’ve learned during my first six months of self-publishing on Kindle Direct. To finish off the list...

7. There is more to it than I thought.

I had not anticipated running a lot of ad campaigns, or Goodreads Giveaways, or writing a blog, or emailing with readers. But those things are all part of building a series, and they have all become part of the rotation. And I don’t mind doing them; they are just things I hadn’t expected at the beginning.

8. There is also actually less to it than with alternate paths.

Publishing through traditional publishers often requires getting an agent, and that seems a difficult trick. There are writers in a group I have joined who spend a lot of time trying to win that part of the game. Agents aren’t really a feature of the world of academic publishing that I’m familiar with, but once a contract is signed to write a textbook, I can say from experience that there are a LOT of moving parts before a final manuscript is accepted that aren’t part of the KDP world.

9. If you are thinking of making a go of self-publishing, be prepared to lose money initially.

You have to advertise, in my opinion. There are several million books on Amazon, and if you are new, you have to create visibility for your book or not very many people are likely to find it.

You also need covers that are interesting if you want people to take a first look at your work. If you have the knack for designing them, that’s great, but I don’t, and so covers are the other main expense I’ve had with my books. Lindsey Cousins is my cover designer - https://www.behance.net/gallery/21047... - and she does a great job. Wait until you see the cover for Voided Man 6.

But even with expenses, my experience has been that you can get to the break even point and beyond reasonably quickly, just not right away.

10. The KDP world is user friendly.

I’m not tech savvy, but I’m almost never frustrated with the KDP ecosystem. And on the few occasions I’ve hit a roadblock, I’ve been able to get a call back from someone who can help within five minutes.

That’s my report on my first six months of self publishing. Next time I’ll have a synopsis of my two December releases.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.

This is the second installment in a three part series on what I’ve learned in my first six months of self-publishing on KDP. Last time, I talked about the first three things on my list of ten items. Picking up where I left off...

4. You will go nuts if you check your numbers all the time.

It’s tempting to do so. You can track sales, and royalties, and ranking in genres and subgenres and on Amazon overall in the US or the UK or anywhere else. You can take a deep dive into ad campaigns and pre orders and average customer ratings anytime you want.

And if you go down that rabbit hole, it takes away time from writing. If numbers are up, it tempts one to take the foot off the gas for the rest of the day. “What I have out already is doing great, so I’ll do something else.” If numbers are down, the amygdala wakes up and says, “What’s going on?! We’ve got to figure this out right away!!”

But you can’t figure it out, not over short lengths of time. Book sales are like stocks, to my eye. A good book will sell more over time just like shares of a good company will go up over time. But how will they do hour to hour? No one knows. At all.

I check sales numbers once a day in the evening when I’m not going to write anymore that day and try to keep it to 15 minutes. I do a deeper dive once a week and look at trends a little bit. That’s it.

My advice to anyone new to the game is to spend as much time as possible writing and as little time as is reasonable checking the background stuff.

5. Writing fiction is difficult.

I’ve written and ghost written a fair number of textbooks over the years, and while those are much longer than novels (at least on average), they are easier to put down on paper because they’re tied to specific things. If you want a textbook chapter on law or ethics or government or public policy I can probably turn it around in a few days, because I probably already know a lot about the issues you want to cover with your students, and I can research the rest.

But fiction? Different deal. There’s no opening blueprint, there is no obvious starting point, and there are no rules. There’s nothing. You have to build it all, and sometimes, the blinking cursor seems to taunt you. Sometimes, it makes me think, “You know, if I were a smarter man, I would have settled on how the next part goes by now.”

But then sometimes, that blinking cursor dances and simply glides across the screen, which leads me to my next point.

6. Writing fiction is marvelous.

I am not aware of any professional activity that is as fulfilling as creating a story out of nothing and having it mean something to someone else.

I’ve gotten tastes of it lecturing over the last twenty nine years. I always figure that if you give students a definition, they’ll memorize it for your next exam and then forget it, but if you tell them a story, they might actually remember it. So I’m a storyteller in the classroom when it is reasonable.

But writing novels is 100% storytelling, all the time. It’s amazing.

I bet I’ll teach for a long time yet, but I’m pretty clearly more than halfway through my teaching career. I can’t imagine I’ll still be at the podium when I’m 81. But I bet I’ll still be writing fiction at 81, and if everything holds together, longer still. Some authors do that.

Now that I see how it is writing everyday, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to not doing so. I really don’t.

I’ll finish this series off in my next post mid-month, and then I’ll have one more post at the end of the month that will preview my December releases.

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing.