Red Wolf Blogs

 Hi, folks! I just sent the final draft of Half Empty Half Full , the second book in my Spaceship Huey Adventures series, to the proofreader for editing. Soon the brilliant Ivan Zanchetta will begin work on the art for the cover. I thought you guys might want to get a sneak peek at some of the story, so here's the Prologue! Let me know what you think   Bernie Cosner felt extremely confident. In fact, he was on top of the world. He stood with his hands on his hips, nodding in satisfaction as the flood lights illuminated the scene below, replacing the fading rays of the sun. Two giant excavation vehicles, each of their sixteen tires easily three times his own height, gouged away at opposite ends of the strip mine. A fleet of smaller trucks hauled meronium-rich ore back and forth between the excavators and a line of field smelters, each of which had been grinding away non-stop since morning, extracting the precious metal from the ore and converting it into ingots the size of bric...

From December 3, 2021 Hi, Packmates! A little over three decades ago, when I was trying to kick a serious drug habit, my support group encouraged me to regard every day I made it through without using drugs a successful day. It was good advice. Especially since so much of my life at the time was crashing and burning around me, I needed something to hold onto that indicated a positive direction. But as the one-day-at-a-times accumulated into months and years, I needed to raise the bar on the definition of success. I wanted to succeed in my career, build a good marriage, raise a kid who didn't turn into a serial killer, stuff like that. Some of those things turned out successfully ... some, not. (I'm happy to say, there's not a single body part stored in my son's freezer - that I know of.) But, through it all, it was a good idea not to lose sight of that original success definition - each day without using drugs. Okay, I won't elaborate further on that. If you're ...

From November 17, 2021 Hi, Packmates! The crew of the SS Huey is an eclectic mix of scientists, technicians, and forgotten heroes whose vision is to take down the paramilitary corporation that controls commerce in the human colonies. Their task may not seem humanly possible. Don't worry. They're only half human. The paperback is now on sale! Check it out on Amazon: <Half Human> The ebook for Kindle will be available for pre-order soon. Once we accumulate a minimum of ten reviews for the paperback, Mr, Miyagi and I will set a date for the Kindle launch and start scheduling promotions. So far, the book has been enthusiastically received by reviewers. We don't want to stop at ten reviews, though. we want as many as we can get between now and the launch of the ebook, which we hope will be in January. I'm offering a free signed copy of the paperback to anyone who is willing to read and review an advanced digital copy (for the sake of speeding up the process of getting ...

From November 5, 2021 I know a beautiful place. Hilliard Falls is a little slice of Heaven where you can skinny dip in a clear pool at the bottom of a lovely waterfall with a near zero chance of being discovered. The reason the place remains idyllic and pristine is it's accessible only via a side excursion off the Cherokee Foothills Trail after slogging over twenty miles of wilderness to get to the trail access. I'm not using the word slog lightly. Much of the hike is uphill where the only reward for reaching the top of the hill is ... you're no longer going uphill. And it's not a side excursion you can take on a whim. It requires some planning, choosing a nearby base camp, and adding an extra half-day to your backpacking trip itinerary. But the effort is worth it. It's a lot like the creative process in some ways. There are brief periods of inspiration, when you can skinny dip with your Muse, sandwiched between long periods of slogging through the wilderness of the...

From October 15, 2021: Hi, Packmates! I'm not just talking about feedback from the pack. It's feedback on  the pack, as well. You see, I was talking to Mr. Miyagi the other day. (That's what I call my marketing sensei - behind his back, of course. His real name is Adam.) He was describing our launch strategy for Half Human and the fact that we needed at least ten reviews before we start promotion campaigns. I said, "I can get that from my newsletter subscribers and my ARC team, easy." He was skeptical, since he knows my list is relatively small. So, I started bragging about how great y'all are - how I go for quality, not quantity. I wasn't just blowing smoke. Y'all are pretty awesome, way better than the industry standard for email engagement. Most authors' emails have a 20% open rate, at best, but almost 60% of you guys at least look at the ones I send out. In fact, most of the time one or two of you reply with some comment or feedback I've as...

 From October 1, 2021 Hey, Pack Mates! No, I'm not going all cowboy on y'all. It's the title of a chapter in Chris Fox's Write to Market . My online writer's book club read it last month, and the phrase seemed like a great subject line for this month's newsletter. Because that's what I've been doing lately... branding with a hot iron. I think I mentioned in the last post that Adam Houge's Fan Base Formula marketing group is guiding me through the launch of the first book in my upcoming Spaceship Huey Adventures series, Half Human. A lot of what we've been working on is my author brand. Branding is a buzzword thrown around a lot in marketing circles. I don't pretend to understand all the ins-and-outs of it, but I think we're trying to work towards the goal of having my name being recognized as an author and associated with good books. And that would be cool. Two of the first "hot iron" tasks involved is setting up a new website a...

From September 17, 2021 I found it! My genre, that is. The month of September has been filled with marketing research, with a tiny bit of writing on the side. Since signing on with Adam Houge's marketing group, I've been diving deep into the space opera genre, looking for clues in how to position my upcoming shifter space opera series for launch in the first quarter of 2022. Typing random words into Amazon's search engine with an incognito browser and crunching the numbers on the results may not sound like much fun to you. Believe me, it isn't! It's a lot like panning for gold, I guess. It's tedious and mind-numbingly boring...until you find that gold nugget. And I found the gold nugget! I am not the only one writing about werewolves in space. I'm delighted to have found two very successful series that have mashed up the urban fantasy and science fiction genres into some great reading. If you liked The Cargo, I guarantee you'll like my upcoming release, ...