reading – Gunpowder and Ink!

Hasta La Vista, 2025. Bring on 2026!

Leap The Dead will be finished by the end of next week. That’s book… -counts fingers- seven.

Not bad.

I started it May of 2025. So, 9 months. That’s the shortest time it’s taken me to write a book yet.

My favorite cover artist, fellow author Matt James, is working on that part. Also, my favorite narrator, Christopher Lyell, is going to be dragged back in to do the audio on this one as well. (After three weeks so far of dealing with Amazon ACX/Audible trying to get the cover art uploaded – we finally wrapped that up Trample the Weak last week. Now it’s around ten days of waiting for approval…) And as for myself, I’ve an idea for a third book to continue the Beau Henry series. Which will likely be titled, ‘Eat the Survivors‘.

I also have ‘Settling Prehistoric‘ on the brain. I miss Jedidiah Huckleberry Smith, his horse Carbine, his love Skyla, and all that chaos of fun western characters in the lost world of Prehistoria…

Conquering Prehistoric, the 5th book in the series, was a blast to write from a new perspective. Cato ‘The Black Plague’ Landry was a cool character who needed his story to be told. And bringing a lost Roman Legion into the story was fun as well. I mean, c’mon… Roman’s vs Cowboys. Heck yeah.

But ultimately, while the reviews are at an awesome average of 4.7/5 stars, it wasn’t as popular as the Jedidiah books. And Settling Prehistoric would be going back to Jed as the main character, with his ‘family’ intact, and a dangerous new threat that was hinted at in the end of Conquering Prehistoric. (So I reckon you ought to read that one even if you wanted more Jed… just for the reveal at the end.)

After almost two years away from Prehistoria, I feel like I need to re-read the books first while I work on an outline. I’ve been so glued into WWII and the Pacific Theater, that it’s going to take some work to recall all the details of the West of Prehistoric series.

That may give me time to figure out the next series I’d like to work on. And also give another book to the fans of WoP before 2026 is over…

But expect a cover reveal post and pre-order option soon for Leap the Dead. Which will hopefully coincide with a ‘Audible Release!’ announcement for Trample the Weak.

Things are a moving.

Cheers to 2026.

May we make all things better than they were before.

Erik.

December 2025 – Update

The writing continues. I’m over 60% through writing the Leap The Dead. It’s going well, we get to explore Yeuhan Island in depth, and the Japanese Emperor’s sadistic Unit Thirty-Five. I’m having fun with that. And Trample The Weak is still doing REALLY well in sales. So I need to wrap that up…

My next project is up in the air though… I was going to write this series about two competing billionaires using mercenaries to retrieve artifacts of Christ.

But then I saw this $0 deal on Amazon for The Blood King by Matt James who is a fantastic writer and cover artists. (He does my cover art)

And danged if he didn’t write my book.

It’s so good, folks. I’m about 3/4’s of the way through, reading it in bits and pieces on my bathroom breaks at work. (heh) And I’m very, very impressed. I highly recommend it. He gets the ‘nerd lore’ down pat. I won’t say anything more than that, but it’s clever and historical and such.

Go buy it. The sequel, The False Prophet, is already out.

So, since Matt James wrote my series and all… it’s back to the drawing board.

Settling Prehistoric is still waiting. I’d love to go back to the world of Prehistoria and write about my favorite character of all time. But I’m going to have to re-read the books so I don’t goof it up after taking a year and a half off from the series.

And… that’s kinda it. I’ve a few small ideas that I’ve got to do some thinking on and see if I can expand them properly for a nice little series.

But we will see.

Hope you all had a glorious Thanksgiving with much giving of thanks to our Lord and Savior, and enjoyed your bountiful feasts on this conquered land.

Hasta la vista.

Writer’s Update – October 2025

Still working on ‘Leap the Dead‘. It’s coming out spectacular.

I think the word tracker was at 40% written. Not where I was hoping to be, but still progressing. Will I make it by the end of the year? Dang, I dunno… I really hope to pull it off somehow…

But there’s an awful lot going on in the real world for me. Pretty much all of it is just… exhausting and difficult and in some cases, kind of needless. But alas, the world continues to turn and my books continue to be written in my free time with style, elegance, and grace. 🙂

I did manage to take a couple days off from work and go shooting. It was good for the soul. The first time out, the rifle range was packed so I spent some time on the pistol range zeroing in my daughter’s Ruger Mark IV pistol and plinking with mine. As tempting as it was, I didn’t go guns akimbo(dual wield!)… The second time, I got there early Monday morning and beat all the old retired guys to the rifle range. Got some really good shooting in and spanked the old steel coyote at 300 yards with regularity.

I’ve gotten back into reading my bible. I’ve backslid for a few years now. So trying to get back into that. Also we are actively looking for a new church.

I’m planning on watching Primal War this weekend with my son. Pretty excited for that. I attempted to read the book… and it was terrible but I’ve heard the movie is pretty good.

Speaking of books, Larry Correia’s “Academy of Outcasts” came out a week or so ago. I just finished it… and wow. Highly recommend. I’m a snob when it comes to ‘reading time’ these days as my time is so limited and I can afford to be picky. Whereas when I was younger, I’d just devour everything inprint.. But Correia has yet to let me down on anything he’s written. May his Moose Yard Mountain grow ever higher.

Kind of a boring update. I’ll try to be more interesting next time.

But there’s only so many ways I can write, “The writing continues…”

Trample the Weak – Back Book Blurb.

These are always fun to write. I typically do it as I’m rounding the final corner of the manuscript so it’s a cool milestone to hit. I’ve still another 12-15,000 words to write and then polishing, but I’ve been hitting about 1.5k words a day. Which is the best writing I’ve ever done in terms of sheer volume, and from what I’ve been churning out, I don’t think much editing will be needed.

I learned today that there are ‘over writers’ and ‘under writers’. Over Writers tend to be extremely verbose and write too much, while Under Writers will lean towards not being wordy enough in terms of description, dialogue, etc.

I’m definitely an Under Writer. If I had to choose, I’d prefer this anyways as it means when I go back to edit instead of cutting big chunks out, I’m adding to the story.

But anyways, I wrote the Back Book Blurb today.

Here it is. (Subject to change.)

***

Corporal Henry didn’t sign up for adventure.

He signed up to kill the enemy.

And as the Marines of the 2nd Division push back the Empire of Japan from their heavily fortified islands in the Pacific Ocean, he is given the chance when they are tasked with taking Yeuhan Island. A small island with an airfield vital for the coming invasion of mainland Japan.

It is there, underneath the sand and bodies, that a secret of the Imperial Japanese Army will be discovered hidden inside the island.

The Emperor’s Unit Thirty-Five.

A sadistic combination of fanatical scientists and soldiers, who search for the mysterious, the wonderous, and the unknown. Anything that will aid their empire in crushing the Americans.

On Yeuhan Island, they found kaiju.

And it is up to Corporal Henry and his small band of degenerate Marines to kill them all.

Or the tide will turn, and the war will be lost.

***

Coming soon.

Mid April 2025 Update

Trample the Weak – 75% finished.

Writing has been going extremely well the past few weeks. And I’m at the fun part in the book where the main characters are riding around in a Willys Jeep shooting kaiju with the pedestal mounted Browning Machine Gun.

So that’s exciting.

It’s like writing something out of a video game.

The book will probably be wrapped up in the next month or so and then the writing of Leap the Dead will start.

In other news, the publisher who had contracted for these books went out of business it appears. Their website has disappeared and they haven’t posted on FB in about a year and a half. Thus, I’m toying with the idea of self-publishing these two. I have this very rational fear of having all my eggs in one basket. (Or all my books with one publisher.) So I might as well learn a new skill set and make some bigger royalty percentages.

As for the West of Prehistoric series, I’ve got a rough idea for the next book. It’d be titled Settling Prehistoric and be all kinds of fun. I’ve set up some cool things in the previous books that I always wanted to go back and revisit.

In personal news, our Bear has turned ten! For an English Mastiff this is quite the milestone. As the Vet said during his checkup, he’s a ‘Super Senior’.

We had a small party for him and sang Happy Birthday. Then he promptly ate the cupcake WITH a candle in it.

Also, a shout out to Henry Rifles for one of their recent instagram posts. As you all know, Jedidiah Huckleberry Smith and his iconic 1886 rifle in .45-70 are a pivotal pair in my books.

So when this popped up, I was promptly tagged by a buddy.