Progress Report 2026 Week 32

Do you remember me talking about the Real Life Family Event (RLFE) that I had hoped would wrap up last week? It did! And then it came apart. In a big way. On the plus side, at least there was progress on the audiobook front, though not by any of my efforts. For my part, I worked on The Fissure Kings Book 2: Thyone’s Ascent, and despite confirming I knew in general where I wanted it to go, it didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped. Before getting into any details, let’s look at the key performance indicators.

Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers

The numbers capturing output during the first couple of weeks after starting a new book make me feel like I’m wildly under performing!

I started the background material for The Fissure Kings Book 2: Thyone’s Ascent, and I immediately hit a snag on all three points of view. I have drafts of the blurbs of all three books, so I have an idea of where I wanted to them to go. But the details are really fighting me this time around. By the middle of the week, in fact, I had to admit I had no idea where Trent Raven, Leah Flores, or Jadwiga Janczak were going.

Fortunately, when I admit that I don’t know what I’m doing, that’s when I can make progress. I started drilling down into each characters’ perspective at the beginning of Thyone’s Ascent. Restating the tactical situation between our heroes and the Investment Houses also helped. I brainstormed on various technological advances that Raven might need to achieve his goals, and I looked into how he might make that happen.

Slowly, the threads started to come together. Right now, I think I have enough material to get to the midpoint, or maybe a little before. In the coming week, I hope to flesh out enough of the world and its developments to start plotting in earnest. So all in all, this part of my week went well.

Being Nuked from Orbit

I won’t go into any details here, but if you don’t mind, can I tell you a little story? When I was a young ‘un in Ohio (okay, I was in my late twenties), I was in the political party that favored privatizing everything. I bought into the arguments that government was inefficient and private business could run things better. I was even behind the idea of privatizing previously public institutions like prisons. Why not save a few of my tax dollars?

Remember I mentioned I was a young ‘un? Well, I’m here to tell you that not only was I young, I was naive. The older, wiser, more cynical mean would even say I was an idiot with a prefix of blithering. Rather than recite a litany to prove my points, I urge you to look at what happens in prisons. Listen to executives associated with prisons lobbying the legislature to make more things illegal so we can put more people in prison. You know — to elevate profits.

Unfortunately, that’s just one example. I am living through the impact of privatizing care. Like I said, no details — but whether that care is general in nature or specific (like support for the disabled), combining the profit motive with people’s health or rights is a disaster. I’ve seen it more than once and I’m seeing it now.

This is an artist’s visualization of what this event has done to my family’s peace of mind.

It’s hurting individuals in my family, and that’s bad enough. But the thing is, these kinds of events effect the whole family. So we’re all going through it. It’s disrupting all our lives. And it could all have been avoided by divorcing the profit motive from the imperative to deliver care.

Which just makes it worse.

And just as an aside, that’s why I made no progress on recording the first chapter for Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Duty of Prisoners. In the scheme of things, that failure means nothing. In this context, it’s insult to injury, and the injury is the thing I’m focused on. This RLFE likely to go on for the rest of the year. If we’re lucky.

The Sword of Sirius Book 2: Collapse Zone

Summer Foovay delivered the final chapter for Collapse Zone this week, and it’s sounding good! I asked her to begin recording The Sword of Sirius Book 3: Firebreak when she gets the time.

My plan (even saying that makes me laugh — like any plan of mine will survive contact with reality!) is to engineer three or four chapters a week of the material she has already recorded. The goal is to finish my work in the late September timeframe. After I publish it, I’ll need to make a decision: re-engineer Red Flag Warning (because I don’t think I did Summer’s work justice) or leave it be and get ready to engineer the third book.

At this point, I don’t believe I’ll use generative AI to narrate my other books. I just purchased a book in my genre that was recorded using Amazon’s Virtual Voice, and I hate to say it, but it repelled me. I know some studies suggest generative AI is an overall plus in this context, and I have no problem if you like it or use it for your books. It’s just not the kind of thing I want to represent my brand.

So maybe I’ll try to record my own. I’ll have to wait and see how it goes.

Update on Marketing

Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Duty of Prisoners continues to sell well. That, despite it only have two ratings with one of them being a one. Sales of Resistance Movement are doing okay, too. Preorders for Lines of Operation aren’t terrible, either.

Will I do preorders in the future? I think I need to wait about two months after the third book goes on sale to know for sure. I’ll want to look at read-through rates from launch to the availability of book three, then read-through rates from the availability of book three to that future point in time. Then I’ll compare all of them to the launches of The Sword of Sirius and Dreams of Deucalion.

Basically, I want to know if people put in preorders at the same rate that people buying later would go on to buy all three books.

Progress Against Last Week’s Goals

Here’s how I did against last week’s goals:

1. Reconcile where Semele’s Lament actually stopped with where I had planned to start the next book: Done! I revised the blurb for all three books based on how things turned out with Semele’s Resolve.
2. Begin plotting The Fissure King’s second book: Ongoing! I have the Scrivener project started, and I’ve started drilling down into the details.
3. Monitor Summer Foovay’s recording progress for The Sword of Sirius Book 2: Collapse Zone: Done! Summer delivered the last chapter!
4. Re-record the first chapter of Duty of Prisoners and confirm that I can engineer it to meet ACX’s requirements: Not done! And this isn’t happening while that RLFE is ongoing. I’m going to shelf it for now.
5. Monitor the performance of the Facebook and Amazon ads: Ongoing. Ad performance is above where I feared but still below what I hoped.

Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2026 Week 32

Here’s what I hope to accomplish this week:

1. Continue plotting The Fissure Kings: Tyrone’s Ascent
2. Monitor Summer Foovay’s recording progress for The Sword of Sirius Book 3: Firebreak
3. Engineer one chapter of The Sword of Sirius Book 2: Collapse Zone to ACX’s standards and document the process
4. Monitor the performance of the Facebook and Amazon ads

What Do You Think?

Have you had to write through significant real life family events? Has your writing helped you help your family? I’d love to read your experience in the comments!