Thank you everyone for your feedback and voting on my poll. It's clear that most of you are happy to support me through fallow periods as well as fertile ones, but enough voices made a compelling case to pause regardless that I have gone ahead and done so.
When we go live a month from now, it'll be to return to Throne Hunters with a vengeance. I'll be resuming my 3/week posting rate, and ...
2025-12-05 22:14:13 +0000 UTC View PostI'm not sure what's the appropriate Patreon etiquette here.
But if I want to take December to plot out the Throne Hunter books and bank chapters, is it considered 'polite' for me to pause the billing here for a month? Or is that unnecessary? Are you guys happy to just hang while I work in the background, or is there more of an expectation to receive chapters constantly as long as your me...
2025-12-03 16:17:35 +0000 UTC View PostQuick note to keep everyone up to speed:
With Gods of the Game #3's first draft finished, I'm going to do a read through/polish this week, then send it over to my copy editor. That should take 2 - 3 days.
I'm going to a writing retreat this Thurs - Sun, and plan to use that time to prep for Throne Hunters #5, #6, an...
2025-12-01 16:04:41 +0000 UTC View Post5 Years Later
The view from the top of the orbital tether was mesmerizing. Cloud cover far below expanded into a vast curvature that hid the bleak landscape of Patagonia from view. The horizon was indigo, bleeding up to black which occasionally flared the soft blue as the forcefield flared.
Lance stood at the platform’s edge, gazing out over the distant clouds. Hi...
2025-11-25 20:15:03 +0000 UTC View PostJessie flew at Charn Chai, her form blurring as she tapped Ramming, her blades incandescing as she engaged Conductive. Shadows wreathed her frame as if night were coalescing about her limbs, and with the speed only a mörderin’s turbine boots could afford, she hurtled with unstoppable power at her bemused father.
Who drifted backward, not making any overt moves to dodg...
2025-11-25 00:35:09 +0000 UTC View PostGame day.
The Finals.
The atmosphere in their flutterline was brittle. Tense. Fatalistic. Twice they’d played Nullpoint, and twice they’d been decisively beaten. And today they’d face Charn Chai.
In all respects they should have been celebrating. To rise from the Scandinavian Minor League to the Premiere and carve a swathe through every other team, to rise to second plac...
2025-11-24 20:09:23 +0000 UTC View PostIntrospection.
Lance forgoed training sessions to instead walk, hands linked behind his back, and think.
Sindre’s advice came to him: You want to jump up a whole tier? Then you need to get your head on straight.
Everybody trained. Everybody pushed their bodies to an extreme. Even now, each day leading up to the Finals, all of Brutal Deluxe was sweating, laboring, st...
2025-11-23 21:12:01 +0000 UTC View PostMeaning derived from purpose.
Existence boiled down to one goal: victory.
Humanity stripped to its rawest core.
This basic, crude ideology challenged, however, at every turn. Each time Lance caught sight of Jessie liberated from their end zone to charge forth as their mörderin. Each time Virgil gave him a measured up-nod of respect after a game. The breathless exhilaration th...
2025-11-23 01:16:05 +0000 UTC View PostLance scrambled up against the wall, eyes wide, recoiling from the apparition. Who refused to dissipate, and instead leaned back to sip on his mug of something hot.
It was Virgil.
Alive, breathing, his skin flushed with health, his hair freshly washed and hanging in golden curls. It was him, every inch, unharmed, face uncrushed, eyes clear, his amusement obvious.
“I… you...
2025-11-21 21:46:13 +0000 UTC View PostThere was nobody in the training center. The echoing space felt sacred. A cathedral of blue flooring and fluorescent lighting. That familiar smell of rock, rubber, and oil.
Maybe it was because he was flecked in blood, brains, and bone, but Charoen felt strangely emotional. He’d gotten a lot more of Virgil on him than he’d realized. Part of him knew he should shower. Hot water would s...
2025-11-19 16:57:17 +0000 UTC View PostIt turned out the Echo Charoen had something unexpected in common with the dead Charoen: pride.
Having been pinned and forced to watch their team lose stirred a deep and primal force within him. A resentment, a refusal, to allow anyone or anything place limits upon him.
That shame and anger burned deep within him even after they returned to the training complex. As everyone integrat...
2025-11-18 17:28:21 +0000 UTC View PostI've run into a bit of a conundrum with my approach to the end of Gods of the Game #3, and am going to take a day or two to get the next chapter just right. Doesn't help that I'm traveling tomorrow and will be back Sunday, which means the next chapter will be posted Monday, Nov 17th.
Apologies for the delay! It's become a bad habit to just post chapters as I write them, which results in ...
2025-11-12 20:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostThe medical drones worked their magic. Charoen slept for most of the flight home. There were after-game celebrations, but he was only dimly aware of them. Buenos Aires was apparently a wonderful city in which to celebrate, but the next day the team showed up in various states of wear and tear, and boarded the flutterline home.
Virgil was obnoxiously ebullient. Brutal Deluxe was already in...
2025-11-11 20:14:25 +0000 UTC View PostThe game against the Platinum Suns was held in Buenos Aires. They rode a massive flutterline ship across the globe, everybody strapped in and absorbed with their own thoughts or Neural Link entertainments. Charoen had felt an all-encompassing clarity of thought since beginning his tutelage under Silence, and managed to sleep for the duration of the flight.
The scene awaiting them at their...
2025-11-10 17:21:38 +0000 UTC View PostTime spent alone.
Hours in his bunk. The walls bland and beige. The lighting overhead adjusted to a dull glow, a faint but constant ember. The bedding perfectly suited to his frame and weight. If he closed his eyes he could imagine himself floating.
But he liked to examine his body. It had grown from an idle hobby to a fascination. His physicality was growing more alien to him with ...
2025-11-06 19:04:28 +0000 UTC View PostSindre
“Well, that was a merry shitshow,” said Virgil, pouring himself a glass of white wine.
Sindre moved uneasily in the office chair. “I thought you weren’t supposed to drink.”
“Oh, that’s only most times. Now-times, however, is the only-times I can get away with it.” Virgil held up his wineglass. “While I’m in the full bloom of health, ...
2025-11-05 20:39:36 +0000 UTC View PostHis isolation couldn’t last.
Virgil ended his silent stint with a team channel message that had special override privileges so that even Charoen saw it despite his mute.
Everyone, hello hello. It’s time for a lovely meet and greet. The roster is now complete, and it’s time to get to know the people you’re going to live and die beside. Training complex in thirty minutes, ...
2025-11-04 19:38:10 +0000 UTC View PostCharoen could sense the tension boiling in the training camp. It was there in the whispered conversations other players had amongst themselves when he walked by. It was in the strain in Sindre’s voice. The way Dr. Bierhals kept examining his medical data as if seeking anomalies that should be there but weren’t showing up.
There were conversations that needed to happen.
He had to...
2025-11-03 20:01:57 +0000 UTC View PostAvailable Apex Zone Armor abilities.
■ Shadowed: Generates a low-spectrum distortion field that bends light and muffles sound, making the wearer far more difficult to detect.
■ Brawling: Augments servo feedback and kinetic reinforcement, dramatically increasing the force and pr...
2025-10-31 18:51:29 +0000 UTC View PostThe sound of Virgil’s lazy applause died away as the three men walked—well, Virgil limped badly, his limbs barely carrying him in a straight line—over to where Charoen sat.
“Incredible.” Sindre sounded almost angry. “At your peak you were in the mid-B rankings. Now you have three stats at Solar?”
“Ah, don’t get mad,” said Virgil. “I swear I’m not about to kil...
2025-10-28 17:17:25 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone,
Apologies, but I wasn't able to finish the latest chapter today. One of those unexpected complications blew up my schedule, and as I've yet to build up a backlog I don't have any reserve chapters to fall back on.
I'll get a couple of chapters out tomorrow to compensate, but I appreciate your patience and understanding.
Cheers,
Phil
2025-10-27 21:12:32 +0000 UTC View PostIt took Charoen six days to integrate the socket, stimpack, and the baseline rewiring of his body’s code.
Six days of alternating deep sleep and fevered nightmares. His body sought to reject the implementation. He had glimpses of the doctors fretting over their panels. Brief moments of lucidity where the world seemed to run like candlewax and everything was tinted rose. Tubes ran thickl...
2025-10-24 17:25:47 +0000 UTC View PostJessie burst into the community center just as an ashen-faced Mandeep was serving plates of butter chicken over saffron rice.
The atmosphere between him and Clovinn had grown brittle, her discomfort over sitting with an Echo of her best friend overwhelming the previous tentative connection.
Charoen, aware of the discomfort, found himself unable to dispel it. Instead, he was supremel...
2025-10-22 17:53:09 +0000 UTC View PostThe Vyperion ascended to an altitude of 10 miles. The sky deepened to indigo while above it darkened to a violet-black dome. The sun grew ever brighter, the shadows in the cabin knife-edged, till its merciless radiance tripped some threshold and the windshield polarized. Wind noise dropped away altogether until only the hum of the fusion-reactor engine could be heard. The world below betrayed a...
2025-10-20 16:41:51 +0000 UTC View Post“…the sea of thought is calm tonight. Let your breath follow the waves in… and out. The body remembers the tide even when the mind resists.”
The voice was soothing, with slow, rolling cadences that felt like the very rhythm of the tide against the shore. Gentle, loving, and coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“You are not a copy. You are a continuation. The same so...
2025-10-17 17:38:49 +0000 UTC View PostDarkness.
Turbulent currents. The swish and curl of unmoored thoughts. Impressions that failed to leave a mark.
Intimate darkness, swirled by emotions. Emotions like the flicksilver flash of a fish’s flank espied for a moment in dark waters. Seen and then gone.
Burgeoning need. The body’s imperatives. Physicality. A cloak of muscle and restive strength. Desire. Formless ne...
2025-10-15 14:09:21 +0000 UTC View Post[Here we go, starting a new book and returning to our M/W/F schedule. I'm hoping this will be a much easier book to write, and that we'll be all wrapped up with both this novel and this series by early Nov, after which I plan to return to Throne Hunters #5. It's been some time since I've written in the world of Game of the Gods, so please allow for a rough start - I'll definitely be coming ...
2025-10-13 16:31:25 +0000 UTC View Post
It's here at last! I hope the general readership enjoys the tale as much as you all seem to have done, but I can't deny being nervous about its reception. One way to find out, I suppose.
If you've a mind to help with the launch, you can grab a KU copy over here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FTZZG1SM 2025-10-13 16:26:48 +0000 UTC View Post
THE LOST CUBE is finished, copy edited, and in Podium's hands. It's done! For better or worse, Book 4 of The Immortal Great Souls is complete, and ready to be published on Amazon.
Thanks to you all for the support, enthusiasm, and positive feedback. Fast Lance and Michael Thomas especially were clutch, but all of you helped keep my fires stoked with your comments and insight. Choosing to ...
2025-10-06 17:12:02 +0000 UTC View Post
If you're close to Oklahoma City at the end of next month (Oct 26th), come by the HEMA tournament being hosted by the Cymbrogi School of Western Martial Arts to say hello! I'll be teaching a class on writing combat, and possibly signing some paperbacks thereafter. It'd be great to see any of you that can swing by.
...
2025-10-02 16:57:59 +0000 UTC View Post