A part of me has a hard time believing that next week is the launch of Terminus Cycle. My first book, The Godslayer, was very different. I’ve said that a ton of times but I can’t state it enough; it was an incredibly different book. Everything from my approach, attention to detail, polish to the genre and the style that it was written in. The Godslayer was a product of where I was as a guy who dedicated a lot of his time and efforts into combat sports. I’ve been writing about combat sports since 2006 and watching them for at least ten years before that.
They served a very important role in my life for a long time. I had done a lot, from reporting to editing to managing sites and even tried my hand at managing a few fighters. It was an interesting ride but I wanted off. The Godslayer was an attempt to do something on my own and work off of what I knew and what people knew of me; combat sports. My hopes were that it would be the end for me, that it’d be my meal ticket to stop the slough of writing about combat sports for good so that I could move on to just writing novels.
Things don’t always work out as planned, right? It sold pretty well, better than I ever expected (because you have to be realistic), but still wasn’t enough to get me to quit, especially when my name was out there more than ever. I was doing freelance PR, managing sites, getting a lot of attention and a lot of money coming in. The thing with me is that I tend to work a lot. It was this whole thing instilled in me by my father; work hard until you drop dead. I guess that’s what being from a New England Irish family does to one, right?
So I was working seven days a week for extremely crazy hours and I was miserable. Not just miserable, I was angry. I hated what I was doing and resented all of it. I resented the sports that I was covering for existing, I resented the fans, I resented the other media, I resented the athletes, I resented my employers who kept giving me money and I resented myself for doing the thing that I swore that I’d never do again; work overly hard at a job that I don’t love. My wife did some math and figured out that I could cut back considerably and everything would be fine.
It felt strange to me, in fact, I was torn. I hated what I was doing and it was eating me up, but could I really just give it up and become what I considered a freeloader? We had been having these discussions for a long time, over a year, actually. I still couldn’t bring myself to do it, but finally I had no choice, I was stopping everything and I was going to focus on my novels. It took time and I didn’t really shed all of my other jobs until February (which is a long time considering that I made this decision in August), but over that period of time I finished Terminus Cycle and got myself to where I am now, which is about halfway through the follow up to Terminus Cycle.
So next week feels like a big deal to me because this is a long time coming. It is also me moving into something that I care about quite a bit more than combat sports; science fiction. I grew up obsessed with science fiction, reading the likes of Asimov, PKD, Bradbury, Wells and many others. It had a profound impact on me (as did the Timothy Zahn Star Wars novels, if we are being brutally honest) and has left me as a lifelong fan of science fiction.
I’ve been brushing up on my modern science fiction over the past few months, but I felt that it was important for me to not read what else was out there before I finished up Terminus Cycle so that it wouldn’t have that many outside influences in it that readers would pick up on and either notice or be turned off by. But really, what pushed me back into wanting to do science fiction was the landing of the Mars Curiosity rover, re-reading Dune and watching the entirety of Babylon 5 for the first time.
I’m confident in Terminus Cycle adding something valuable to the modern science fiction lexicon now I just have to hope that others agree with me. I’ll find out next week and in the weeks following that for sure, but it’s still exciting to think that I’m putting something out there that I really want to be out there.
So don’t forget to pre-order your copy of Terminus Cycle before it launches on March 24th.
Also add Terminus Cycle to your GoodReads shelves as well.
As always I’m overwhelmed by the support and I can’t thank everyone enough.