These two critters are keeping me from running around screaming at the moment. While old Mocha is still her opinionated self, Marker boi continues to think I'm the center of his world and someone to be adored. It's nice having a horse who is basically a 1100-lbs Golden Retriever in my life, and he's probably the best part of what happened to me in 2023. His affection for me continues to be unconditional, as opposed to Mocha's treat-based affection. He's happy to get scratches, loves, and so on. Even when I need to get after him he's still coming back with affection. I'm honored to have this in my life because I need it right now.

Yeah, I want to yeet 2024 into the sun but I don't have a lot of hope that things are gonna improve. I'm seeing some changes roaring down on me like a freight train and...oh, well, you don't want to read the depressing stuff and I don't want to write it. Living through it is bad enough.

So. Positives. I finished reading Premee Mohamed's Void trilogy and what a ride it was! A mixture of science fiction, fantastic elements, and horror, including a lot of Lovecraftian homages only without the racism.

Progress continues on The Cost of Power. As always, when drafting, I feel alternately like it's the best thing I've written or else that it's a steaming pile of offal. I managed to come up with a rough blurb for the series:

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Who goes there?

Martinieres.

Who are the Martinieres?

We are the fighters!

What do the Martinieres do?

We stand and fight!

When rodeo queen Ruby Barkley fell in love with broke saddle bronc rider Gabe Ramirez, she thought he was on the run from indentured servitude due to massive debt. Then she learned that her love was really Gabriel Martiniere, wealthy descendant of aristocratic brawlers, in hiding due to his testimony against mind control programming abuses of indentured workers performed by his family’s company, the Martiniere Group.

Not that brawling has been a part of the Martiniere heritage since the mid-nineteenth century. These days the Martiniere Family’s income relies on agricultural technology, security services, and pharmaceuticals. Not fighting. Not mercenary companies. Their battles are waged in corporate boardrooms and financial manipulations. But the hidden history of the Martiniere Family surfaces in Gabe—and his father Philip.

Gabe and Ruby face foes from other universes as well as their own, including a malign digital version of Philip intent on eliminating all other Philips and Gabes from the multiverse. Add in the multiversal feud between Fae water spirits who patronize not just the Martinieres but their greatest enemies, the Braun family. Even worse, the centuries-old vendetta between the Brauns and the Martinieres has been revived with greater fervor since Gabe’s great-grandfather Charles unscrupulously excluded the Brauns from Cold War-era military mind control research. Charles also instituted a eugenics program involving genetic manipulation of his descendants, intended to recreate a Napoleonic-era Martiniere, Etienne, culminating in Gabe.

What is digital Philip’s ultimate goal? Why did Charles seek a modern version of Etienne? How can Gabe and Ruby prevail over the threat posed by the Brauns and their supernatural and digital allies? What is the cost of the power they gain in order to win?

For gaining power always demands a cost. Ruby and Gabe walk a knife’s-edge balance between victory and defeat—not just for them, but for the multiverse. And if they lose themselves in the quest for power, they might just lose who they really are.

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I'm not sure I can live up to this ambitious blurb, but I'm sure going to try.

Meanwhile, things proceed. I have a book on sale this month--The Enduring Legacy, fourth in the main Martiniere Legacy series. You can read this book without diving into the entire series and if you're interested in The Cost of Power, this gives you a solid background on some of the digital thought clones that appear in it. It's one facet of the Martiniere Multiverse and is available at all ebook retailers for $2.99, or in paperback at Bookshop. Links below:

Amazon Apple Barnes and Noble Bookshop Kobo Smashwords

If you've already purchased and read The Enduring Legacy, please leave a review--and thanks!

But if you are up-to-date with my books, and want to give me a little boost, please feel free to toss a coin to your writer through Ko-fi, either as a one-time contribution or a monthly donation. Believe me, it's appreciated.

Buy me a coffee and thanks!

That's it for now. I'm hoping that May will be much more cheerful. Stay safe, everyone.