Writing Progress, Sept ’26 Edition

After releasing book 2 in The (Secret) Tower Lord series, I began working on the next installment. As of the end of September, I reached 16.7k words. I’m undecided whether to treat this new book as the finale for the series. Modern/urban fantasy has its appeal. But a political thriller fantasy seems rather nichey, so I’m not surprised the series hasn’t drawn that much readership.

On the flip side, book 2’s release brought some interest in my (extensive) backlist, so there’s the silver lining. Book 1 also got some new reads/borrows/ratings, which is very much appreciated.

In any case, I expect the new/current writing project to remain consistent, in the 100k-word range. So whether book 3 is the series finale or a continuation is too early to think about at this point. I expect to spend the rest of 2026 writing the first draft before starting the final round of edits for publication next year.

Thank you for your continuing support! Xoxo

iPhone Duo = New Status Symbol

At first glance, it’s hard to understand who is the intended consumer for Apple’s upcoming foldable screen phones, aka “iPhone Duo,” with its $2k selling price. With a 7.6 inch screen (when unfolded), this device is, in reality, a tablet pretending to be a smartphone.

Sure, you could use the extra screen space for facetime and streaming videos. Power execs will have their secretaries and aides carry these devices for Zoom and other online meetings on the go. So, I do expect it to be widely adapted at the executive level in business settings.

But for the rank and file workers, a $2,000 phone becomes a demonstration of your wealth, income, or earning power. I wouldn’t be surprised if youngsters start popping up at bars and social events carrying the Duo. And loan sharks will likely have a field day offering loans to desperate folks fishing for wealthy partners to hook up with and treating the Duo as a tool for this endeavor. Pretend until you make it indeed.

As for Apple itself, the company obviously realizes the Duo would cannabilize iPad sales. But iPhones is were the company makes its money, and the costs of chips make iPads less profitable than before. So losing iPad sales wouldn’t hurt as much if Apple could convince its consumers to pony up more $$$ for the Duo instead.

So, will people start saving money now for the Duo launch in late October? Will we see a noticeable dropoff in consumer purchases/spending as a result?

We are Live!

The (Secret) Tower Lord 2: Post-Integration Earth is officially published on Amazon and also available on Kindle Unlimited.

Our Joel Black finally comes out of hiding within his tower and confronts a vastly different Earth. New continents are added by the System, bringing aliens bent on expansion and conquest of humanity!

But since our MC pretended to be dead, he takes on a new identity as Pal, the sole Beastmaster in the world. He joins the Hunters Association and relocates in Long Island and NYC. But his missions soon pull him beyond the borders of USA.

Meanwhile, America’s enemies target him for assassination again. How will Joel protect himself without revealing his secret class as a tower lord? Will he be forced into hiding again?

Thank you for your support! xoxo

Writing Progress Aug ’26 Edition

I finished the first draft of my manuscript, reaching 101.3k words. Subtracting from July’s 80.4k, that comes out to 20.9k words for August. I also proceeded with the editing process and finished the first round of edits. So now, I’m going through the manuscript a second time and still making important changes to the novel here and there.

I hope to finish/finalize the edits and publish Book 2 of The (Secret) Tower Lord series either later in this week or sometime next week. Stay tuned. =)

Benefit Versus Requirement

My current writing style is to review and edit each chapter as I write, rather than leaving the edits until the first draft’s completion as I had done previously. The benefit is that I would spend far less time in edits compared to the second method and the details would be much fresher in my mind. Conversely, edit as I write would slow down the daily and weekly word count. But I view this as a reasonable tradeoff.

Right now, I’m in the latter portion of the current manuscript. Our MC is returning to NYC while riding on his flying serpent. But some New Yorkers are upset by this. Why should a Beastmaster enjoy special privileges to fly across the city sky? And endanger local residents with a possible crash into tall buildings?

So i needed to come up with a reasonable explanation that City Hall could offer to justify this situation. Otherwise, we would have civilians riding horses on the street and pretend these creatures are tamed beasts, too. What I came up with was treating our MC as an emergency responder who REQUIRE his tamed beast to react to emergencies ASAP rather than a privileged BENEFIT. One change of the word resolved this theoretical problem.

If we had used AI to generate the content, it wouldn’t necessarily appreciate the difference or nuance between these two words in this context. This is the sort of human touch needed in writing stories, in my view. Will AI someday offer such nuanced wording? Perhaps. But not currently.

Backfired

Amazon sent me an email this morning notifying me about a recent book release from a well-respected fantasy author that I follow on their website. The book was literally published yesterday, and it generated 1x 3star review in total–from an advanced review copy (ARC) reader (who got the copy via a ARC distribution company). And it turns out the reviewer is gushing with positives about the work but probably click three stars by mistake.

I plan to keep an eye on the work and see if that 3 star review would crater the book sales. If so, that would be really, really bad luck. The work is published by a traditional (but smaller) publisher, who had spent gobs of money on a nice fantasy cover. This situation shows that even going the traditional release route, getting a fancy cover, going through the hassle of ARC, and you could still risk having a poor book launch. Yikes.

Writing Progress July ’26 Edition

At the end of July, my current manuscript reached 80.4k words. Subtracting from last month’s 52.6k words, that comes out to 27.8k words for the month. It’s a bit less than last month’s progress, but okay considering we had July 4th holiday celebration and whatnot.

I’m targeting 100k words for this book 2 in the Secret Tower Lord series, meaning I expect to finish the first draft during this month of August. Here’s a small preview of this upcoming book:

The Appraiser is dead. Drowned. Body cast out to sea. How will Joel Black re-emerge from his secret tower and return to the world? What is his place in it now?

Another Danger of Using AI For Writing Novels

It’s disputed that many AI trained using libraries containing copyrighted material. That’s how they could generate novels in the style of popular authors. Well, due to AI concerns, a $2.4m publishing deal for unreleased manuscript just got cancelled. Whoops!

We (the public) don’t know the identity of the author who got cancelled. We DO know the agent representing this author and their literary agency involved. So you can bet that, in the future, when the agency peddles future manuscripts to publishers, they won’t be offering that cancelled author’s work. The publishing world is small and insular; sooner or later, folks in the industry will learn that cancelled author’s identity and avoid their works like a plague.

Now, I might not be submitting my manuscript to a publisher in the near future. But it’s important to retain proof of you authoring your work. How? Keep saved files of your work in progress. For every writing session, I create a NEW saved file of my work. If somebody compares older files with newer ones, they could confirm gradual progress made in the manuscript. You can’t do that with AI-generated content.

This habit also protects you if your work file somehow becomes corrupted; you can go back to an earlier version and keep most of the work you produced.

LeDoom?

Lebron James finally announced his next stop in his illustrious NBA career: Philadelphia. Previously, there was talk of his interest in going to the Madison Square Garden and joining my New York Knicks. But their championship title this year made him back off. Clearly, Lebron cares a lot about his image. If the Knicks fail to repeat, he might become the fans’ scapegoat. Yeah, I get it.

His decision to join the Sixers is interesting. It’s in the Eastern Conference, which people thinks is an easier road to reach the NBA Finals compared to going through Oklahoma City Thunder or the San Antonio Spurs out West. And there’s some truth to that, considering how the OKC-Spurs playoff series went seven games and reached the Finals battered and bruised.

On paper, the Sixers have a strong starting five, as good as the Knicks even. But the problem, as I see it, is that Lebron, Jaylen, and Joel are strong personalities, and they could have a volatile locker room. What distinguishes the champion Knicks from other teams is their chemistry, a willingness to sacrifice and fill roles on the team. They enjoy playing with and for each other, enough to take less money to return as free agents.

Do you think JB would defer to Embiid? Or Tyrese? And note that Lebron wants to film his final NBA season. Would players in the locker room stew in their annoyance when camera crew follow Lebron around? I would not be surprised if fights break out in the locker room. Or players start becoming anonymous source for NBA reporters and attack each other through the media.

Bring out the popcorn!

New $12.99 KDP Ceiling = Nothingburger

Previously, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing offered 70% eBook Royalty for publications priced between $2.99-9.99 on their website. After July 7th, this ceiling rose to $12.99. On its face, this sounds like a great policy. That $3 increase would translate to an additional 2 bucks and change in royalties. However, which publisher would charge $12.99 for an ebook on Amazon? Primarily the traditional publishers. If a lesser-known indie author tries to price their ebooks at $12.99, what happens? Skip. No sale. Moving on to the next indie book on the website.

Let’s face it. Books aren’t a consumer necessity like food, clothing, housing, electricity, and internet. People will survive reading old ebooks. Yeah, that’s a sacrilegious idea. I know. But if money is tight, book readers could simply add titles to their wishlist and buy something in the future. And if your wallet is skimpy, would you buy a $9.99 ebook or a 12.99 indie, self-published ebook? I believe most will pick the lower price work unless they are diehard fans of that 12.99 author. When viewed in this context, KDP’s $12.99 price ceiling for 70% eBook royalty is a nothingburger for self-published authors since their readership is less likely to pay that much for eBooks.