Repenter and Brigands Relaunch 10/20/2026

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Hey, hey!

Double the saga.  Double the action.  

Repenter and Brigands have just relaunched.  With a plan.  Based on (gasp!) data analysis.  Truly we are living in unprecedented times.

I’m exclusive with Kindle Direct Publishing for ebooks, along with Kindle Unlimited.  I’m wide with paperbacks through both Amazon and Ingram distribution to Barnes & Noble and Bookshop, among many others.

If you’ve already obtained the first versions of Repenter and Brigands, no need to buy new copies.

If you want to help the cause, please feel free to leave reviews on Amazon or Goodreads.
Review Repenter on Amazon

Review Brigands on Amazon
The New Players Is Next!
New Players’ Kindle relaunch is a mere 3 weeks out.  Go live is on Tuesday, 11/10/26.

If you’re interested in getting a complimentary copy of Players of the Game Book 3, please reply back and let me know and I’ll send you an ARC copy.  I simply ask for an honest Amazon review when you’re done.

The paperback is already out with a “soft launch,” so if you feel like helping out, you’re welcome to leave a review whenever you’re ready before 11/10/26.
Review The New Players on Amazon
And After That?
I have all kinds of action-packed stuff coming soon.

The Breakers relaunch in early December.

Jagged Pieces launch in March of next year.

PLUS: Repenter’s multi-voice cast, digitally narrated audiobook, with Brigands getting the same treatment soon after. More info to come in the near future.  

Thanks so much for all your interest and support!
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

James McGowan Reader Group- Relaunch-o-rama

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Hey hey!

The full-court press continues with the 2nd edition relaunch of the Players of the Game series.  And not even a historic torrential downpour that seeped into my lower level will stop it.  

Though it will slow me down for a few days as things get dried out and carpet replaced.  All is on the right track for getting restored on the home front.

And the restoration of the POTG line continues.  Using a marketing/ad consulting group to be more data-driven about getting ads in front of the right folks with the magic of two omnipresent corporations’ algorithms.  Getting paperbacks soft-launched weeks to months in advance of their Kindle launch with big spikes to promo sites and methodically tracking what ads convert to sales.

It’s a whole thing.

I’ve already reached out to a few of you, but if I haven’t, and you want to assist with leaving reviews on the Brigands, New Players, and Breakers paperbacks, please let me know and I’ll throw you an ARC copy and the Amazon link to post your review.  And no prob if you’re not interested.

I remain optimistic about the potential of the POTG series as an epic story.  It is a tale that must be told.

Here’s the schedule for October PLUS bonus novellas on the house.
Repenter and Brigands: Relaunching on 10/20/2026
Repenter and The Brigands are getting a simultaneous spike Kindle launch on October 20, 2026.

I’ll be throwing out a quick reminder email closer to their launch date.

Their paperbacks are available now.

Along with their companion novellas.
Complimentary Bonus Novellas on Bookfunnel. Available Now.
Hidden Chapters and The Favor are now perma free in ebook form on my website with Bookfunnel links.

The paperbacks are available on Amazon, BN, Bookshop.org, and other retailers.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
In case it is not apparent, I shall make an explicit statement: It has been an extra busy September.  

Spinning up bunches of processes.  Reaching out to reviewers.  Getting questions answered by smart people and smart Claude chatbots.  Lots of pushing forward.

Sadly, my writing productivity has taken a temporary hit.  The revision of Secret Fronts clocked in at page 616, with just 15 pages for the month.

I expect to ramp it back up once I have a business-as-usual mode established for all things marketing.

I’ll keep at it.  And then keep at it some more.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

“And then we escalate by discussing an expanded partnership with an old friend,” Gath said. “And with luck, also new ones.”

“Not luck, Inventor.” Nadia kept her socket-based eyes leveled at him. Resolute. Hard. “Preparation. A century of it.”
Recommendation Corner
The Photonic Effect by Mike Chen

What if Star Trek: Voyager started after they got home?

That’s the hook of this novel.  A science vessel called the Horizon has only recently returned after getting stuck in the Gravity Well.  A place where universes overlap and ships get caught.  The crew is a skeleton after suffering attrition of surviving on their own for nearly 10 years.  And their depleted ranks get filled by an extra-dimensional alien and a human.

All while a civil war against staying in a different war simmers at the periphery.  Or at least Demi, the captain, thinks it’s at the periphery.  

It’s already on her ship.  She just doesn’t know it yet.

Really compelling space opera with an exploration/science bent.  Highly recommended to folks who aren’t feeling the new Star Trek stuff.

Resident Evil (2026)

Holy Eff.

This movie is how you should adapt a video game.  It takes place during the events of Resident Evil 2, or shortly before.  And it’s more of a remix.  Undead Zombies from the first three games are replaced by the tentacle exploders from RE 4.

The main character is an organ donor courier who makes the mistake of taking a job to carry something to Raccoon City.  Some people don’t like his mumbling quips.  I thought they were funny and helped balance the tension.

But man, was it still tense.  Especially with a jump scare that literally made me toss up my hands and yelp. P

lus the video game over-the-shoulder and first-person shots.

If you’re looking for a solid, unnerving horror movie.  You can’t go wrong with this one.

I’m not usually a horror movie guy, but there’ve been a lot of good ones this year.
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

James McGowan Reader Group- Honk

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Hey, hey!

I have absolutely overused this joke over the last few weeks, but I’m taking this opportunity to run it further into the ground.

I’m tooting my own horn on this one.

Honk.

Though, having played trombone in high school, I can emphatically tell you I would take great pains to avoid tooting someone else’s horn.  But I digress.

This past month, I was the spotlight author at Parea in Glenwood, Iowa for Shelf Indulgence, put on by the town’s library.  It has a fantastic and vibrant downtown scene.

I talked about why I write.  It’s play for me.  An evolution from my childhood of making up stories for various Star Wars, MOTU, and Transformers toys.  Then playing D&D campaigns and running Rifts campaigns in high school and college.  

I then transitioned to writing novelized summaries for a friend of mine when he went off to the navy.  (Hi, Justin!)  And slowly adapting some of the characters and making my own worlds with an original setting.

Then I read an excerpt from Repenter where Ashe and Corsis encounter each other in the first chapter.

‘Twas a fantastic time.  Thanks to everyone who attended.  And thanks to Autumn Yosten of the Glenwood Public Library for the invite!

Here are a few pics of me at the event.

This one shows me talking about creating my own worlds:
This one shows me reading from Repenter:
And this one shows me talking about what’s next:
And what’s that in the background with my slide?  It’s a little fuzzy.  Let’s zoom in and talk about that development now.
Kirkus Has Given Repenter a Postive Review
Yes.  That Kirkus.

I made a banner for my ongoing relaunch’s Amazon A+ Content.

Tap the image to view the full review on Kirkus’s site.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/james-mcgowan/repenter-players-of-the-game/
Plus! 

I’m in the midst of the relaunch I mentioned last time.  The second edition Repenter paperback is live on Amazon.  And the Ebook will be getting relaunched in October.

Check out the Amazon A+ content and feel free to leave a review if you’re so inclined with the button below.
Check Out Repenter’s Relaunched Paperback on Amazon
Players of the Game Works In Progress
With all the images above, showing me and the Kirkus positive review, I’m skipping the usual character profile this time around.

I had a busy month. Doing stuff with the relaunch, the author event, and a quick road trip to see some old friends.

And yep, my progress on Secret Front’s second draft definitely got back-burnered.  But not as bad as I’d feared. My productivity stats rolled in at page 601 with 35 pages for the month.

Less than last time, but actually better than I’d first thought.  I’ll take it.

I’ve been working with 100 Covers for a bunch of covers for later books.  It’s way too early to share them.  But Secret Fronts’ cover featuring Nadia of Muné is effing astounding.

Nadia will make her debut in Jagged Pieces when I release that sometime in 2027.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Alise Tula: “If you’re about to tell me that my morning brew doesn’t taste phenomenal, I will decapitate you with my mother’s letter opener.”
Recommendation Corner
Not Till We Are Lost by Dennis E. Taylor

I do love the Bobiverse series.  It’s humorous and full of unexpected pathos. The Bobs have many plates spinning.  Chief among them, making an alliance with an alien AI that is loosening its hold on its sapient beaver-like client species.

And they make their own AI based on its guidance.  Things do not go according to plan.

Plus, a B plot takes another two Bobs, Icarus and Daedalus, through an alien wormhole network where they get to witness the Milky Way’s supermassive hub black hole, Sagittarius A*.

And they discover an even bigger problem in the wake of an abandoned civilization.

Ray Porter does a great job with the many disparate Bobs and their various friends and adversaries.

My favorite kind of sci-fi comfort food.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

This might be recency bias, but I think this is my favorite Spidey movie.

The Hulk versus Punisher and Spidey fight was catnip for my inner teenager.  And the lingering pain from Peter’s decision to remain estranged and forgotten by MJ and Ned still haunts the movie.

The villain is plenty menacing.  Though her reveal makes it a little hard to walk back some of her cruel actions that possibly killed an innocent person and nearly killed another major character.  Minor quibble.

Spidey’s surprisingly earnest relationship with Frank Castle was a highlight of the movie.  Tom Holland, Zandaya, and Jon Bernthal are having a banner summer with Odyssey and Spidey.

Watch it and have a ton of fun. 
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

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James McGowan Reader Group- The Relaunch

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Howdy!

I have been working a bunch this past month. Not just on my latest POTG draft, as I always do.  

But also on my long-term strategy.  

And the cover refresh from last month led me to make another decision. I’ll be using an advertising consultant in the coming months to help me implement a better strategy for getting my books in front of more readers.

Part of that will be relaunching all the books with new ASIN (Amazon numbers) and ISBNs (International Serial Book Numbers).

I’m altering the text a bit from my original newsletter to something more evergreen for the website blog entry.

I’ll be relaunching the Repenter ebook on Amazon likely sometime in October 2026, but I’ll have the paperback re-released sooner in mid-August. 

If you’re reading this in the future, and have obtained a copy of Repenter, please consider giving it a review on Amazon. No need to leave 5 star reviews or a lengthy review.  A simple “I liked it” or “I loved it” or “I somethinged it” will do just fine with whatever star number you think is right.

Again, no pressure.  But if you’re interested, I appreciate your help.
PLUS: Guess Who’s a Featured Author at Shelf Indulgence on August 13th?
Me.

The answer is me.

The current editions of the Players of the Game series, with their old-school covers reminiscent of the TSR-era D&D novels, are getting a grand send-off.

Autumn Yosten with the Glenwood, Iowa Public Library was kind enough to invite me to the monthly Shelf Indulgence event.

When: Thursday, August 13th from 6pm-8pm

Where: Parea Lounge in Glenwood, IA, just south of Omaha and Council Bluffs I’ll be giving an author presentation. 

Here’s what I plan to chat about:

Why I write.

How I built my novels’ worlds Repenter’s main characters.

I’ll do a reading of the end of Repenter’s first chapter.

And talk about what’s next, which includes the relaunch.

Plus answer any questions from the audience.

I’ll also have a stack of my novels with the old covers to sell.  And once they’re gone.  They’re gone.  Destined to be collector’s items.

If you’re in the Omaha-Council Bluffs area, come on out to Glenwood’s absolutely rad downtown and say hi.

I attended it last month at Chris Poore’s event, and I can attest that it’s a genuinely fun place.  It makes fantastic drinks too!
Players of the Game Repenter Amazon A+ Content Preview
This updated Amazon A+ content, or a variation of it, will be showing up on Repenter’s new Amazon Page. Looks pretty cool, me thinks.
Players of the Game Works In Progress
I’ll keep this section brief, as I covered a lot of it above.

With Secret Fronts’ 2nd draft, I’m up to page 566 with 47 revised pages for the month.  Better than last month’s 35 pages, which is pleasantly surprising.

I’ve reached a section that requires less first-draft-style rewriting in the last week or so, and that let me open up the lead on last month.  Especially encouraging, given all the back-end work I’ve been doing with the ramp-up to the relaunch.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Corsis: “My children. My trusted agents. My other selves. Progress the Game in my stead. Make it entertaining.”
Recommendation Corner
Spider-Noir on Amazon Prime

Nicholas Cage can be a lot for some people.  I totally understand it.  His delivery choices for some of his roles can be… confounding.

But.

He is perfect for the role of Ben Reilly in 1930s Manhattan as a gumshoe detective, who’s also this world’s Spider-Man.  

The show can be watched in black-and-white or color.  I picked color, as the setting and character designs are so vibrant in that version.  I might try black-and-white later. 

The plot is very noir with a femme fatale and a morally grey Spider, who’s caught between opposing forces.

When he went undercover as a police union rep who says, “Yeah, see!”, it cemented him as one of my favorite actors.

What can I say?  I have confounding tastes.

The Odyssey

I’ve watched this movie 3 times.  It is astounding.  It has the same vibes as the LOTR trilogy for me.  Though I’ll take Aragorn over Odysseus.  Much better people leader, that Strider.

Still. 

The Cyclops.  The Laestrygonians (the giant knights). Circe and her body horror stuff with the pigs. 

And Odysseus tearing ass in the climax. Plus, the parallels to Oppenheimer with an equally famous and infamous feat that ended a war, that haunts the man who came up with it.  Because such a victory breaks the old world.

Great cinema. 

Highly recommended.
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

James McGowan Reader Group- How Very (Cover) Refreshing

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Hey, all.

It’s time to show you the refreshed covers for the POTG Series!

Here’s a look at The Breakers in a big format.

It’s very metal.  And eye catching.

I likey!
PLUS:

Here are the covers for Repenter, Hidden Chapters, Brigands, The Favor, New Players, and Origins.

They really pop.  And even snap and crackle if you listen closely.

I also likey!
The new covers are currently available through Amazon on Kindle and Paperback, and E-Books on Kobo, BN, Apple, and the rest. 

The refresh is pending for the paperbacks on BN and Bookshop.org at the time of this writing on July 1, but they will be available soon.

I’ll likely have that updated by next month’s missive.

NEAT!
Players of the Game Works in Progress
My time got a little monopolized with artwork updates with the covers and other stuff, plus a bunch of back-end marketing prep for Jagged Pieces, which is still on track for a February 2027 release.

And how did that impact the WIP productivity on the Secret Fronts?  I made it to page 519 with 35 pages for the month.  That’s about flat with last month’s 36 pages.  I’m honestly shocked it’s not worse.

I’ve been doing website updates with all the new covers and working with Claude on marketing ideas.  Writing creative fiction with LLMs is not for me, but holy eff is it incredibly helpful with the stuff I hate doing, like marketing strategy.  It helped me update my keywords and categories with a bunch of ideas that I plugged into Publisher Rocket.

The audiobook saga seems somewhat stabilized with the Spoken digital narrated full-voice cast version.  I’m up to Part 6 in Repenter.  And my producer will continue with his run-through.  I’ll plan on sharing it with folks who want to partake in the new medium in exchange for joining my ARC team and leaving a Goodreads review.  And the human-narrated version is still a possibility as well for ACX (Audible).

I’ll say it again: NEAT!

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Corsis: “I can see a case for either approach. But I never know how that moody lad will react these days.”
Recommendation Corner
I’m doing a speed run this time around.   Why?  Because the last two months have had a gaggle of movies I’ve watched in May and June, so you’re getting a tier list:

Excellent Tier- Flicks I Highly Recommend

Obsession:  This is possibly the best movie I’ve seen so far this summer. It’s basically Monkey’s Paw meets Love Potion Number Nine. The female lead is fantastic. It starts off like a romantic dramedy, but turns on a dime when the male lead makes a throwaway wish on a One Wish Willow novelty item to have her “love him more than anything.” Things go unhinged from there. Depending on how you interpret it, her personality fragments into something jagged and twisted, or she gets possessed.

The male lead’s cowardice and weakness slowly devolve his behavior into feckless, inactive evil. Andy Richter even has a small role in it. I totally didn’t clock it until the credits. I absolutely loved the movie. And I don’t usually like horror movies. Though this was almost a thriller. It didn’t have a lot of jump scares. And it’s a fantastic commentary on toxic, co-dependent relationships. 

So freaking good.

Toy Story 5:  Fantastic. Especially the multiple high-tech Buzz Lightyears subplot. “Star… Command.” And Conan O’Brien’s Mr. Smarty Pants stole the show. Jessie did a great job as the lead of this one.  It’s the weakest of the Toy Stories. But it’s in rarefied company. 

We are in the summer of Late Night alum, it seems.  And I’m quite sure absolutely no one has made that observation.  No one at all.

Anywho.  Bring on Toy Story 6 to finish the Bonnie trilogy.  Fun stuff.

Sheep Detectives:  I missed it in theaters, but it’s on Prime now. An incredibly sweet movie that’s a cozy mystery about a bunch of sheep helping a somewhat inept policeman solve their shepherd’s murder. A shepherd who read them mystery novels, so they had some grounding with it. It also gets into some deeper subject matter with themes of confronting and remembering trauma rather than trying to forget it. Plus lots of goofy sheep shenanigans. 

My wife ADORED this movie. And that makes me like it even more.

Good Tier- Recommend Despite or Because of Flaws and/or Glorious Stupidity

Mortal Kombat 2:  Gloriously stupid and goofy. But it didn’t overload the ironic/self-aware jokes. It had a few with Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage’s commentary, which was the right amount. Definitely dialed up Kitana as the main character, which was cool. Plus, it had Scorpion saying “Get Over Here!” and the techno song at the end.

I’m a simple man with simple needs.  I liked it.

Backrooms:  Another indie horror movie, this time based on creepy pasta (creepy posts) liminal horror stuff that younger folks dig. There’s a weird underlying dimension that looks like an abandoned, off-kilter office. An endless maze of it. And things lurk within it. It was definitely more vibes based and pretty vague. My wife loved the found-footage segments. I didn’t really find the environment that creepy, but she did. The weird things lurking at the periphery were definitely scary, though. 

Good, but I liked Obsession much more. But my wife liked Backrooms more.

Disclosure Day:  I liked this one. I liked the pacing and the humor. Very frantic and full of Spielberg wonderment. Emily Blunt was the standout performance in it. There’s a scene where she has a panic attack following a harrowing escape. She does a fantastic job conveying the sense of not being able to contain her anxiety. There were some elements of hand-waving with the plot and the evil government contractor company’s level of competence in some scenes and incompetence in other scenes. 

Some folks didn’t like the ending. I did. Twas a fun time.

Masters of the Universe:  This has strong vibes with the 80s Flash Gordon movie, with its aesthetic and especially the score. It even had the “Princes of the Universe” Queen song. However, it had the same problem as Thor: Love and Thunder. It made way too many self-aware jokes, which deflated any sense of drama. The movie really needed to dial back the jokes and lean into the goofiness and earnestness of the source material. It also sadly hasn’t done well.  With the only demographic that wants to watch it being men who were kids in the 80s.

That said. I liked it. It had frickin’ Mekaneck.  As I said before, I’m a simple man with simple needs.

The Okay Bordering on Neh Tier- Disappointments That Are Skippable

Mandolorian and Grogu:  It was okay. I definitely enjoyed the beginning sequence with the warlord fight. Rutta (or however you spell it) was okay. As were the twins. I liked the blue guy who was apparently from the Rebels cartoon or something. I guess he was based on the original Chewbacca design.

I didn’t like the pacing. It literally felt like two episodes mashed into a movie, even though I know they scrapped their season 4 plans to make the film. The part where Mando flew back home literally could have been a cliffhanger for a streaming episode when the hat guy showed up. A friend of mine said he walked out of the movie at that point, as he agreed with Mando’s need for a break. I liked it more than he did. And that sequence with Grogu trying to nurse Mando back to health, while significant, was incredibly slow.

Mando is basically a Mulligan / do-over character. He’s the cool man of few words who wasn’t quite a bad guy that every Gen Xer and Millennial’s inner ten-year-old imprinted on Boba Fett. Before Jango Fett and the clones jacked up everyone’s head canon.  But.  Mando has the Master Chief problem. In making him so blank and (mostly) faceless, he becomes less compelling without character quirks or overt emotions.

Still a decent movie. But it did not feel like an event. No character progression. Nothing changed. It did not feel different from the streaming series. I can see why the indie horror movies have eaten its lunch.

Supergirl:  It was okay, bordering on neh. But thematically all over the place. I didn’t find the villain compelling. And Lobo either needed to be more integral to the plot or just not appear in it. The ending, while better than the Woman of Tomorrow comic series on which it’s based, seemed thematically off. At odds with her conversation with a certain cousin at the very end of the movie. 

It’s about as good as Mando and Grogu for me. Just kinda there. Not awful. But not good either. Not in the same league (pun intended) as last year’s Superman. 

Sadly, the more I think about it, the less I like it. Big disappointment.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Candice Quentra

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Candice feeds on death.  

She wants to feel bad about her parasitic nature as a Draqu.  Feasting on the life force of her prey.  Taking their vitality, their memories, their powers.  But she does not feel guilt.  Or shame.

She relishes her predatory nature.

Following the events of The New Players, Candice still brims with the power she siphoned from Hekati, the Unmaker Goddess.  She should feel ready for anything.

She does not.

Other Draqu prowl about the world.  Her mother.  Her sister.  Both with a history of tormenting the Burnhelt Family.  Killing. Torturing.  Her family despises Candice for aligning with their enemies.  For trying to balance the scales from the harm she inflicted in her old life.

And then there’s Ed.

She begged him to save her.  From what she did not know.  Possibly a vengeful Hekati.  Or Corsis.  Or her family.  Or herself.  And Ed promised he would save her.

That thrills Candice.  And scares her.

Because Ed brims over with life force, pulling much of it from his Tumult Flame hyper powers.

So very delectable.  So very tempting to feed upon.

Find out if Candice lets Ed save her in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.

James McGowan Reader Group- One. We Tried Hard. And Two. We’re Still Dear Friends.

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Howdy!

Sometimes you work really hard at something.  Then things change.  Either stuff external to you.  Or your own perspective.  And the thing upon which you’ve been working incredibly hard shifts into incompatibility or obsolescence.

You feel like the work you’ve done is “wasted.”  But I have a different philosophy on situations like that.

You have experience.  Even if the work no longer has viable output.  Even if it feels like you just slogged through something and lost.  

A friend of mine likes sending a particular GIF when we lose at bar trivia.  The guy from the Talladega Nights pit crew.  It kept running through my head this past week.  So I quoted him in the blog entry title and below for good measure:

“One. We tried hard. And two. We’re still dear friends.”

Yes, he immediately gets told to shut up.  But never mind that.

So, what am I talking about? I believe I once recounted my story of the original draft of The False Pact.  It was the Burnhelts’ tale that took place alongside Repenter.  It was around 200k words.

I tried for a good long while to shove it into the overall Players of the Game saga that evolved in Repenter.  And it just.  Didn’t.  Fit.   I had to scuttle it.  That was a dispiriting experience.  It took me a while to wrap my head around the full scale of what needed to be done.

BUT.

I ultimately reused many elements in The New Players, The Breakers, and The Game War.  I think the overall story is vastly improved.  It also taught me the value of loosely outlining story beats a few novels in advance.  Then tightening up the outline when I actually get to the next book I’m writing.

I just encountered something similar, though on a far smaller scale, with my ongoing efforts to produce the Repenter audiobook with its full AI cast.

“Wasted work.”

Spoken.Press recently released a 2.0 version.  Things have changed.  Better narration.  Improved emotional deliveries.  Vastly more customizable voices.  But it’s incompatible with 1.0.  Some of the voice actors pulled their clones.  Including the guy I picked for my narrator.  And my producer and I had just worked on the first 22 chapters.  Hours upon hours of work.

Wuf.

I provided some feedback to Spoken about some British vs. American accent issues with the 2.0 version.  And they’re thankfully able to put in a fix with their upcoming 2.1 release.

So, yeah.  I can either look at it as effort that ultimately had no value.  Or consider it experience for the future.

I choose the latter.  

Plus, we’re more future-proofed with all Eleven Labs voices.  And I shall plug away at it anew whenever version 2.1 rolls out.

I’m in it to win it.  Or at least spin it.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
I had a bunch of family and friends’ events in May.  Visits.  Graduations. Travels.

So how did this affect Secret Fronts‘ 1st-draft-flavored 2nd draft?  (Almost used “effect” there.  Travesty averted.)

I’m up to page 484 with 36 pages for the month.  A little worse than last month’s 46 pages.  But I was busy.  And words are words.

I’ve also been using Claude to help me synthesize some marketing strategy ideas from some recent webinars I’ve taken.  It’s helped me figure out a general timeframe to release Jagged Pieces in the first quarter of 2027.  Hopefully, I can stick to that.  

The cover refresh is also nearing the halfway point with all seven books that are currently published.  I’ll share the new images in a future update in July or August, depending on the timing.  And then I’ll have them work on the covers for several of the upcoming novels in the POTG series.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Seska: “I think we both want this day to just. End.”

Gath: “No. I want today to live forever.” 

Seska: “It probably will.”
Recommendation Corner
Platform Decay by Martha Wells

This is the first Murderbot story that’s emerged after the Apple streaming show.  I like Alexander Skarsgaard’s portrayal of the synthetic cyborg others call Sec Unit.  But Kevin R. Free’s narration IS Murderbot.  So droll and long-suffering.

It is the spirit animal of all introverts.

It hates talking to people.  Has to keep track of its emotions that it doesn’t like to think about.  And it really just wants to watch its entertainment media.

Sec Unit/Murderbot is again tasked with saving a portion of the family who grants it asylum outside of corporate territories.  But it still gets pulled into helping other humans.  Ones related to an old adversary.

The extraction, of course, does not go as planned.

Enjoyable as always.

Tactical Breach Wizards

This tactics video game is extra fun.  And also goofy.

It takes place in a fantasy world that’s basically modern with magic and modern tech.  An electricity witch and a precognitive sniper have to untangle a conspiracy involving a former friend who manipulates time.

They must perform a series of breaches by blowing open doors and move tactically through the defended environments with their wizard powers.

The game’s title is most apt.

And the healing character that has to shoot her allies in the face to bring them back to life is just the right kind of ludicrous.

Then there’s the murder board at the sniper’s mom’s apartment.

And snappy dialog throughout.

In short.  It is most welcome within my house of wheels.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

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Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Ed Burnhelt

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Ed Burnhelt can reach the horizon well within a second.  But he can’t outrun what awaits him.

He’s grown a beard in an attempt to hide the scar that Corsis’s Lizard avatar gave him at the end of The New Players.  But that doesn’t really work.  The claw marks on his cheek light up with blue flames when he uses his hyper powers.

That’s the least of his problems.  The Holy Alliance is staging another invasion.  And a focal point is again in the beleaguered frontier city of Findenton.  And even if he and his friends fend off disaster.  There’s the matter of a Skin Bot named Vermillion.  

The Grellish spy discovered secrets vital not only to the battle against the Holy Alliance but also to the Game itself.  Vermillion is being held and interrogated in the pico realm of Inparadis.  Locked behind many, many layers of security.

Find out if Ed and his friends can reach Vermillion in time in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.  This is an older version of Ed’s armor that has way more plating and silver, rather than its streamlined mesh and blue revised appearance.  But this rendering still looks rad with his pose, face, and swords.  So I wanted to share it.

Other more current versions of Ed will show up in future installments.

James McGowan Reader Group- Not Quite Full Dance Cards

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Yo yo!

I have myself a busy late spring.

Lots of family events of the May Pomp and Circumstance variety.  Plus a bunch of other fun visits.  And then there’s all my writing and author comings and goings.  I’ll get into more of the details of all that in the WIP section below.  But the headline above aptly tells you the tale.

I have a dance card that is nigh out of room.

A quick Gemini search pretending to be a Google search told me that the term comes from 18th Century Europe and ballrooms.  And yep.  Exactly what I expected.  Something you’ll find on popular streaming shows that I don’t watch.

However, one might expect that I’m feeling spread thin.  And I’m not really feeling it.  I feel adequately activitied.  Whelmed, if you will.  There are miles of difference between a not quite full dance card and one that runneth over.

Pretty sure the key to my inner equilibrium is the things I’m not doing.  I’ve not said yes to everything that’s come my way.  And I think that’s helped me creatively thrive and feel more engaged at the events I am attending.

Speaking of which.
Jim in the World
I teamed up with Concierge Marketing and a bunch of other local authors at Junkstock on May 1st.

It’s an Omaha-area massive craft fair out on a farm in the Waterloo suburb.  Or maybe it’s an exurb.  Some kind of urb.

And it’s still going on at the time of this writing.  May 1-3 and the following weekend, May 8-10.

Check out all kinds of quirky crafts and grab some books from Concierge Marketing’s stall in Sycamore Stables.  Including a few of mine.

And say it like Fred Schneider in the B-52s Love Shack:

Junkstock, Baby.

It will delight me.  And only me.
Players of the Game Works In Progress
Here’s a rundown of all the writing nigh-full dance card stuffage.

Secret Fronts’ second draft is still very first-draft flavored as I fill in more of the initial “wire frame”.  It’s clocked in at page 448 with 46 pages for the month.  Better than last month’s 25 pages.

There was some rewriting of old scenes, but a lot of it was new writing for fleshed-out passages.  So I’d call that pretty decent output.

And my producer and I are still plugging away at Repenter’s full-voice cast audio book with the AI voice clones from Spoken.Press.  It’s sounding really cool.  We’re about a third of the way through the book.  

There’s A LOT of work in making the deliveries sound good.  The UI does indeed have a button you push to narrate it.  But that first output needs plenty of massaging to get everyone sounding correct.  Lots of little things.  But diz-amn does it come together nicely once we’re done.

High-quality, high-effort artisanal AI creativity abounds.

As I mentioned last time, I think I’m pivoting to high-quality hardcovers as well.  Rather than using Ingram Spark’s process, I think I’m going to wait for Book Vault to set up shop in the US, and order a limited number of their expertly crafted hardcovers, and just sell those at in-person events as the high-end fancy option along with the paperbacks.  So hardcovers are on the back burner for now.

And the cover refresh is inching closer to its reveal.  Just need to get the new covers for New Players: Origins and Breakers, and I’ll share them all once they’re done.

Jagged Pieces is looking more likely to be published in early 2027, but I’m not for sure on that yet.  I want to see what I can do to be better about advanced promotion prior to release.  It still might squeeze into the end of 2026.  

I’ll keep you posted on that and everything else.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Tiff Shalai: “We’ll keep the rest away from you. Please slice out their gonads for me.”

Gath: “Only because you said the magic word.”
Recommendation Corner
The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

I liked this last installment of The Broken Earth Trilogy.  But it didn’t quite land for me.

There are several interludes with the Hoa character that show the decadence of the dead civilization in its prime that were incredibly difficult to fully immerse myself.  I couldn’t really get a sense of place with all the talking heads stuff until much later.

I eventually got into it.  And it was interesting to see the “original sin” of the dead civ’s attempt to harness the Earth’s magic, which led to the moon’s altered, millennia-long orbit and the Evil Earth’s eternal grudge against humanity.

But I’ll be honest.  I groaned every time one of those countdown interludes popped up.  Especially when I realized it was a countdown to zero, rather than one.

So why am I still recommending it? 

The stories of Nassun and Essun remained compelling.  The former with her broken Guardian who’s loyal to her, but at the cost of massive pain caused by the Evil Earth.  And the latter with her adopted com’s exodus to the empty city of their petrified enemies. The mother and daughter’s paths at last converge. 

But both of have changed.  And let’s just say that Essun’s prickly behavior is not fondly remembered by her child.

Worth the read, despite the momentum-sapping interludes.

Dan Murrell on YouTube

My wife and I have been watching this guy for six years.  And I figured he’s overdue for a shout-out.

He was originally on Screen Junkies, writing Honest Trailers.  But his Charts With Dan show migrated to his own channel.  He goes over the box office numbers and streaming rankings.

I’ve always enjoyed seeing how movies are performing, going back to the quick segment on MTV’s Big Picture.  Dan generally keeps his analysis pretty neutral.  Though he’ll let rants sneak into his live shows.

Just search for him talking about Hereditary and his fury for Toni Collette not getting an Oscar nom.  Or even better, his antipathy toward the enduring popularity of the Minions.

He’s very earnest and anti-click baity.  Which is what I gravitate towards on YouTube.  And everything else, for that matter.

Check out his recent video on the largely under-the-radar but disastrous opening US box office for the Saudi-funded Desert Warrior.

Compelling stuff.  And a compelling YouTuber too.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

Click here to view the original format.