If you’re a Kindle Unlimited reader, The complete Modest Proposal Institute series is now available there and you can read it from start to finish for free. For those who prefer to own a book but didn’t pre-order, you can still buy it here for only $0.99. Don’t leave it too long. This is an introductory price and it will go up on July 7.

For the next books in the Modest Proposal series, I’m still pondering if the Infinite Probability Drive can move the traveler through space as well as time. It would be so much simpler if it could but hard to explain satisfactorily. A change of percent probability would make a huge change to what had occurred in a particular location but not really move the ship to a new location — Doctor Who’s Tardis it is not. The Tardis has the ability to move in time and space as does the starship Heart of Gold from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. My ship needs to do both as well or have some more mundane system for traveling across distances. Maybe the SABRE engine has to be attached too. Your thoughts would be appreciated:-)

You still have time to pre-order The Complete Modest Proposal Institute series before it goes live on July 1. However, the good news is, if you’re a procrastinator, it will still be only $0.99 until July 7 so all is not lost.

Meanwhile, my next book, a cozy mystery with the working title of, In The Beginning, There Was a Murder, is ready for a developmental editor to read and suggest improvements. If anyone out there knows a good editor that specializes in cozy mysteries, let me know.

My follow on series for The Modest Proposal Institute will use a probability drive to power their space travel. The question I’m struggling with is, would a probability drive allow for the user to shift locations or simply see the parallel universes that exist in the one place? If it is the latter, then my heroes need to have a ship that transports them to different places in order to experience the alternate universes at each location. This is where the Infinite Improbability Drive was so much better — it passed through all the places in the universe simultaneously. Choosing where to stop was all the traveler had to do. Your thoughts on this would be welcome.

In last week’s post, I talked about the end being a new beginning and I wanted to expand on that idea this week. I’m taking a rest from sci-fi for a few weeks and producing a cosy mystery BUT I haven’t forgotten about Alexis and the gang. In particular, Alexis left Moon City in his Probability-Adjusting spacecraft. Series two of the story will follow those who left, starting with Alexis.

One of my favourite science fiction ideas comes from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and i know it wasn’t serious sci-fi but it worked for me. The starship, Heart of Gold, in Hitchhikers guide, with its Infinite Improbability Drive, strikes me as a great starting point for humanity in the future. Even if we start small with a mere Probability Adjustment drive. Once we escape Earth’s heavy gravity and atmosphere (in more than one sense of the word) we can really travel the universe without anything to hold us back. Look out for the start of the new series in the not too distant future.

In the meantime, why not visit my earthbound Amazon Author Page and buy The Modest Proposal Institute boxset.

Book 4 of The Modest Proposal Institute, War of the Institutes, has been on Amazon as an eBook since June 5. Today, the paperback version is there too. Those of us who prefer a book in our hands can now get the book as well. While doing the paperback of book four, I discovered I hadn’t published the paperback version of The Modest Proposal Institute book 3: Rival Institutes. Right now, I’m working on correcting that omission.

In addition, I’m working on creating a boxset of the completed series. The files for each book are out with the Formatter and should be back soon. The cover, showing each of the four book covers, is already done and just awaiting the formatted boxset file. Once I’ve published book three’s paperback, the full boxset will follow. I’m intending to publish it sometime early July. If you’re a boxset reader, your desires are almost about to be satisfied:-)

Where can you find all these books, I hear you ask? They’re all to be found on my Amazon Author Page.

After eight long months of writing, editing, formatting, and the annoyances of things going wrong at the worst moments, the end is now in sight. The Modest Proposal Institute: War of the Institutes is uploaded to Amazon and ready to be released to the impatiently waiting public. At least, I hope you’re all impatiently waiting — or at least would pretend to be if you were asked.

It will be available at a reduced rate of US$0.99 from June 2 – 4 and then go to its regular price of $3.99 so jump in quick for a bargain. And even better, all the other three Modest Proposal books are US$0.99 as well right now. You can buy the whole set at my Amazon Author Page for some summer reading.

Book four of The Modest proposal Institute: War of the Institutes is ready to go. In fact, it’s better than that. It’s available of Amazon to pre-order so, those of you who’ve been waiting, go right ahead and do that. For those who can contain their excitement, it will become published on June 2 at a US$0.99 special price.

A special request from the author: when you’ve read the book, please leave a review on Amazon. You’d be surprised how much that helps us authors to build credibility and encourage us all to continue writing and publishing.

I’ve also made all three earlier books of The Modest Proposal Institute US$0.99 for the next two weeks so you can read them all at one low price. I’m beginning to sound like a salesman, I think I shall lie down and take a short nap.

I’d hoped to be a little further ahead this week than I was last week and, to be fair, I am ‘a little’ further ahead. I have received back the .mobi file of  book four (the final book) of The Modest Proposal Institute but I’m still waiting for the epub and .pdf files. For those of you whose eyes have just glazed over wondering what I’m talking about, I’ll explain. To publish a book on Amazon to be read on Kindle, you need to supply Amazon with a .mobi file. For those who read on Kobo, or other eReaders, you need to provide an ePub file and for the paperback copy, a .pdf file.

Now my publishing schedule isn’t at a standstill. I have a Launch Team of volunteers who will read and review my book. I’ve sent them the .mobi file so those who use Kindle, which is most of them, can start reading and any final mistakes they find they will send back to me for fixing before the big day. However, at present, I could only launch the Kindle version on publishing day, which isn’t what I want. No matter, I have faith — and ten days to go. I’m sure all will be well, I think…

Meanwhile, as always, I hope my readers are keeping safe in these interesting times and visiting my Amazon Author Page for new books to read. Finally, for this post, here’s a preview of book four’s cover.

Excitement is mounting in this author’s breast. Book 4, War of the Institutes, of The Modest Proposal Institute series is now with the formatter. Sometime very soon, I will have the files back with me for uploading to Amazon. Publishing will be shortly after that.

Those of you considering becoming an author, even if it is just for that ‘one good book’ we are all popularly supposed to have in us, should know this is the end of the ‘fun’ bit. From this moment on, it’s all about marketing. Marketing in the self-publishing book world is a lot of work. The good news is there are hundreds of companies who will, for a modest sum, help you to do that work. It’s important to start before publication date so the book goes out into a world of eager readers hoping to snap it up on day one. The author’s job is to encourage them to buy and leave a review on Amazon. I hope all you who are reading this have taken note and are poised to do just that. Meanwhile, while you wait, don’t forget to visit my Amazon Author Page🙂 and check out the books there.

For those of you following along in this series of posts on ‘how to be an author’ (or maybe it should be called ‘All the Annoying Things That Come Between An Author and Writing’), you won’t be surprised to learn I’m now at the stage where I’ve received my book back from the Proofreader. The good news about this stage is it is much quicker than trying to fix all the faults the Copyeditor found. The Proofreader simply corrects your grammar, spelling and punctuation — you know, like the English teacher at High School. The difference is your school essay was 1,000 words and you didn’t even have to look at the corrections, unless you were one of ‘those kids’. A book, however, is 50,000 words or more and you’re supposed to go through it and Accept or Reject every single suggestion the Proofreader made.

The Modest Proposal Institute: War of the Institutes is 54,000 words and full of dodgy punctuation, apparently. What can I say, I’m working on it! The good news is, when I’m done, there’s only the formatting to do and then it’s ready to publish. The cover is being developed, even as I write this. Mid-May is looking good. Meanwhile, don’t forget to visit my Amazon Author Page for all my other books while I treat myself to a nice cup of tea.