Greetings from Kentucky. It’s chilly here today. Last week was almost 60 F. Very typical Bluegrass weather. I hope you are somewhere warm with a good book in hand. I finished 2023 with 42 books read. My goal was 36. Before you begin your angry “why are reading and not writing?” e-mail, I want to clarify that most of the books I read last year were audiobooks. I can listen while doing mundane things. Besides, a healthy diet of reading is fundamental for keeping the creative tank full.

All that said, one of my goals for 2024 is to read more physical books. I’ve noticed my reading speed declining over the past year or so and I want to get back in the bibliophile gym, so to speak.

I'm currently chewing through Lee Child's Back Luck and Trouble. Season 2 of Reach on Amazon is based on this book. I like how Child's does endings. As I've been reading lately, and since I'm writing a tough ending myself, I've been thinking about how books end.

Some authors have mastered the tidy ending where all the subplots resolve together in a timely, satisfying way (looking at you Brandon Sanderson) and sometimes it just sort of stops. I'm not gonna call anyone out on that one. Finally, you have jerks like me who write epilogues with cliffhangers you have to wait a year to resolve.

How do you feel about endings? Do you like everything wrapped up in a neat little box? Or do you like a bit of tantalizing chaos thrown in? Drop me a line: jack@authorjackadkins.com

Progress

I feel like a broken record. A scratched CD? A buffering song? Anyway, I’ve been getting close to finishing the first draft of Book 3 for a long time. Between real life demands, creeping imposter syndrome, and a desire to get the story right, I’ve moved very slowly. At the risk of repeating myself, I could say it’s close. It is, but I may have one more section to rewrite and then I can write the ending. The story has grown well beyond what I was planning. Enough so that I’ve pondered splitting the story into two shorter books. Book 3 is well past 100,000 words and my stories tend to expand during the first round of editing. We shall see.

The audio performance for my short story Reaper is done. If you haven’t read it yet, you can download it for free HERE. The audio is being edited and will (hopefully) enter the final engineering phase next week. Once it’s done, I’ll offer to you first and then release it into the wild. My talented son, Nathan Adkins, narrated this story. He beautifully captured the solemn tone of Klavin’s first story The Dead of Winter (available here).

Even as I’m eyeballs deep in my third Dorwine novel, I’m looking ahead. A lot of my reading has been in the “guys with guns” vein of literature (Jack Carr, Lee Child, Brad Thor) and I’m itching to unleash my own version of Mitch Rapp. These will probably be released as serials on Kindle Vella or Royal Road. I wrote sketches for five or six of these years ago and I’m excited to get back to them.

Finally, Tabir and Ember are patiently waiting for their own stories. With an intentional break planned after Book 3 of Dorwine, I want to get some backstories out for characters who have become fan favorites. Tabir is much closer to becoming a reality. Ember’s past is a weird and tragic tale of a young Malkin learning to thrive amid a life of terrible dysfunction. It’s taking shape, but I’m not even ready to outline it yet.

Piercing The Veil

I'm listening to this wonderful book by Steven Guglich right now and I highly recommend it. Get it HERE: