The other day on Twitter I mentioned having some good news. This is it. On the scale of publishing news, it’s not really huge, but it’s important to me, so I’m going to share it.

Before I get to that, let me say that nothing is changing with book three. Planetside 3 is turned in to my editor, and while I don’t have an official release date, we’re expecting it to come out in December of 2020. I’m really happy with the draft that I turned in, so I don’t see anything that should interfere with that. We don’t have an official agreement on the audio book yet, but RC Bray and I have talked and I expect you’ll see him continue on as the voice of Carl Butler. As it should be. I expect it will release at the same time as the paperback and e-book.

So now the news.

Back when I agreed to the contract for Planetside 3 with Harper Voyager, there was a second book in the deal. In the contract, I think it’s called ‘book to be named later.’ Maybe that’s just in my head. Regardless, there is a contract for a 4th book with Harper Voyager, and it wasn’t named.

Until now.

A couple months ago, I shared two ideas with David Pomerico, my editor. He seemed interested in one, so I wrote an outline and last week I sent it to him. This is a formal thing, set out in the contract…I submit a proposal for the book and the publisher either approves it or they don’t. He got back to me right away and said he was going to pitch it to the rest of the team, and he’d let me know Monday. Monday he emailed me to tell me they were all in.

I’m pumped.

Book 4 will be my first published novel outside of the Planetside universe. At the same time, it will be similar in where it fits in the genre…a twisty military story that’s part mystery, part war-zone action.

The main character is a Sergeant named Gastovski. His friends call him Gas. He lost a member of his team in the last battle…except nobody saw the man die. Gas can’t live with that.

You don’t leave someone behind on the battlefield.

The brass don’t believe his theory that his man might be alive, so he takes matters into his own hands and recruits a team of soldiers who don’t quite fit the mold to help him get their comrade back.

I’m going quite a bit higher tech in this one compared to the Planetside books. There’s power armor in multiple varieties, drop ships, killer drones, bot tanks and more. You know…once I write them.

I don’t have a title for this book yet, because, well…I suck at titles. I’ll let you know when that happens.

As always, thanks for reading. Future updates as events warrant.