This weekend I finished my first pass pages for PLANETSIDE. If you’re not publishing savvy, what that means is that I got a formatted copy of my book and went through it one last time to make any last changes. It was a pretty short turn, and as I was doing it I had some...

One unexpected but really cool thing that’s come about recently from being a writer is that I’ve gotten the chance to read some books before they’re available to the general public. Having read four books that release in March, I thought it would be fun to share some of that and to write a little...

I really hate posts that suggest that all writers do <fill in the blank.> Especially when there’s some sort of implication that if you *don’t* do that thing, then you’re not a *real* writer. But if you asked me to name one thing that I see from most writers, it’s that they all deal with...

One thing we don’t always talk about in the writing community is money (Though I’ve seen a few authors address it.) I thought I’d do my part to share some information on the process, along with passing along some specific numbers. I want to say up front that I’m sure all contracts are different. I’ll...

I saw a great twitter post by an agent this week about negotiating contracts, and it got me thinking about what agents do. I think there are a ton of great posts from agents out there on the subject, but I wanted to hit it from a writer perspective. I might not know what happens...

It’s been just about a year since we agreed to a deal with Harper Voyager to publish my debut novel, PLANETSIDE. A year seemed like a good time to talk about what happened after the celebration stopped. I think we focus so much on getting that deal that sometimes we don’t think about what comes...

Welcome to my first ever episode of Mike talks about SFF you may not have read. In this space I’m going to discuss some possibly lesser known books that for whatever reason haven’t gotten the attention they deserved. I won’t be talking about the newest Scalzi book, or Kameron Hurley’s latest. Yes, I’ve read them....

I always see people talking about that thing that ‘All Writers Must Do.’ I almost universally detest them, as there is almost nothing that’s set in stone that you must do to be a writer. But there’s one thing that I think comes close. It came to mind a few times in the last week or two...

I can finally, happily announce that we sold my novel PLANETSIDE and a second book to David Pomerico at Harper Voyager. It is tentatively set for release in summer of 2018. PLANETSIDE is the story of a decorated war veteran who flies to a distant planet to take care of a routine investigation, only to find himself enmeshed...

A topic that I see come up a lot but that maybe doesn’t get enough attention is setting goals. After all, we talk about it all the time, right? Life goals. That’s the goal. But when asked to define what our goals are, it gets a little murkier. There are of course the standard goals. I’m...