The details:
Studio Project – In Development
Latest book series:
Book 1 – Complete
Book 2 – Awaiting final edits
Book 3 – First Draft 40% complete
Editing Project – Took this on for a client who’s writing an excellent series of travel books. 80% done there…
Over these past many months, it must look like I’ve been up to, well, nothing much. Things probably appear pretty dead here at the site and on my new release notices.
I’ve stopped promoting my backlist. My last series, I made the tough decision to prematurely end. That hit the shelves way back in 2019. October 2021 was my most recent short story sale…
I mean, I could understand why somebody might think I’ve stopped slinging ink for good.
But these last three have been nothing but busy. Professionally. Personally. (Did I mention we bought a 200-year-old house in need of a little TLC?)
On the writerly side, all of my projects are lingering in various stages of development. Busy, time-consuming, development.
It maybe doesn’t help that I’ve stepped away from social media too. For those who use it successfully, congrats. But I’m still of the opinion it’s at best a productivity killer and at worst an unregistered sociological experiment fomenting mass psychosis.
(Did I warn you my opinions are often unpopular? Yet another reason I don’t instafacetwittok.)
In fact, I recently deleted my Twitter account. I’d been debating it for a long time. I had over 1000 followers but most of those accounts seemed to be dead. I rarely got any interaction on my posts from there. And I rarely saw anything worthwhile in my feed. The algos seemed to intentionally feed me things I absolutely despised trying to spark “engagement.”
Look, I love many of the products and innovations Elon Musk has brought to the market. I’m even sending this post to you through space from my campsite using his Starlink satellite service.
But the guy is somewhere on the spectrum when it comes to social anything. He doesn’t need to be running a social media fiefdom anymore than I do.
As for my projects:
I’ll start with the studio gig I completed toward the end of last year. So many moving parts come with productions like that and writing is the first thing that happens. I mean, I didn’t even write the script. I wrote a story to be adapted. It’s up to some other guy to write the script.
Did he/she/they finish it before the strike? Hell, I don’t know. Even if they did, that only leaves everything else that goes into a series to happen. Who knows when I can actually share a link and pimp my budding career as a Hollywood adjacent writerly person.
But damn straight, I’m telling everybody the first second it happens.
Then there’s my new series. With Ace, one thing I wanted to do was weave my nomad travels into a fictional narrative. An urban Fantasy steeped in Americana. The concept was solid, but my execution a bit of a minefield.
I did take some time off from writing after Ace. Took editing gigs. Worked on my short story-fu (that’s what landed the great studio job). But I wanted to give the general concept of one more chance.
That’s where what I’m calling “The Fort Black Thrillers” begins.
It’s a thriller with a strangely familiar sounding protagonist who absolutely isn’t me. Think John Wick meets the season six winner of Alone. You know, the guy who killed a wolverine with an axe. Who had so much food stocked up at the end of 77 days living in the Arctic, he fed the entire crew.
Kade, my protagonist, is like that. Born kind of feral and later trained to be a vicious guard dog for the U.S. Government.
When we first meet him though, he’s once again unsure who to trust.
He was raised in a militia compound, steeped in conspiracy. Always waiting for the black helicopters to sweep in and bring about Armageddon.
And one day, they did.
But they didn’t gun him down. Instead, an act of kindness changed his life and made him rethink his father’s teachings. But the stain of his past never could quite be scrubbed away.
Now he finds himself at the center of a true government conspiracy. And he’s wondering if he didn’t just pick the wrong side…
Espionage, action and adventure, outdoor skills – what more could you want? Yes, the image above is a sneak peek – I’ve got all three covers ready to go.
I’m on a blistering pace with book three. I need to be. I’ve got a hard deadline of June 6th for the first draft. My goal is to release the first two books in July and have the third on pre-order for September.
It’ll be quiet around here for another few months. Then I’ll spin up the propaganda machine to make sure everybody’s heard about this latest release.
Wouldn’t hurt if I landed an IMDB listing before then. Fingers crossed!
Categories: Author News
RUSS LINTON 
Multiple fingers painfully crossed. And ready to help.
Working furiously to get the next book finished. Your help, as always, is greatly appreciated!