I’ve officially finished the first draft of The Shattered Empire, Book II of the Shadow Space Chronicles.  This is good news if you liked The Fallen Race.  It’s also good news if you liked my other books, since that means I can get working on those sequels.  For those of you who don’t like my books… er, why are you reading this?

For me, I’m very excited.  This book has been setting on the backburner for five years now, waiting to be written as I waited for my lucky break in traditional publishing… until I went the self-publishing route.  That said, I think the novel benefits from five more years of writing experience.  The novel is much larger than The Fallen Race, with the rough draft coming in at 160k words.  That makes it 30% longer than The Fallen Race.  Since my final versions of novels tend to add another 10% as I go back and fill in some details, that means The Shattered Empire will be a long read.  Technical details aside, the book is chock full of action, character growth, and lots of details in the Shadow Space Universe.  The main story line follows Lucius Giovanni as he goes about liberating Nova Roma from the Chxor… and finds that being the leader of a new nation is not all it’s cracked up to be.  There are two additional story arcs that follow Mason McGann and a new character, a mercenary by the name of Garret Penwaithe, both of which tie into the main story, sometimes in unexpected fashions.  What I really like about this book is that I finally get the opportunity to flesh out some of the side characters, the people who help Lucius Giovanni to do the things he does.  As an author, getting to explore those characters, as well as the antagonists, was a wonderful opportunity.

The Shattered Empire is now headed to my alpha readers.  After a their feedback I’ll do my editing, copyediting, and then I’ll post it on Amazon.  Keep checking here for updates, samples, and hopefully soon a post about the progression of the cover art.  Thanks to all my readers for making this possible!