If you've been paying attention to Facebook, you know I finally figured out why my Muse had quit me on ZERO4. Essentially, because of all the changes I'd made to Books 1-3, I was trying to pack eight different novels and novellas into the beginning of ZERO4 to make it all come together. Because of that, it was leaving Joe's first scene at around the 100,000-word mark, which I didn't feel was acceptable.
However, I couldn't just ditch those stories, because they were necessary for the flow of the book, so I finally worked out a compromise with my Muse that has got me working on the ZERO series full steam again. The compromise was this:
I'm tearing a bunch of the scenes and story arcs out of the front of ZERO4 and publishing them separately so that Joe Dobbs is front and center in the ZERO4 novel, as he should be.
To that end, The Scientist, the Rat, and the Assassin is now live! It's an 85,000-word novella featuring Rat and Sam from Book 3 and what happens to them before they meet up with Joe Dobbs in Book 4. It was a A LOT of fun to write, and from the beta reader reviews, they enjoyed it as much as I did. An example response:
"Well FMR! (FuckMeRunning) Seriously??? I'm not sure i can term it "ENJOY" Drug induced high/near coma is better!
I started reading around 3pm MST, and...I read until around 3am, and by that point I felt like a junkie that had stumbled across a cache of uncut crack and was at the threshold of OD'ing - seriously, when I stopped, I was dizzy and nearly passed out as I went to turn off the lights, and my head was literally spinning as it hit the pillow! I was drooling just a moment ago, that perfect place of mental highness, and then WHOOSH, not high LOL. Crack of this calibur is at minimum worth the $3.99..."
I sent the story out to 80 (ish) beta readers, and their responses were varying degrees of this^^, so I'm pretty satisfied that it'll entertain you guys, despite being only about Rat and Sam. :)
I am working on two new novels essentially at the same time, hopefully to be published before the end of the month: Two more ZERO novel/las featuring Mickey from this novella and Daviin ga Vora from ZERO2. They both need to be put out there, but I'm still not sure which is going up first...
In the meantime, probably within a couple days, I'll be polishing up my epic fantasy series Form and Function and putting it online, complete with hand-drawn art by the incredibly talented Lance MacCarty. It's one of my favorite stories that I've yet created, and readers go totally nuts for it.
Also, an update on the Outer Bounds buyback: I've been in a fugue of work and sleeplessness the last month and a half, but I did not make the Outer Bounds buyback cut that I needed in December. HOWEVER, by my calculations, I will get paid for January on THE SAME DAY as the OB deadline. Hence my rush to get more stuff out there, and hence my plea to you guys to buy the stories that interest you sooner, rather than later. Every book that is bought in the next two weeks will count towards the buyback. I still think (hope) I can make it. Wish me luck!
The Scientist, the Rat, and the Assassin blurb: "This is what happens when, in the chaos of an apocalypse, the world's smartest human (sort of) swears to obey the galaxy's greatest assassin (definitely) on Wednesdays through Mondays, if she will give him Tuesdays in turn. It is a 85,000-word kinky romantic adventure from the Legend of ZERO series where Rat and Sam struggle to survive the Apocalypse (and each other) before they meet up with Prime Commander Joe Dobbs and the human genetic experiments that he's taken under his wing." Only $3.99 on Amazon, or FREE with Kindle Unlimited!
-Sara King
Author, The Legend of ZERO, Outer Bounds, Guardians of the First Realm, Millennium Potion
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