As the release day for Mandate of Heaven inches closer, I managed to have an extremely productive month of writing! I set a goal to add 10,000 words to my current work-in-progress (Book 3 of the Ethan Chase series, Gold of the Jaguar) by month’s end, but I ended up adding 20,000 words as of this weekend. That brings the manuscript to just over 50,000 words and near the end. Just this morning I was able to finish a chapter that puts Ethan and company into place for the exciting, climactic scenes.

I also had the pleasure of being interviewed by fellow blogger and author Berthold Gambrel! He will be releasing that interview on October 10th, the same day that Mandate of Heaven drops, and I’ll be sure to share it here and on Twitter, as well.

They say that writers have to be readers, and I’ve been doing my best to live up to that standard this month! I finished reading George W. Bush’s presidential memoirs, as well as a biography on Dwight D. Eisenhower (I’ll review that one later this week), and I’m about a quarter of the way through the audiobook version of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs. Also, this weekend I picked up a two-book collection of arguments about the US Constitution and the Constitutional Convention that my brother gave me, and that has been fascinating to read!

Well, fascinating to me, anyway. My wife and children roll their eyes when I open that dusty, boring tome.

As always, thank you all for being loyal readers of this blog and my works! It’s officially one week until Mandate of Heaven is released and I’m brimming with excitement about it! It’s one of my best works to date, and I think you all will find it easy to fall in love with these new characters.