Jack of Harts

New Hampshire did their primary thing, and they are a far more liberal electorate than Iowa. But Joe never does well there, so the Democrats did a funny. They decreed that a State friendly to Joe would be the first primary. But the fine folks here have a law saying they have to be the first primary, so they ran a primary without Joe. So Joe ran a write-in campaign so he wouldn’t lose the primary he didn’t want to have happen. Meanwhile, more Democrats and Independents voted in the Republican Primary than Republicans did. Trump got more than half the vote for what looks like a double-digit win, while the loser looks to have gotten somewhere around three quarters of her votes from Democrats and Independents. Talk about interesting times…

One of the hardest parts of getting back into the writing gig has been… getting back into the writing. The muse that always has ideas doesn’t drive me like they it did before. Which sometimes makes it hard to write. So I’ve been looking around at various short story submission sites looking for story prompts for their open calls. I find one I like, and I start working on writing a story that covers that idea. It’s a good way to get the creative juices working again. Right now I’m working on writing a short story concerning a contested troop landing in the New New York system. When the New England Federation gets rid of people who do not promote the common peace, New New York is where they send them. Then the aliens attacked. The poor… poor… aliens…

Since I started writing Jack of Harts, I have contracted artists to bring my ideas to life. Some have been one and done, mostly due to budgetary issues, while I still work with others over a decade later. I’ve proudly watched both Alderfek and Stephen Huda go on to bigger and better things over the years. Alderfek creates a series of spaceship gaming miniatures, and Stephen creates designs and art published by multiple gaming companies. Alderfek created multiple concept designs for me when I was writing my first novel, and I contracted Stephen to take one of those designs and create an amazing cover for that book. Forge of War. It still looks amazing over decade later. Truly timeless art. Here is that piece. The art is all him. You can blame me for the text.