So yeah, I wrote the lyrics for the album.

Then I built what I thought was this amazing story outline for future projects. ASSO was supposed to be an album, a graphic novel, and a book.

Then the plan was simple: finish that foundation, move on, and start writing lyrics and guitar for the next album.

Well…

That is not what happened.

I’m wrapping up Track 4 right now, and the book is sitting at 110,000 words.

We are chunky. Aggressively chunky.

This thing is packed. We’ve got an eight-stage hierarchy of power, 28 individual characters, system mechanics, four or five major twists, and layers of subtle foreshadowing all over the place.

In other words: I was not messing around.

Also, just to make this funnier, this is my first book.

Special shoutout to Grammarly for helping hold the line while I figure out what the hell I’m doing.

My main goal with all of this is to get it made into an audiobook.

That matters a lot to me, because audiobooks have been a huge part of my life for a very long time.

I was actually a beta tester for Audible way back in the day, back when I worked in publishing. Long story. If you want a preview of that rabbit hole, go check my LinkedIn.

I’ve listened to so many audiobooks that trying to check my listening stats has literally crashed the app before. The last time it worked, I was at something like 26 months of total listening time.

So yeah, this format means a lot to me.

And if you know my music at all, it probably won’t surprise you that sci-fi and fantasy are my favorite genres.

Anyway, enough rambling.

At some point, it became very clear that this book was trying to be three books.

So that’s the call:

Apocalypse System: Season One is now a trilogy.

Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3.

The good news is that this also means Book One is almost done. I only have a few chapters left, and the ending is going to be absolutely unhinged.

Once my editor gets a look at it and says something in the general range of, “Well, this isn’t absolute shit,” I’ll probably have the confidence to start posting sample chapters.

Until then, I’ll be over here listening to “Grief Bears the Smithy” on repeat and trying to contain the chaos.

Later!