WRITING JOURNAL: This is pretty much my view for 7-8 hours a day during the final stretch of finishing LONGSTAR. Writing window on the left, reference window on the right. What you can’t hear is Spotify playing the Epic Writing Music playlist in the background. Right now it’s Ennio Morricone, The Ecstasy of Gold from the soundtrack of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly… Good stuff!
WRITING JOURNAL: Starting on the LONGSTAR final chapters today. The whiteboard wall in my office is wall-to-wall with evil deeds and good intentions. I love thickly-plotted books where everything comes together in a surprising way at the end, but it takes a LOT on brainwork. plus, I’m a little high from the fumes of the whiteboard markers. The good news is… coffee! Onward!
WRITING JOURNAL: With LONGSTAR coming out soon and ORUS in the pipeline for next year, it’s time to start thinking about marketing and promotions, and one of the most cost efficient ways to spread the word about your new book release is to give a bookmark to every single human being you pass on the street. So, today, we sent off our order for 1,500 bookmarks (we use PrintPlace.com). These were designed in my ancient and decrepit version of Adobe Illustrator that is probably older than some of my readers.
“You need a bookmark for every eventuality. Life’s too short to be scrambling around for a bus ticket when you need to mark your place in ‘Varieties of Shovel’.”
–Terry Pratchett
WRITING JOURNAL: Got the markers out this morning and spent the entire day filling my entire fifteen-foot-long whiteboard wall with intricate plot details and awful situations (and a few extraordinary opportunities) for our friends Se Jong, Nkiru, Littlefeather, Toroni, Rupe, Zia and Arni. Unfortunately, I can’t show you the whole whiteboard because SPOLERS, but here’s a tiny corner with the concept for one of the exotic locations.
WRITING JOURNAL: Within an hour on the first day that GRONE was released, it got three 1 & 2 star ratings. It was devastating. Beyond devastating. Imposter syndrome is a…
WRITING JOURNAL: Just 90 days past launch, and we’re about to surpass 3,000 orders and 100 very welcome ratings/reviews, plus hundreds of thousands of additional page reads on the Kindle…
As a science fiction writer, I’m always on the lookout for inspiration, and art has always been my first destination for ideas. The images below are updated in real time…
“GRONE is an absolute masterpiece of science fiction.
Each chapter brings a fresh revelation… every new twist feeds you just enough information to feel like you’re sorting through the last handful of puzzle pieces you’re sure came from different boxes…[but then you] twist them around… and they suddenly fit together perfectly to create an immeasurably gratifying picture. Cumby is a master storyteller. ” —Beatrice Toothman, Seattle Book Review
“A kinetic and sharply written space opera [with] spirited, impressive worldbuilding [and] a stellar cast of characters.
Cumby’s spirited, impressive worldbuilding packs this first installment with incident. The novel moves at a steady clip [with] spry dialogue and intriguing narrative details. The stellar cast of characters includes a likable game designer and an uncompromising former dark-web hacker. The author doesn’t take long to link the dual plotlines, but there’s still plenty of mystery as well as a few shocks along the way. This book’s ending offers a surprising amount of closure, [and] copious virtual worlds remain for sequels to explore.” —Kirkus Reviews
JOURNEY INTO THE DARK HEART OF THE MACHINE–AND TO THE FARTHEST REACHES OF THE GALAXY…
TWO HOSPITAL BEDS in a Stanford University lab. Two still figures, attached by bundles of cables to the experimental QARMA supercomputer. Analise and Wolfe are true scientific pioneers, the first humans to ever leave the shells of their physical bodies to explore an entirely new virtual universe beyond time and space. But their creation, the most vivid VR metaverse ever envisioned, has come under attack.
ON A CROWDED MANHATTAN STREET, a young woman materializes within a pillar of fire. Does the arrival of this mysterious stranger correspond to the unprecedented swarm of sunspots that has turned noontime to twilight, or the auroras that ripple across daytime skies, or the regular micro-tremors that have begun to ring the Earth’s crust like a church bell?
IN A SUBURBAN CALIFORNIA BASEMENT, fifteen-year-old Fiona Martinez is playing an online video game. The phone rings. A stranger is calling. “Please don’t hang up,” the man pleads. “You’re about to be approached by a character in your game. She’s hurt. You must keep her safe, at all costs. Do you understand? Help her, or she’ll die. Help her, or we’ll all die.”
Immerse yourself in the grand tapestry of GRONE, and see why critics call Patrick Cumby “A MASTER STORYTELLER.”
“GRONE is an absolute masterpiece of science fiction.“
“Cumby is a master storyteller.”
—Seattle Book Review
“Kinetic and sharply written [with] spirited, impressive worldbuilding [and] a stellar cast of characters.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Read what critics and reviewers are saying about GRONE.
The first volume of the Legends of the Known Arc Trilogy, GRONE is a groundbreaking cross-genre mix of hard-SF, LitRPG and space opera that the Seattle Book Review calls “AN ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE OF SCIENCE FICTION.”
Inspired by the thick-and-thoughtful cyberpunk and space opera epics from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Neal Stephenson and Dan Simmons, GRONE is a fast-paced adventure set in a world where the ambitious experiments of a game developer, a neuroscientist and a physicist have created a virtual universe more real than our own, but in the process may have aroused a vast and unimaginably powerful cosmological force that jealously guards the powers of creation.
GRONE is the first volume of the Legends of the Known Arc trilogy. The second and third volumes, ORUS and PHADE, will be released in one-year intervals in 2024 and 2025 respectively.
In the meantime, you can further explore the mysteries of the Known Arc in the thrilling new standalone novel LONGSTAR.
March 1, 2023 – Got a big box in the mail today. Our first author copies of GRONE have arrived. It’s quite the feeling to hold the final release version of your novel in your hands. Getting excited for the April 1st release!
Thanks to everyone on the team who made this book a reality. This represents a LOT of work from a LOT of folks. You are ALL awesome.
We’re still looking for ARC reviewers, so if you’d like a free ebook in exchange for your honest review on Goodreads/Amazon, etc, check out this page.
