Hey, Hey!

It’s that time.

The Breakers: Players of the Game Book 4 is available on ebook and paperback.

The stakes have risen. Ashe Stelfire and Avril Enzali have come out of the events of Repenter (Book 1) and The Brigands (Book 2) in one piece. But the cost of their struggles lingers on their spirits. The loss of those who died still weighs on them.

But they navigate that emotional damage as best they can. They are at last in Trojis. Ready to liberate Avril’s goddess, Celsis Kri, from an extra-dimensional prison of unbreakable ice. Their hard experiences also taught them something else.

They will need help.

Which is fortunate, because others also have business in the ice dungeon. Emerging from the events of The New Players (Book 3), Ed Burnhelt and his friends have only just fended off the threat of Corsis’s mind-warped, body-twisted horrors in the frontier city of Findenton.

Celsis Kri is not the only one trapped in the ice dungeon. The Titan hero from another age. The Skin Bot spy. The Taurus Man mercenary. The secretive Keeper Captain. And the corpse of another goddess who might one day rise again. All of them yearn for freedom.

And Ed’s cohort must liberate them.

Lending help goes both ways.

And it will start where it recently ended. In Findenton. Where the flashpoint of war reignites.

Find out more in The Breakers.

"An electrifying blend of high fantasy and futuristic warfare… Ambitious, gritty, and emotionally charged."

The Prairies Book Review

"Wielding sharp, varied battle scenes, political plots that fit together with intent, and characters whose choices resist simple labels of right and wrong, James McGowan has created a layered war where every alliance comes with a cost and every victory changes the game board."

IndependentBookReview.com

I'll have a table at the Get Lit Conference with copies of all my Players of the Game books.  Including The Breakers.

If you're in the Omaha area, check out the Get Lit Conference site below and buy yourself a ticket for September 12th and 13th.

Swing by my table and say hi.  I'll have some fun stuff to give away too.

Want to know the score fast? Select Quick Recap, and Corsis will detail all his jerky skullduggery in just a few minutes.

Want to know the nitty gritty? Select Detailed Recaps to jump in with both feet and learn all the big events and character moments of the Players of the Game saga.

I've just added the map of Subterranean Jeea to the Stelfire.com.

Check it out, along with maps of Jeea and Sufrinzon on stelfire.com/atlas.  All can be viewed in magnified detail.

Mobile users can tap on the map image and select "Download image" to zoom in on a map.

Czar Balpors rules the Holy Alliance with infamous cruelty.

He and Starm, the Dragon God of Power, came out on top following the cataclysmic upheaval of the Eruption centuries ago.  Their empire gradually spread across the eastern half of the supercontinent of Jeea.

And now they want the west.  All at once.

They have upgraded their armed forces with improved weapons.  Their Dragons are among the most powerful combatants in existence.

Balpors intends to take back Findenton from the Free Jeea Coalition as a matter of pride.  And pride is costly.

He is more than willing to have others on both sides pay that bloody price.  The geopolitics and conquest are secondary to him.  Balpors may lead the foremost world power on the planet of Trojis.  He may be a Dragon in the guise of a Human ruler wearing impregnable stone armor.  He may pretend to serve Starm.  But his true motivations serve another.  The one with whom he shares a mind.

Corsis.

He is a drone of flesh controlled by the Master of the Game, but with his own bellicose and misanthropic impulses.

Everything he does serves to keep the Game in a state of constant turmoil.  A role he loathes more and more with each passing year.

But he can never stop because he cannot help himself.  His will is not his own.  And he vents his frustration with his lot in life on all he encounters.

Learn more about the harm Balpors inflicts in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.

So, on top of all The Breakers excitement, I finished the first draft of The Game War's combined bonus novels of Unseen Scars and Secret Fronts.  

Huzzah and exultations!

The book that became two books' first draft final numbers came in at 499 pages with 144,400 words.

Next, I'll be going over the editor's draft of The Game War.  I'll either jump into the second drafts of Unseen Scars and Secret Fronts from there.  Or I might kick the tires on directing an AI-narrated audiobook version of Repenter.  That subject is very squishy on multiple fronts, so we'll see where that goes.

And since this month has both the launch of The Breakers and the completion of the double bonus books, I'm going to supply a reading order of the POTG series existing books and upcoming books, rather than a WIP out-of-context quote.

Book 1: Repenter

Book 1.5: Repenter: The Hidden Chapters

Book 2: The Brigands

Book 2.5: The Brigands: The Favor

Book 3: The New Players

Book 3.5: The New Players: Origins

Book 4: The Breakers

Book 4.5: The Breakers: Jagged Pieces - Coming Soon

Book 5: The Game War - Coming Later

Book 5.5: The Game War: Unseen Scars - Coming Later

Book 5.7: The Game War: Secret Fronts - Coming Later

Book 6: Back to the Dark - Coming Later

I plan on writing ten main novels and ten to twelve bonus books.  So I'm about 40% there with the published books, and about 55% there with the various WIP drafts.

I have a high-level outline for Back to the Dark, but that one is still baking in my mind.  It will undoubtedly take years to complete.  And then there's the rest of the series, on which I have even rougher outlines and thoughts.  It will emerge from the ether in time.

I'm in it for the long haul, folks.

Marathons, not sprints.

Triangle Strategy

A tactics video game.  Recommended by me.  Shocking, I know.

This one is a slow-burn gem with very strong Final Fantasy Tactics vibes.  Which makes sense, as Square Enix is the publisher.

It is not perfect.  I nearly stopped playing it with the literal first hour of world-building cut scenes.  But I gave it another chance, and the gameplay and characters ultimately engaged me.  The geopolitics of salt are interesting in a pre-industrial world where the compound is rare.  And the voice acting for the characters is pretty decent as well, especially for Benedict, the pragmatic and cold-blooded strategist and advisor to Serenoa, the young lord main character.

The characters are locked into their jobs, so you can't customize that aspect of them.  But you can focus on what powers and abilities they use, and also customize your deployment of units for any given battle.

I don't often replay games, but I did so with this one because there's a lot of diverging story paths that lead to entirely different battles and character interactions.

Either skip the cut scenes at the beginning or just grab some popcorn.  It's a stellar tactics game for gamers like me who love the niche.

Lucky Devils by Charles Soule and Ryan Browne

The guys who made the Curse Words and Eight Billion Genies comic book series are back with another absurdist comedy with dark undertones.

A nurse and a schoolteacher are stuck in terrible careers and life situations.  They keep doing the ethical thing, and get nowhere for it.

They have a pair of unseen devils on their shoulders, Collar and Rake, who both decide to reveal themselves to the hapless humans.

Silly good intentions paving ensues.

And the two devils think the whole hell underworld where they live when they're off shift needs to be upended too.  They have ambitions.  And they'll likely run afoul of many worse denizens as the series progresses.

It's on hold for right now because the artist, Ryan Browne, recently suffered a minor stroke, so he's focusing on recovery.

I wish him the best.  And hope they're able to finish the story at some point.

It's fun and compelling.

That's all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim