Tag Archives: Schlock Mercenary

Book 18 Kickstarter Closes FRIDAY

Here’s the Kickstarter link for Mandatory Failure: Schlock Mercenary Book 18.

The project closes this Friday, October 20th, at 5pm Eastern time. I’d love for you to not miss out on it.

If you’ve never purchased a Schlock Mercenary book before, this is a great place to start. Mandatory Failure functions well as a stand-alone story, but it’s also the first book in the capstone trilogy for all of Schlock Mercenary. See, I wrote Books 18, 19, and 20 as a trilogy because that structure helped me keep things focused—no small challenge when wrapping up a story that took me twenty years to write.

Anyway, the Kickstarter… we’ve unlocked some ship coins, and a mission patch, and some desktop wallpapers. If you want any of those (especially the mission patch, which is a Kickstarter Exclusive) you should back the project now, before it closes.

Here’s the link, just in case you scrolled past it…

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/howardtayler/mandatory-failure-schlock-mercenary-book-18

Kickstarter Alert! Book 18!

We’ve launched the Kickstarter for Mandatory Failure: Schlock Mercenary Book 18, and it has already funded.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/howardtayler/mandatory-failure-schlock-mercenary-book-18

Not only have we funded, but we’ve reached some stretch goals, too! Click here to visit the Kickstarter and see the latest news.

The project will run until October 20th of 2023. Back it early to ensure that you don’t miss out on the bonus goodies, and to help us afford even more bonus goodies.

Coming Back From the Printer!

Big Dumb Objects is on its way back from the printer!

We had a couple of delays, but yesterday we received our advance copies of the book, along with some advance copies of the slipcase for books 12 through 16.



It wasn’t a big box of books, but it was full of new book smell. Which I wish I could share, because it’s awesome.

You’ve been waiting a long time for these, and the shipping container won’t actually get here until early May, and then I need to begin signing and sketching, so there’s a bit more waiting to be done.

But it’s a measurable wait. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is definitely not a train.

Off to the printer

Big Dumb Objects has been sent to the printer.

And it’s about time. Big Dumb time, even.

Cover image for BIG DUMB OBJECTS, Schlock Mercenary Book 16

The cover inset art was done a year ago, and the principal art and story was done five years ago. It was the bonus story which hung us up, and a lot of things went wrong during 2019 and 2020 (including the flooding of my office, and several productivity-impacting health problems), but we finally got that last piece finished a week and a half ago.

From there all I needed to do was assemble the cover, with all the circuits and stuff, write the back cover copy, and clean up some of the interior marginalia. I did all that last week, between December 28th and 30th, and then Sandra assembled the final files for the printer and sent it away.

It feels nice to be finished with that.

Sandra has promised me that on Monday she will unearth the sketches I’ve forgotten about drawing, the ones which outline the covers for books 17 through 20, and I guess it was nice having a two day vacation.