A Medieval Future in Mirth & Madness!

Greetings, weary readers! 

I hear your claims, feel your pains, and in most ways agree. You have need of summerly encounters with worthy word-hoards. You have found the fare lacking thus far. Yet fear not for the summer has yet to conclude and in the interval we may yet partake of a tome or two.

Those of you who have followed this blog may have already found a means by which to endure the summer days. I speak of the ribald comedy THE WARRIORS BAUMANN. This comic relief has been available since this past December (2025) though it is rightly a summer tale. You may read about its origins and some of its delicious content hither (part 1) and thither (part 2).

Next on our future medieval line up we have the might epic A TIME OF KINGS, which shall become available to you and yours upon the 8 of August in this summer. Much has been said about this dramatic turn, according to those responsible for and those so engaged in the War of the Five Princes. This seminal event in our future history is mentioned in my earlier written work: EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS - where it is treated with the reverence of an ancient legend. And so I have emboldened a fine descendant of the family Baumann, a Royal physician, to tell us this great tale in impressive and passionate detail.

While A TIME OF KINGS is true to its realistic nature, a brief mention of dragons is included in order to anticipate the scourge of  aerial beasts in that earlier written tome which is set much later in the timeline. While THE WARRIORS BAUMANN is set in 2353 Missouri, A TIME OF KINGS covers the range from Tulsa to Louis, from Chicageaux to Cinnati, from 2988 to 3079. This leads us to EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS set in the year 8000. 

However, behold the sacred interval! 

Between the end of A TIME OF KINGS and the start of EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS, we have a brand-new book of the kind oft called the "cozy" version of a "romantasy" (romance + fantasy; yet are not all romances actually fantasies? I ask you.). This tale sees the wayward grandson of our fine narrator in A TIME OF KINGS set out on his own quest across the remnants of the upper midwest region of the Americus. This lively tale has just concluded and should be available for the winter holiday gift-giving event. Let us title it thus: BARON HARON TELLS THE TALE OF "A POET, A PRIEST, AND A PRINCE GO INTO A TAVERN". 

It should be noted that this 93,000 word "romantasy" novel began on March 15 and the complete draft was finished on June 15. It bears some sort of a notable accounting. All this was done while awaiting beta reader feedback on the final version of A TIME OF KINGS. Now the revision and editing work begins on Baron Haron's fine tale. More details revealed soon.

And then, just as we put the final word count upon this quest/cozy/romantasy novel, we have suddenly proposed the next book in a series which had not existed only seven years ago. It should be a story of desperation, of survival of the fittest, of the extended Baumann family in, say, the year 3220. But I get ahead of myself. 

To Recap: When Polly Baumann (music professor and tuba player) takes her teen son Sandy out of the city in the sixth year of a worsening pandemic, our grand narrative is set in motion. All does not end well in each volume's entry, yet some member of the family carries on, pushes the narrative forward, and so we come episode by episode through the lawlessness, the civil war, the reconstruction of a new "Ideal Society" - only to have to escape from its tyranny to a western enclave in what many may know today as southwest Kansas. Descendants of that Kansas family hold on....

This covers the six books of the FLU SEASON SAGA. We then advance to 2353 with THE WARRIORS BAUMANN in a medieval Missouri, then to 2988-3079 with A TIME OF KINGS. You can see the pattern: try and try again yet fail and fail again to set our world aright, ever and ever, each in its interval, each in its turn, until we are at the year 8000 with dragons reigning the skies.

In other news, we can now report that this grand narrative and its timeline include the largest novels I've written: EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS (233,000), DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS (Flu Season, Book 3) (151,000), THE GRANDSONS (Flu Season, Book 6) (178,000), and A TIME OF KINGS (187,000). And yet they each read surprisingly quick; the story moves along. Sandwiched between these are a pair of thinner works of equal delight: THE WARRIORS BAUMANN (94,000) and the just-finished BARON HARON TELLS THE TALE... (93,000). 

Furthermore, I can reveal that in all 23 of my published or soon-to-be published novels I have composed collectively with 2,755,000 words. For those deeper into statistics, I can declare that the 6 books of the Flu Season Saga + The Warriors Baumann, A Time of Kings, and Baron Haron consist of 1,129,000 words in total. For those interested in my smallest books, they are AFTER ILIUM (79,000) and A GIRL CALLED WOLF (86,000).

NEXT TIME: All about A TIME OF KINGS: A Who's Who of Ne'er-do-wells!

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