I have risen from the dead!
I finally remembered to come over here to post. It’s almost embarrassing how long it’s been. It’s basically been about a year and a half since I updated my website, and there’s really no excuse for that, except to say that I’ve been working on building my freelance business and getting everything situated with that. And, as a result, it slowed down my writing and I haven’t finished literally anything in the past year.
But I have loads of updates on that front, thanks to an insane amount of productivity over the past, oh, three or four months! So if you want to know what sort of projects I’ve been working on over the past little bit, keep reading!
First up is The Becoming! In November 2018, Permuted Press released a new, updated, expanded edition of the first book in the series, The Becoming, and needless to say, I am insanely proud of how it’s turned out. Prior to this edition, in all honesty, book one was my least favorite of the series. This was partly due to feeling like I didn’t really get the chance/have the know-how to present the story I truly wanted to present, and I—like many readers—was deeply unhappy and unsatisfied with the ending of the book. Thanks to the generosity of Permuted Press, I was given the opportunity to completely overhaul the novel, and the result is one that is at least 1/3rd longer than the original book, but also a book that is tighter, more streamlined, better written, and has a better ending. Two of my three previously published novellas, The Becoming: Brothers in Arms (Theo and Gray’s story) and The Becoming: Deliverance (Remy’s story), are now incorporated into the narrative, which brings a whole new, fleshed-out dimension to the book that I feel is a lot more complete (and interesting!) than the previous edition.
As for the rest of the series…well, I’m hoping at some time in the future, I can convince the publisher to let me do new editions of at least the next couple of books in the series. This will be easier to convince them to let me do if the sales of the new edition are great, so if you want to be awesome, go pick up your copy of the new edition today!
Speaking of The Becoming Series, I have news! You’re actually going to get a new book in The Becoming Series within the next year! I’ve been teasing a new book since 2016, I believe, but I haven’t had much traction on it since then. I think it was because I was trying to tell the wrong story. But thanks to the creation and introduction of new characters that I think you guys are going to love just as much as the original batch of characters from the rest of the series, I have been off and running, and as a result, I’m currently about halfway through with the rough draft of this novel! It will be titled The Becoming: Bloodlines, and while some of our original gang will still be in it (primarily Ethan, Kimberly, and Sadie), there will be plenty of new people for them to interact with, along with a whole new scenario that spells potential disaster for the uninfected parts of the world. I’m super excited about this book and am really looking forward to getting it out there for you guys to read!
Now for something fun: I’m doing an autographed preorder of the new edition of The Becoming! I’m preparing to place an order with my publisher for some new copies of the books and am offering up the chance for you guys to purchase a paperback copy of the book for yourselves! And even better, I’ll autograph it for you before sending it on! I’ve got this preorder set up through my Square account. All you have to do is check out through Square, and in the note section of the checkout page, make sure you put in whether you want just the autograph or if you want it personalized and to who. My order will be placed on June 25, 2019, and I’ll be mailing books out as soon as I receive them. The cost of each copy is $25, and that price includes all shipping costs. These are for US readers only—I’ll be doing a separate preorder for international orders as soon as I figure out shipping costs for that!
Hello, 2018! And With It Comes a Long-Overdue Post…
Pardon me while I take a moment to dust off the ol’ blog.
*busts out a Swiffer, goes to work*
Ah, that’s better.
Hello, everybody! I know it’s been a long time since I’ve shown myself around here, but I promise I had good reason for it. It’s been a pretty rough 2017, which is the only way I can account for my year-long absence from my blog.
First, I spent most of January through May slogging through that very last semester of my undergrad, and I finally walked away with not one but two degrees, in English and in History. This was a long time coming, truly. I started trying to get my undergrad degree(s) all the way back in 2003, and after switching majors a couple of times and spending about nine years “on a break” (during which I wrote some books that you guys presumably read and enjoyed or you wouldn’t be here), I finally finished it, and I couldn’t be more elated.
Then I started trying to write again. Then the thought crossed my mind, “Hey, maybe I should try to get my Masters.”
Yeah, that didn’t work out too well. I’ve since decided that grad school just isn’t for me. I’d rather spend my time writing and making a semi-living (at least supplementing my living) editing other people’s books. So that’s where I’m back to now, and I couldn’t be happier.
So on the writing front…
As you might or might not have noticed (and judging from book sales, it’s probably a “not noticed”), I released a book back in May, the sequel to The Unnaturals. It’s called Hellforged, and I’m rather proud of it. (And seriously, check out that cover. Is it not beautiful?) Be sure to go check it out. That series is turning out a lot darker than I anticipated, which is something the horror and dark fantasy fans might appreciate.
And on that front, I’m also almost done with the next book in that series, Wicked Creatures. As soon as I finish collecting up the cash to get the cover done, I’ll be releasing it. Hopefully I’ll have a better release date for you guys soon!
Still speaking of writing, I have great news for the fans of The Becoming Series: THERE’S GOING TO BE ANOTHER BOOK. Not with Permuted Press (they appear to have changed their publishing model or something and seem totally uninterested in publishing another book in the series). I’ll be putting it out myself. It’ll be titled THE BECOMING: BLOODLINES and will have a ton of new characters and, so far, some really crazy new situations. While it’ll primarily focus on Ethan, Sadie, and Kimberly, the other characters that were still alive at the end of Redemption will be making appearances, and I’ll be adding some new characters that I’m really hopeful that you’ll like! I know I like them; they’re diverse and just plain fun so far. I have to see how I feel about it, but I might end up releasing a small novella-length anthology type thing of short stories to introduce you guys to these new characters, because they’re just great. 🙂
I’ve also been working on a couple of other little projects, but those are intended for my agent to try to sell, so you guys might not see anything to do with those for quite some time.
I hope everyone has had a great 2017 and a great Christmas holiday season! And I wish every single one of you a Happy New Year and many wishes for an awesome 2018!
What a Ridiculously Long Absence It’s Been
I figured it’s about time I shuffled around over here and updated; my shameful silence since—holy crap, has it really been that long?!—October is frankly an embarrassment.
Firstly, the Becoming Series is over, done, finito. I really don’t have anything else to say with those characters in that world. I toyed with writing a novel that focuses on a certain trio of characters (for those who have read The Becoming: Redemption, I’m sure you can guess which ones), but it’s lowest priority right now, because I have more important projects to take care of first. There may be some novellas and short stories in the Becoming universe in the future too, which are more likely because they’re less of a time commitment, but they would be self-published and that requires cash that frankly, I don’t have right this moment. So I can officially say that any further work in the Becoming Series is decidedly backburnered.
So what am I working on, you ask?
Allow me to address this in list format.
- Wicked Creatures: The Unnaturals Series, Book 3. Urban fantasy / covert ops thriller. Supernatural meets Mission: Impossible. Yes, you read that right. This is the third book in The Unnaturals Series, which originally had a publishing deal with Permuted Press but is now a free agent in search of a new publisher (long story, that, which I’ll not be discussing here). Yes, I am on the third book of a series that doesn’t even have a publisher yet. But you can’t stop the creativity choo-choo train (did I really just write that?), and besides, if I write them all now, you’ll have less time to wait between each book coming out when it does get a deal.
- Revenant: The Agency Series, Book 2. Urban fantasy / covert ops thriller. Supernatural meets Mission: Impossible…again. This is the prequel series to The Unnaturals Series, ongoing tales meant to explore the dark, red-dripping underbelly of the supernatural world, from the point of view of the characters Ashton and Zachariah. I’m continuing this four-part series despite the fact the first book is probably not selling as much as I’d like (but that’s probably because I don’t promote—or post over here—as much as I should and hey, while you’re at it, you could hop over to Amazon and pick up the first book). It’s been fun to write, which is probably why I keep going with it despite its lack of sufficient sales.
- The Deadening. Horror / historical western. Pick a western. Any western. Add a whole lot of scary shit to it. That’s this book. Takes place in 1868 in the New Mexico Territory, features a “soldier’s heart”-riddled Civil War vet-turned-sheriff, a rather feisty, independent schoolteacher, a couple of deputies, and a four-person outlaw team who band together to protect the town from the spooky things that show up in the dark. It’s been way fun to write but very difficult, because it requires getting as close to historically accurate as possible, which obviously involves research.
- The Hollow Men. Dark horror / post-apocalyptic / literary. Yes, literary. I blame the influence of my current education during my work towards my English and History degrees. This one is deep. I’ll be self-publishing it, unless it turns out so well that I feel it needs to take the deep dive into traditional publishing.
So now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to address a few semi-personal matters that I feel need to be said by way of excuse.
I’ve been largely absent from online activity for a while now, and it’s for a couple of reasons.
Firstly: I’m currently full time in university, working to finish my degrees in English and in History. This is, obviously, a huge time suck. Add in working full time at my job on overnights and trying to keep up with my writing, and I’m sure you can understand why it takes me longer to get back in touch with people when they tweet to me or message me/post to my Facebook. That said, if you’d like a reply to anything you have to say to me and you want to make sure I see it, please email it to me rather than post it on social media. This way I can give it the attention it needs and you will be much more likely to get a response. My email address is jessica(at)jessicameigs(dot)com. Please insert appropriate punctuation in place of the punctuation placeholders.
The other reason for me being mostly absent from social media (and this blog) is much more personal. In July 2014, my father passed away, just three days after my twenty-ninth birthday. I’m sure it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s been a very rough year and a half for my family and me after this very much life-changing event. We’re still trying to adjust to life without him. As a result, I often have days where I lack motivation to do pretty much anything relevant or useful to my career—even including simple matters like writing a blog post. This is part of why it’s taken me months to get around to posting here on my site. Fortunately, I seem to be crawling out of this morass, likely because I was forced to by school last semester, and I haven’t backslid again, which is a huge plus. As such, I’m hoping to post more here, and not just about my books. So the site will, hopefully, be getting a little bit of a rebranding soon. It will still be the best place to come for book/publication news, but I’ll be making more posts with my thoughts on assorted matters. Because ultimately, I’m not advertising my books so much as myself—I want you guys who read The Becoming and its companion books to read my other works too!—and I want you guys to be able to get the opportunity to learn a little more about me and the way my brain works.
What these posts will entail, I don’t know yet. Some of them will be interesting things I’ve discovered through research for novels; some will be informative things I’ve picked up along the way at school. Maybe even some of it will be commentary on current events (but I haven’t decided if I want to do that for sure yet).
Anyway, expect some tweaks to how things are done here, but be assured they are good tweaks—tweaks that will hopefully make this site more of a place to come to read interesting posts in addition to my regular, sparse posts about my books.
The Becoming: Redemption Now Available!
As I’m sure most of you have figured out by now, I am absolutely terrible at remembering to update and blog over here. In my defense, I have a lot going on (work, school, writing, more of the same), so things like this sometimes slide right past me.
The majority of you are probably already aware of this, but I have a new novel out! It’s the final novel in The Becoming Series, and it wraps up the story of Our Adventurous Heroes in the Zombie Apocalypse as they deal with everything that’s cropped up for them in the course of the entire series. I like to think it closes things up nicely.
When Woodside fell, Remy and her companions barely escaped. Now they’re scrambling to recover their shattered lives and find a new place to call home. But their friend Brandt Evans is still missing.
Desperate to recover Brandt from the military’s grasp, Remy and her friends set out on a mission to find him–or die trying. Their search takes them back into the heart of Atlanta. What they find there are the seeds of a betrayal they didn’t expect and a world wholly different than what it had been when the Michaluk Virus struck. With the entire world turned on its head, the group finds themselves dealing with the biggest challenge of their lives.
In this exciting conclusion to The Becoming Series, the survivors of Woodside navigate birth, death, and everything in between as they fight against impossible odds.
You can pick up your copy of The Becoming: Redemption on e-retailers everywhere, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I’ll update this post as I finish rooting out all the different retailers who offer the book for sale. 🙂 In the meantime, just go to your preferred e-retailer and search “Jessica Meigs,” and all my books, including Redemption, should pop right on up!
I’m Going to Texas Frightmare!
For the third year in a row, I will be attending the Texas Frightmare Weekend convention at the Hyatt Regency DFW in Dallas, Texas, on May 1st through May 3rd. This appears to be becoming a tradition for me.
I’ll have paperback copies of The Becoming, The Becoming: Ground Zero, The Becoming: Revelations, The Becoming: Under Siege, plus the first book in The Agency Series, Nightfall, for sale and autograph at my table. I’ll also be hosting a giveaway via random drawing for a $100 iTunes gift card (delivered electronically via email on May 5th)–but to enter, you’ll have to visit my booth at Frightmare. I’ll also have loads of bookmarks and some postcards at the table too, so feel free to drop by and say hello!
That said, do you have a convention near you that you think I’d be a good fit to attend? I’d love to know about it! Just shoot me an email (jessica.meigs at gmail.com), Tweet me @JessicaMeigs, send me a message on Facebook, or comment here and let me know about it! I can’t promise attendance this year, but at least I can put it on my schedule to look into for next year!
COVER REVEAL: The Becoming: Redemption!
Yes, you read that right! It’s time for the cover reveal for The Becoming: Redemption, the final book (other than the book of novellas) that’s being released in the series!
Yes, for those who are wondering, that’s Remy Angellette, finally making her series cover debut! (I’ve been sitting on this one since book three, when I realized there were going to be more than three books to the series.)
Cover art is by Dean at Conzpiracy Digital Arts.
So…what do you guys think? Does this make you anxious to read the conclusion of the series?
Announcement Regarding The Becoming Series
So I have a little bit of an announcement to make, now that the ink is dry on the paperwork.
There will not be six books in The Becoming Series.
There are a variety of reasons that this is going to happen, but the primary reason is that, contrary to the outlines I drafted almost two years ago, there just isn’t enough material left to get an entire sixth book written for this series. I’d rather give you guys five great quality books than six so-so books. This isn’t, of course, the only reason I’ve made this decision, but this is the primary reason for it.
So what I’m doing is this: Book five is being retitled to The Becoming: Redemption. Instead of publishing a sixth novel, Permuted is going to reissue The Becoming: Origins, BUT Origins will have an added bonus of including two never-before-released novellas, one called “My Brother’s Keeper,” which is a story about the twins Sadie and Jude O’Dell, and a currently untitled story that tracks Remy Angellette when the outbreak reached New Orleans. Both of these stories take place before or concurrently with book one in the series. The Becoming: Origins will still include the novellas “Brothers in Arms” and “Origins.”
Hopefully all you guys are understanding about the need for these changes to take place, but I promise you that, in exchange, Redemption is going to be EPIC.
NIGHTFALL (The Agency Series #1) Now Available!
I am very, very excited to announce that my newest novel, Nightfall, is now available for purchase on Amazon!
Beyond the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service, there’s an organization known simply as The Agency.
And within The Agency are those who fight against the creatures of our nightmares.
As one of the best covert operatives in the United States’ employ, Ashton Miller travels the world, infiltrating the lairs of drug lords, arms dealers, and mercenaries and dispensing swift justice to those who deserve it. Until one day when he runs into another operative in the middle of his assignment. An operative who shouldn’t even be there.
Zachariah Lawrence is thrilled to meet another covert, especially one as talented as Ashton Miller. The attraction between them is undeniable, and Zachariah is elated when they’re assigned to work together on a mission to drop a document to Nathan Chambers, a notorious arms dealer who leaves a trail of dead bodies in his wake.
There’s a reason why Chambers is so dangerous. And as Ashton and Zachariah work together, they find themselves on the wrong side of supernatural creatures they never knew existed. And now, these monsters are out for their blood.
Nightfall is the first book in The Agency Series. What’s The Agency Series, you ask? Why, it’s the four-book prequel series for the upcoming novel The Unnaturals; it focuses on two of the main characters from that novel and their (very, very interesting) backstory that leads up to all of the events in that particular series. And it has been a lot of fun to write this first book, so I’m looking forward to seeing the reactions I get for it. 🙂
If you would like to purchase Nightfall, you can view the purchase page on Amazon right here. Nightfall is available for only $0.99 in ebook format for a limited, introductory period, so if you’d like to try out a new series from me but are iffy if you’ll like anything non-zombie that I’ve written, then now is definitely a good time to grab your copy!
As an aside, I’ve been trying to get the book uploaded to Barnes & Noble for those of you who prefer to purchase books from that retailer, but there appears to be something wrong with their system or something, because it isn’t letting me upload it. In the meantime, the version I’ve uploaded for purchase on Amazon is DRM-free, which means you can use Calibre to covert it to any format you need so it can be read on any ereader of your choosing. If you’d like to go that route and need some assistance with this, please feel free to get in touch with me, and I’ll be happy to help! 🙂
If you purchase and read the book, reviews are definitely encouraged! You can leave a review on the Amazon product page, or you can leave a review on the book’s Goodreads page.
Current Projects, October 2014
I have been horrible about getting over here and updating my site lately, but in my defense, I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my life since July and haven’t had the time to even think about this kind of thing.
To smooth things over into the new month, I’m going to take a few moments to update you guys on my current writing projects and where everything stands as of right now.
Here’s my list of Current Projects. This should give readers some idea of what’s in the pipeline and what will (hopefully) be released someday. This also explains why I’m so erratic when it comes to posting and being active, both here and on my assorted social media sites. A busy author means a distracted author!
Things that are contracted by a publisher will be noted; otherwise, assume that it hasn’t been sold yet or a publication date hasn’t been set yet.
Note that books that have been published are no longer on the list.
The Becoming Series
The Becoming: Descent
The Becoming Series, Book 5. Zombie fiction / post-apocalyptic thriller. The direct continuation of The Becoming: Under Siege. With the loss of their new lives, Cade and her companions are forced to try to pick up the pieces and go in search of a member of the group that has gone missing.
Status: Completed, turned in to publisher. Publication date, September 2015.
The Becoming: Redemption
The Becoming Series, Book 6. Zombie fiction / post-apocalyptic thriller. This one picks up where Descent will leave off. Cade et al have the opportunity to save the world. I can’t say much more about this one until Descent is in the wild for readers to indulge in.
Status: First draft in progress.
The Becoming: My Brother’s Keeper
The Becoming Series, Book 6.5. Zombie fiction / post-apocalyptic thriller. Jude and Sadie O’Dell’s story.
Status: In the idea / outline sketching stages.
The Unnaturals Series
The Unnaturals
The Unnaturals Series, Book 1. Urban fantasy / covert-ops thriller. The first book in the series. Two special agents are transferred to a sector of the US government that investigates supernatural activity and get more than they bargained for.
Status: Completed, turned in to publisher. Publication date, November 2015.
Hellforged
The Unnaturals Series, Book 2. Urban fantasy / covert-ops thriller. Sequel to The Unnaturals. After the events of the first novel, Riley Walker is forced to go on the run as forces stronger than her make her destruction their goal.
Status: First draft in progress.
The Agency Series
Nightfall
The Agency Series, Book 1. Urban fantasy / covert-ops thriller. First book in a prequel series to The Unnaturals. Nightfall tells how Zachariah and Ashton met and how The Unnaturals was formed.
Status: First draft in progress.
The Deadening Series
The Deadening: Collapse
The Deadening, Part 1. Serialized Novel. Horror / historical western. In an 1868 silver mining town, the sheriff, a schoolteacher, and an outlaw team up to protect the town’s citizens from a mysterious outbreak of violence.
Status: First draft in progress.
Stand Alone Novels
Small Town Dead
Standalone novel. Horror / pandemic fiction / post-apocalyptic. A small town is turned completely upside down when an Ebola outbreak begins to spread through their town and the military quarantines them.
Status: First draft in progress.
There are a ton of other books on my list of future projects, but they won’t make an appearance on my list until I actually start on some point of the process on them.
