My novelette, An Illicit Mercy, is part of a new promotion in August: Free Sci-Fi & Fantasy Reads.
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When a hustler from the Grey District steals the wrong card, the Night Owls become the lunar colony’s most wanted—and its only hope.
Ethan Keller survives by throwing illegal dome parties by night, running small hustles by day, and trying not to die when the blackouts hit. Then a risky grab puts a high‑level control card in his pocket—and a target on his back.
A ruthless security enforcer wants Ethan erased, fusion cells are vanishing, and the outages are getting longer — and deadlier. To survive, he leans on the only thing that ever saved him—his crew. The Night Owls: a relentless hacker, a class‑crossing girlfriend, and a ride‑or‑die family willing to hack domes, duck sentinels, and cross the vacuum to expose the truth.
He can save the colony or chase the one perfect night—but not both. If he misses, the music dies with the lights. If he hits, the blackout ends for everyone.
Perfect for fans of Firefly, Killjoys, and The Expanse, Night Owls is a fast-paced, character-driven sci-fi action thriller where found family fights back, loyalty costs everything, and hope refuses to die.
Download Night Owls by Stephen Gay today—or read free with Kindle Unlimited. The series is complete—binge all 7 books.
by Brian Scott Pauls
It’s been nearly one year and four months since the last update about Probability Amplitudes, my first science fiction collection. I began that update with the observation “[w]riting a book…is all about getting the words out.” But because of circumstances I’ve explained elsewhere, I wrote relatively few words of fiction during the subsequent period.
Well, circumstances have changed, and my output is changing with them. According to my writing log, I returned to my unfinished book on June 4. At this time, I’ve completed 21,197 words of what I originally estimated to be 20,000 required for my first novella, All One, All Glorious. On my initial pass through the narrative, I found the original word-count insufficient to do justice to the themes and characters. This story is challenging—a meditation on totalitarianism, asking, “What if a future totalitarian regime achieved the Third Reich’s dream of a thousand-year reign?” My framework for the tale is Hannah Arendt’s 1951 historical-political analysis The Origins of Totalitarianism. But foremost, it must be an entertaining science fiction story. That’s a lot of moving parts.
The good news is those extra 1197 words (so far) have pushed the amount of Probability Amplitudes material in “First Draft” status to 55% (up from 53% in April 2025), reducing the amount of “New Material Required” to 41%.
I’ve also continued to refine my publishing strategy. In September 2023, I announced an increase in my target word-count for the first draft from 40,000 to 160,000. This allows me to cut 25% during the editing process and still produce a collection of about 500 pages. K-lytics data from 2023 identifies this as the upper end of the length Kindle readers prefer for this sort of collection.
My intention for Probability Amplitudes is to give it away to free subscribers of this newsletter. It seems I can both give it away and sell it on Amazon as long as I have two versions of the book. So, at this time, I’m looking at a “free subscriber” edition with a length of 400 pages (the lower-end of the length preferred by Kindle Readers) and a 500 page “expanded” edition, for sale online.
This sums up as follows:
First Draft: 160,000 words
Expanded Edition: 120,000 words
Free Subscription Edition: 90,000
I can cut 25% while editing the first draft to produce the expanded edition, then reserve 25% of the expanded edition text for that version alone. This allows the free subscription edition to be 75% the length of the expanded edition. But at 90,000 words, it would still be a substantial volume delivering real value.
Thanks to all of you who continue to follow me through this process. I look forward to eliminating the red from the progress chart below, then moving full-force into editing!
New Material Required: 64,886 words
First Draft: 87,700 words
Final Draft: 7414 words
TOTAL: 160,000
Questions about Probability Amplitudes? Please comment below!
Artificial intelligence tools performed multiple tasks in the creation and publication of this article.
This month, I’m reading Rebecca Campbell’s Ursual K. Le Guin Award-winning novel Arboreality. I’m sharing my thoughts on Club Codex, where any Cosmic Codex subscriber can follow along, comment, or ask questions.
Click below to participate:
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