Lore Forge News, July & August 2026

Sorry about the long delay. I thought I'd combine both July and August into a single newsletter because things were both hectic and mundane.

Well, I lost a lobe of my lung. I got a port installed for chemotherapy. They are pumping me full of noxious drugs. Oh...and some news on my book. Imagine that.

Image by Grok

Health Issues

If you've been following along, I lost the lower part of my left lung to cancer. Since then, I consulted with an oncologist and had a port put in for chemotherapy treatments. Actually, the way it worked out was that I had the surgical procedure the day before my first round of chemo. The fact that I had a fresh, raw wound on my chest made the process of chemotherapy fairly unpleasant. It is what it is.

Right now my cancer is staged at 1B, meaning it was caught very, very early. My short-term survival chances are pretty good. The only staging better than 1B is 1A. I'll get into this more later.

The experience with the oncologist was, to say the least, interesting. The first consult was basically the doctor trying to sell me on getting the treatment. He went into a long explanation about how I could improve my odds by roughly 8% with the treatments. Right now, I have a 5-year survival rate of roughly 73%, meaning that, with no treatment, I have a good chance of being alive and kicking after five years. What the percentage doesn't say is whether, in those 5 years, I have a recurrence of cancer. With chemo, I boost my chances to over 80%, and with a better-than-average chance that I'll still be cancer-free. Then again, there are no certainties in any of this.

To further sweeten the presentation, he told me about a patient who was staged at 1A who decided to skip treatment. She made it two years before the cancer came back.

I let the doctor talk for a while. Then I informed him that I had already decided to take the treatments well before I even walked through the door. After that, the consult moved along pretty quickly. As of July 31st, I'm officially taking chemotherapY.

I was a little nauseous and fatigued the day after. I have an anti-nausea protocol at my disposal, and I'm using it. Later on in the day, I started feeling much better. As of this post, I've been through 2 of the 4 rounds of chemo I need to complete.

Lastly - my final health issue - I went in for an MRI on my abdomen. The same CAT scan that showed I had cancer also informed me that there was something wrong with my pancreas. Well, the MRI came back with some diffuse fatty deposits that have a number of causes: age, alcohol use, smoking (cigars), and damage to the abdominal area. Well, in the last few years I've had all of these, especially the aging part. It doesn't seem to be a huge issue as far as my doctors are concerned. For the record: I'm done with cigars. Not that I think that all of my issues revolved around them. Only that I don't need anything contributing to my health problems at present. I refuse, however, to give up beer. I can't give up aging. And the damage from my gallbladder leaking was something well out of my control.

My chemo treatments end sometime in October. Yay.

The Next Book

So, early in July, I sent A Font of Evil Things (that's the title) off to the editor. I've since received the editor's suggestions and comments (over 2,500 of them), and I've been steadily working on perfecting the manuscript.

Yes, I'm using a human editor. I've been using Grammarly as I write, and I'm learning just how poor of a job it does. Most of its suggestions suck. Comma placement is all wrong. Plus, the editor has done a lot of work to streamline the text, reduce redundancy, and question things in the dialogue.

I have a cover artist who's drawn up a few sketches for my perusal. I ran one of the sketches through Grok (with the artist's permission) to generate a few ideas that I hope coincide with the themes in the book as well as align with the style of the previous Odo book. At this point, I think we're real close to a final design.

I've decided that A Font of Evil Things will be available in paperback, eBook, and hardcover. All of this is funded out-of-pocket. I intend to do an audiobook. For the audiobook, I may attempt to fund it through Kickstarter. While some have expressed interest in me distributing my book through Audible, their "new" royalty scheme pays me pennies on the dollar. While I have moved more than a few books through Audible, I just can't let them keep screwing me on my royalties. The book will still be available on Spotify and everywhere else, just not Audible.

The Next, Next Book.

I've decided what direction I'm going to take for the book after A Font of Evil Things. I'm going to try my hand at querying publishers one last time. I spoke to a couple of people who I know are in tune with the indie side of publishing. The next book will be a break from the world in which Odo and Halsedric presently reside. This means a new world with different problems. It's heavily inspired by the movie The 13th Warrior (as well as the book The Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton ). That being said, there are no Vikings and no Arabs. And, of course, I'll have my own sort of story going on.

Event Schedule

As stated earlier, because I had to change jobs and because of my health issues, I will only be appearing at one event this year. That one is already booked.

If you were hoping to purchase a paperback from me at an event, and couldn't do so, you can always purchase it from my online store. While you may not receive special event pricing, you can use code BIONICHEDGE2026 at checkout to receive a 20% discount on your entire purchase. Every paperback you purchase comes signed and with a bookmark. I also send along a pen with each purchase (I really like the pens - I use them myself).

Conclusion

Because of the time it takes to query a book, I'm considering writing a novella as well. I might revisit the Halsedric origin story that I abandoned years back. I've actually wanted to do another novella for some time now. They sell well at events, and Fantasy suffers from a lack of shorter stories. The boat anchor epic installments are nice and all, but every now and again, it's nice to just have a quick read as a palate cleanser.

Also, I'm considering posting my Substack articles here, in addition to a monthly update. I'm still pondering this, so any feedback in the comments would be greatly appreciated. I'll leave you with a page from my next book, before the actual story starts:

Font: [FÄNT]

1) A free-standing receptacle or basin in a church used in the ritual of baptism,

2) A reservoir, such as a well, used to hold oil for a lamp,

3) A source of a desirable quantity or commodity; a fount: “they are a font of all knowledge”.