If you haven't reread the books to refresh your memory on what's going on, now would be an excellent time to start. I hope you enjoy today's character profile:
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       Born in Sao Paulo, Floyd Hernandes was the son of a renowned surgeon and her husband, a surgical technician. Floyd lost his mother during the Scourge and for years planned on following her footsteps by going to medical school. However, Floyd’s father pressed his son to be sure he was pursuing his education for the right reasons. With some embarrassment, Floyd revealed to his father that he’d had an interest in butchering. After convincing his father that he was indeed serious about his ambition, Paul Hernandes helped his son find a job in a butcher shop for a year. Twelve months later, Floyd was certain he’d found the right profession. His father agreed to help Floyd start a shop in Sao Paulo using some of the money inherited from his mother’s death.

       Two months after opening his doors for business, while staying late to complete shipping orders, a masked man entered the shop through the back and nearly strangled Floyd to death. The masked man stole all the meat and equipment from Floyd’s store. After a five-day recovery in the hospital, Floyd was released. The first thing he did on his release was permanently close his shop. Two weeks later he sold his premises and relocated to Rio, where crime rates were lower and neighborhoods safer. The first customer to walk through his doors in Rio was a woman named Karéna. They married nine months later.

       Floyd never attained the level of wealth his father and mother enjoyed from their professions in the medical field, but his business stayed steady. He stood to inherit almost two million dollars upon his father’s death, which he planned to use to renovate his butcher shop, his home, and then put the rest away for retirement. Unfortunately, those dreams ended on March 16, 2086 when a woman calling herself the Queen broke into the home where the Hernandes family was staying in Sao Paulo. He watched in horror as the woman slaughtered his children like a butcher. His last thoughts were directed toward his wife, hoping she would stay strong and keep Samuel’s location a secret.

I hope everyone had a marvelous Thanksgiving. There are only a dozen days left for you to wait. Here is the next character profile:
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    In 2045 Calven Bredenkamp was born six months premature. Doctors gave him less than ten percent chance of surviving due to his weak heart. Fortunately, Calven was a fighter. As his health steadily improved, he was released from the hospital to his parents, Freddy and Marnie. Freddy, a professional rugby player, raised his son to love the sport. Calven played rugby through the university level. His prospects at playing the sport professionally were high until a physical showed something doctors had missed for years: a potentially fatal heart condition. Heeding the counsel of medical professionals Calven switched gears and went into coaching. It was through community outreach programs that his eyes were opened to the dire need his city, Johannesburg, had for foster parents. After lengthy discussions with his wife, Calven enrolled his family in one of the foster programs. Six months later, they were asked to accept a foster child in their home. When Calven found out about Sammy’s situation, he learned all he could about the boy. Through his research, he decided to study chess because it was Sammy’s favorite hobby.

    Calven was Sammy’s foster father for thirty-two days. He never was able to beat Sammy in a game of chess, though he tried mightily. Calven liked Sammy. He found Sammy to be an exceptionally bright and well-behaved young man. The thought even crossed Calven’s mind that adoption was something he might do if their relationship continued to blossom. Unfortunately, during one of their chess matches, Calven suffered a massive stroke and died nearly instantly. Sammy, so shocked by what he’d witnessed, ran from the house without even reporting the death to Calven’s wife.

To mark the days until Psion Alpha is released, each day I'm going to post a small profile of minor characters from the books to give them greater depth. The final character will be presented the day before Alpha's release. I promise that by reading these you'll be pumped up for the next book and also learn a thing or two about some FASCINATING characters. So, without further adieu, here is the first character profile:

Vitória Silva

    Vitória Silva was born on January 9, 2072 in Rio de Janeiro. Her parents called her “Tori.” Tori loved volleyball and football, and was an avid fan of the Botafogo Football club based in Rio. She dyed her black hair half-white when Botafogo won the Campeonato Carioca in 2085. The oldest of three children, Tori’s favorite game to play with her two little brothers, Hector and Raul, was Houdini. They tied each other up and raced to see who could get untied first. Tori was an average student in general, but excelled at football as a keeper. Many coaches in her league saw her as someone with enormous potential.

    Walking home from football practice January 3, 2086, Tori and her friends were crossing the street when a car ran a red light and slammed into Tori. Tori, however, was uninjured. Another driver witnessed the incident and phoned a special hotline, alerting the government of the strange occurrence. That same evening, Tori was picked up from her home and taken in for questioning. Her parents were too scared to fight against the men in suits who took her away. She was thirteen at the time of her capture, and turned fourteen after seven days of captivity. When Sammy was captured by the Aegis, he was placed in her cell. By this time, she had grown so distrustful of everyone that she refused to talk to him. She was held for a total of eighteen days before she broke and was taken to another facility for extraction.

Here are the final covers, front and back. The back cover shows the Elite Mantra, which features prominently in the novel:

"FEAR IS MY CLOAK. PERFECTION IS MY DAGGER. EXCELLENCE DRIVES ME. I AM THE BEST. I AM ELITE."

How do you feel about the cover? I think it's Britta's best work yet. When we designed Psion Beta, it was the first time either of us had undertaken such an endeavor, but I'm still proud of the work we did. Each cover has its own feel, but also the quality, I think, improves as Britta and I have gained more experience. I hope you all enjoy both the art and story! Only three weeks more to wait before you can read it. I look forward to reading your comments below.

Readers of the Psion series will notice that the price of Alpha has gone up a little bit from previous books, both for E-books and paperbacks. I wanted to take a moment to explain why that is.

First of all it's not an ego thing. Yes, like you, I do like money, but I originally had no plan to increase the price for the e-book. However, as the novel grew in length, so did the amount of time and energy and cost of publishing it. I use editors, both free and paid, to put out the best possible book I can. So a longer book means more cost.

Normally, I've charged 4.99 for ebooks. For Alpha I'm charging 5.99. I feel like it's fair to ask 6 dollars for a few hours of solid entertainment, especially since this book is significantly longer than previous books. Like 40K words longer. If Omega, the last book in the series, is shorter, I'll revert back to the 4.99 cost.

Paperback costs are determined by Createspace, the print-on-demand publisher which I use to make my paperback books available. I can't do much about the cost there. I wish I could make it lower, but I try to retain a healthy profit while the publisher takes the vast majority of the sales price. Hopefully the cost won't be too outrageous. I won't know for sure what that is for a few more days, when I load up the final file and save it to their servers.

So, thanks for being understanding fans. I hope you won't begrudge me the extra dollar or dollars, but they help offset the increasing costs of a longer book, which you, the reader, get to enjoy. Only 3 more weeks until the book is yours! Happy waiting.

While the book is highly unlikely to be done on the 12th, it IS getting awfully close. Certainly done by the end of the month. Currently I'm going through the manuscript and using three editors' notes to catch (hopefully) all the little grammatical and punctuation errors.

In the meantime, we're also working on the cover, trying to get it perfect. Britta and I are working and bouncing ideas back and forth. So, I thought I'd share with you where the cover is at now, both front and back ideas we're looking at and developing.