“It’s Darkest This Way” (book #4, series finale) rough draft is done!

Quick update after a long silence to let you know that I’ve just completed the rough draft of “It’s Darkest This Way” (book #4 of the “This Way” series)! Keith Draws sent me the final cover for it as well! I’m hoping that I can get this edited and published within the next month, though with school starting again on January 13th, it might be a bit delayed.

Here’s the cover, and I’ll post updates regularly as the final draft nears completion.

"It's Darkest This Way" cover

“It’s Darkest This Way” by Travis Hill
Cover art by: Keith Draws

Oath of Office – Chapter 1

So, here’s a kind of fun but yet serious story I’ve sort of been working on between other major stories. It’s just a chapter for the moment, but if you like it, leave me a comment and tell me you want to read more!

1. Breach & Clear

“Honey?” Virginia whispered in my ear as she shook my shoulder.

“Wazza?” I asked sleepily, letting go of the slim island woman’s waist as the Caribbean jazz fusion faded into the rustling of covers and the slightest of muffled noises.

“Alex, wake up,” my wife whispered again, this time more urgently. “I think there’s someone outside.”

“Probably some fuckin’ protester assholes,” I mumbled, desperate to resume my conga line dance even if it wasn’t with my wife of twenty years. “You have my permission to shoot them.” I rolled over on my side and closed my eyes.

“Dammit, Alex, I’m serious!” she hissed, giving my shoulder one final rough shove.

“Okay, okay, sheesh,” I said then wiped the drool from the corner of my mouth. “It’s probably the cats and they see another cat outside.”

I rolled my legs onto the floor and stared into the darkness for a moment as if my slippers might suddenly glow softly so I could find them. I huffed a sigh and gingerly tiptoed barefoot toward the bedroom door, praying I avoided any number of obstacles that might make me erupt in a high-pitched scream of vulgar profanity.

I silently pulled the partially-opened bedroom door back, immediately feeling the brief sensation of fur on my bare ankles twice. I waited until I felt a third before taking another step. Stepping on one of our three cats in the middle of the night was only slightly more pleasant and slightly less heart-stopping than feeling my foot slide through a puddle of cold, slimy, chunky feline vomit.

I paused for a moment after hearing a series of strange sounds. The noises were muffled but my brain tried to interpret them as two-way radios. I shook my head and walked to the living room window to look out. The exact instant my mind tried to piece together why an army of police cars were outside our home was the exact instant what seemed like an Anti-Terror Special Operations Unit burst through every possible opening into the house.

“GET DOWN!” screamed at least seventy thousand voices all at once. Continue reading

“It’s Darkest This Way” (book #4) update!

Hey, all. I know a lot of you have powered through the “It’s Way” series and are hoping for a conclusion to it, so just wanted to let you know where I’m at with that.

#1 – It’s Better This Way
#2 – It’s Harder This Way
#3 – It’s Darker This Way
#4 – It’s Darkest This Way

Book #4 will be the final book in this series, and will conclude Evan’s story. I am hard at work on it right now (and school as well!), but hoping to have it out somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas of this year (2019). The very talented Keith Draws is working on the cover for it, and I’m 75% or more finished with the rough draft. I’m hoping to knock it out during Thanksgiving break, unless I somehow get it finished before that!

Now, as you may have read in the series, General Kendra Flanders and her Warthogs are just getting their plans off the ground while Evan & crew are finishing up their stories. Plus there’s Luna Payne, who still has a role to play, as do the fine folks from Eugene like Dallas Payne and Seth Ingram. I’m going to begin a new series for them, which will begin immediately after the “This Way” series.

There’s still a lot of story to tell, and the Bulls aren’t going to simply jump into their ships and blast off without a fight…