Shawn D. America | Updates

Battle of the Planets Complete

Shawn D. America — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The new book is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HKDT9FKG

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Battle of the Planets Complete

Shawn D. America — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This book has a even more epic feel then the last of the series. I liked the idea of pitting two sisters, Noor and Chanai, competitors to the throne, against one another, in a planetary take down. This is what this book is about. Noor inherits the earth from her mother Sidus. And Chanai steals the royal Mars fleet from her sister, freeing 100,000 captives doomed to die.

Good stuff. But here's where it gets interesting. How exactly do you make Mars livable? So many books, from the Martian Chronicles to The Martian imagine how this could be done. I imagine a hundred year journey just to make it from underground barracks to clean air and water on the surface.

I too, want to travel to Mars one day, and know, with the collective wisdom of all of us, it is possible.

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Book Two Rough Draft Complete

Shawn D. America — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have finished the rough draft and am now onto the harder work of revisions. I fire up a cigarette and get to work. The book gets better and better as I go on, and am excited to release it to the world.

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Battle of the Planets almost Finished

Shawn D. America — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have been working hard on book two of the series. Right now, it is down to line edits. I fire up a cigarette, pour a whisky, and get to work. The book itself is much more expansive. We see Noor take up the work of Sidus, as she doubles down on the genocide, and expunge all of the undesirables in her kingdom. I have thought about this often, the brutality of it, and have examined my own totalitarian instincts, and the answer is uncomfortable.

I have seen the tent cities sprawled across our cities, and have often wished someone would just do something: put them in in prison, wash them all with a fire hose, and get rid of them. It is expedient, and spares the rest of us the horror.

The first book made me uncomfortable. There is so much of Nazi Germany in it: the book burnings, the burning of the hovels, even the bracelets which scream, uncompliant, are my version of a Jewish star sewn on the breast jacket.

I have to live with these uncomfortable notions, because I believe the world I have created is entirely probable. Prophetic even.

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The Illuminated Ones: A Forged Weapon Released on Amazon

Shawn D. America — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

eBook, Paperback, and Hardback versions available: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HDK9137R

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A First for Everything

Shawn D. America — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have had a blast writing A Forged Weapon, and becoming immersed in its world. As an indie writer, you wear many hats. The first and foremost of these is writer, and so I will thank the people helping me with the rest. Arsal Khan did a wonderful job on the cover, and all the iterations thereof.

The Book Publishing Experts are working on marketing and getting the word out. There is much to do. Expect to see a presence on X, Facebook, and Instagram before long.

Mostly, its about the writing. A writer can get lost in all of the other tasks of social media, and my main excitement is writing book two: A Battle of the Planets:

The god who saved the world is gone, and the daughter who takes her place was built to be exact.

On Earth, the arks are still full. Lottery Day still runs once a year, with the band playing and the chocolate rations passed out freely, and the winners are still cheered through the doors by their whole section. Letters still come back from the colonies — real hands, real weather, real green places, read aloud from the platform before the names.

Asha has watched those doors for ten years. Four hundred people have gone through them out of her hall, and four hundred letters have come back, and eleven of them asked her for anything at all. She has done the arithmetic. She has never told anybody, least of all the man she loves most, whose entire hope depends on it being wrong.

And below all of it, unseen and uncounted, something that used to be a girl is learning what it can open.

The Battle of the Planets is a novel about the exodus that follows — what it costs to be saved twice, and who gets left standing on the field.

I know readers will be excited to see a Mars colony come to life. I'm jazzed to build it.

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