Like most folks, 2020 was a rough year, marked with sadness, pain, and loss. And my life was no exception. In 2019 my wife and I moved in my ailing mother-in-law to take care of her. It was a wonderful time having her with us. Sadly, she passed away at the end of 2020. With so much going on, it was difficult to get in and stay in a creative space.  But through it all, progress was being made on Cargo 3120, albeit slower than I intended.

Around the time the initial draft of Ties that Bind part 4 was done, we shifted gears, concentrating on compiling all four parts of the novellas into one novel, which was our original goal. This process wasn’t as simple as cutting and pasting the four manuscripts together. To make it work as a full book, there were three major steps involved:

• Revamp of earlier manuscripts: I began the book writing journey in 2015. The novel writing process was new to me, and a huge learning curve. The first three parts were written between 2015 and 2018, and they were in much need of a “facelift” to get them on par with part 4. That was a long and difficult process that took much longer than expected. I found myself having to almost rewrite every line to smooth out the wording and the flow, as well as the addition of new content and enhancements in a few areas. More importantly, I was able to structure the story according to my original vision.
  
  
• Enhancing Part 4: While the first draft of part 4 was completed near the end of 2019, by the time I reviewed it again in 2020, we realized there was more work to do. I worked extensively with my story consultant, Larry Brody, as well as the rest of Team Cargo, making sure the final part of our first story arc went out with a bang! It took a lot of changes and updates, but I’m satisfied with the way things turned out, and we hope you will too!
  
  
• New cover style: I’ve learned throughout this process that cover design is a huge deal. In the end, people do judge a book by its cover. The wrong cover, no matter how good it looks, could be the difference between people giving your book a shot, or simply writing it off as not being worth their time. I loved my original covers created by the talented Lemelle Wherry (the artist who is spearheading the art direction for the eventual comic we plan to create). However, the previous cover style could cause people to think it is a comic or a picture book, and not a traditional novel. The goal this go around was to come up with a simple, yet eye catching design that captures the essence of the book, while at the same time being in line with typical covers you would see with other novels in the same genre. And I think we nailed it with this design.
  
  A lot of time and hard work went into the full novel, and we hope you all will enjoy the ride. It has certainly been our pleasure creating this universe. And this is just the first novel. Stay tuned, there is a lot more to come!