Holo Writing

Authors Jacob & H.P. Holo

Holo Books

Welcome to the New Website!

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Hey, Holo fans! Things are looking a little different over here – in a good way!

After 7 years publishing (Has it really been that long? 😲) we decided our website was in need of an upgrade, and now, thanks to ModFarm Design, we’d like to welcome you to this glorious, shiny, new hub for all things Holo Writing.

Here you’ll find complete details on all our books and series – from summaries to audio samples to review snippets – as well as our blog, newsletter signup, swag shop, and an easy-to-use contact page if you just want to say hi. 😊

Also, author pals: If you’re in the market for a website or website glow-up, Rob at ModFarm is amazing. He’s attentive to what authors want from their sites and determined to make it happen, customer service is near-instant, and site-building in general was pretty quick. The whole design experience gets a big thumbs-up from us! 👍

All that said, welcome to the new website! 😄 Drop in and explore a while!

Excess (Monster Punk Horizon #3) – Cover Reveal!

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If you’ve been following us these past two weeks, you’ve seen the first two books in my new series, Monster Punk Horizon, and now Jacob and I are delighted to bring you the cover reveal for Book 3! 😀

Art by Jackson Tjota

Excess (Monster Punk Horizon #3)
by Jacob & H.P. Holo


🌟 GameLit 🌟 Crafting 🌟 Adventure 🌟 Comedy 🌟


✨ Coming December 23rd, 2021 ✨

Audio Release Date TBD


🐉🐉🐉

Loot Like Your Life Depends On It!

Losing a trusty weapon is like losing a close friend, and Pix’s beloved capacitor blade is on its last legs.

Fortunately, she has a plan to craft a new, even better weapon. Unfortunately, her plan involves hunting down a vicious migrating monster that has more teeth than some hunters have brain cells. Even worse, this new creature has riled up the apex monster of Skull Harbor, and both of them are spoiling for a fight.

But Pix has one thing they don’t: a party foolhardy enough to take them both on.

She’ll need all the help she can get, because it’ll take all their combined luck, skill, and oversized weapons to put down these two monsters. But her friends have her back. After all, there’s awesome loot to be had!

If they manage to survive…

Preorder Here!
Or Read a Sample of Book One Here!

Excess is unique from the previous two Monster Punk Horizon books in that it’s a collaboration between me and Jacob!

While I was writing Book 1, Jacob became so fascinated with the world he watched me create that he wanted to write a story in it – and since he was between books in the Gordian Division series at the time, he took the lore I’d already established in Book 1, created a new monster, and churned out the rough draft of Book 3 before I’d even started Book 2! 😄 I then went over it after I’d finished Book 2 and  H.P.-ified the parts Jacob had marked “write whatever here.”

Excess is slightly different in style, too, in that it follows Pix more than Jaz – which is to say, it follows Jacob’s Monster Hunter character instead of my Monster Hunter character. 😉

As you may have guessed from the vibe of the covers, one of Monster Punk Horizon‘s original inspirations came from our nights playing Monster Hunter World together. It’s not quite fanfiction; in fact, my first step when designing the series was to create a world whose basic mechanics and essential history were independent of the various fictions that inspired it, but that still allowed me to pay homage to those fictions and to insert Easter Eggs for fans. 

Even so, our gameplay experience in Monster Hunter World is very much in the DNA of the Monster Punk Horizon series, and particularly in how Pix and Jaz came to be in the first place. Jacob and I have wildly different play styles, his very strategic and mine very … not.  😆 Plus, when I play video games, I have a tendency to invent headcanons totally separate from the lore of whatever game I’m playing – especially in games with stories as simple as Monster Hunter World‘s.

Because of that, Pix and Jaz had personalities and backstories before I even knew I was going to write Monster Punk Horizon, solely because I needed a way to entertain myself during loading screens, and making up stuff about our player characters was a fun way to do it. It’s no coincidence, then, that Jaz is the Leeroy Jenkins of the pair (me), while Pix is the methodical gamer who likes to go in with a plan (Jacob). Stories told from Jaz‘s perspective – that is, Books 1 and 2 – are thus rather more chaotic than stories told from Pix‘s perspective, which I think brings a nice balance to the series as a whole.  After all, even worlds as crazy as this one need a break from the craziness every now and then. 😊

Excess (Monster Punk Horizon #3) is set to release on Kindle Unlimited this December, and is already available for preorder.

And again, if you’d like to be one of the lucky people to read it early, be sure to join the Pug Scouts – our VIP Street Team! 😀 I’ll be sending out eARCs soon, and all you have to do in exchange for your free book is post a review once the book is live!

Join Our Street Team Here!

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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

Isekai Skies (Monster Punk Horizon #2) Cover Reveal!

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Last week, you saw a peek at Book 1 in my new GameLit adventure comedy series, Monster Punk Horizon. 😀

Now, since the second is going to crash-land soon after its release – a month, to be exact – here’s the cover reveal for Book 2! 😮

Cover art by Jackson Tjota

Isekai Skies (Monster Punk Horizon #2)


🌟 GameLit 🌟 Portal Fantasy 🌟 Adventure 🌟 Comedy 🌟


✨ Coming November 18th, 2021 ✨

Audio Release Date TBA

🐉🐉🐉

I Got Engaged and Ended Up in Another World!

An epic convention. An epic cosplay. An epic engagement. It was the best night of Kaito’s life—until the ground opened up beneath him.

Well, technically, a portal did. Either way, it sucked.

Now, trapped in another world with rampaging monsters, he’ll have to learn to survive. Fortunately, this world is conveniently similar to his favorite video game. And he’s got monster hunting experts (?) Pix and Jaz to show him the ropes.

With their help, he might last long enough to find a way home.

But if not, at least he’ll have fun hunting monsters before he dies!

Preorder Here!
Or Read a Sample of Book One Here!

Last week, you met my series protagonists Pix and Jaz, two girls who just want to hunt monsters and pay off their college loans. They were born and raised in the monster-dominated world under the Dazzling Skies, so named because its sky is taken up by thousands of glittering portals to other worlds, which constantly dump interesting loot and monsters for them to hunt –

And sometimes people for them to save.

Which makes the Dazzling Skies a perfect setting for an isekai story.

If you’re unfamiliar with the word – “isekai” is a Japanese term meaning “different world” and refers specifically to light novels and anime in which a character is transported from their familiar world into a fantasy world, often with distinct video game trappings.

I was indifferent to the isekai genre when I first encountered it several years ago, but as the genre developed and began to play with and parody its own tropes, I grew to love it – especially Overlord, The Rising of the Shield Hero and – I kid you not – Reborn as a Vending Machine, Now I Wander the Dungeon (Review here, btw! 😀).

And, while I hadn’t set out to write isekai stories at the inception of this series, I quickly realized that the basic structure of the world I’d set up lent itself well to such stories. This structure, in turn, would allow me to show the bizarre world of the Dazzling Skies from an outsider’s perspective.

Book 2‘s protagonist, Kaito, is from a strange world himself – a far-future version of our world where everyone has hyper-advanced biotech altering their perception of reality, and where a particularly angry breed of cow changed the course of history – but the world under the Dazzling Skies is far stranger than anything he’s ever encountered. Though, fortunately for him, it does share some similarities with his favorite Immersive Video Game series … 😉

Isekai Skies (Monster Punk Horizon #2) is set to release on Kindle Unlimited this November, and is already available for preorder.

And again, if you’d like to be one of the lucky people to read it early, be sure to join the Pug Scouts – our VIP Street Team! 😀 I’ll be sending out eARCs soon, and all you have to do in exchange for your free book is post a review once the book is live!

Join Our Street Team Here!

In the meantime, keep your eyes on the blog next week for the cover reveal of Monster Punk Horizon #3!  😀

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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

Introducing Monster Punk Horizon – a New GameLit Series from H.P. Holo!

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Yesterday’s blog post told you there’d be interesting book-and-monster-related news, and here it is!

It’s been a looooong time coming, but I’m excited to announce that I finally have a new series coming out! 😀

What new series is this, you ask? 😮 Well, read on!

Where my last book The Wizard’s Way was a love letter to all things steampunk, this series is a love letter to all things monster – hunting, collecting, researching … and sometimes, befriending and bribing into badass kaiju battles. 😄

See, while I was in the process of writing The (still-in-progress) Wizard’s Circus, I flipped through some of my early writing notebooks from middle school and junior high. Around that time, I was obsessed with Pokémon, Digimon, Monster Rancher, and virtually every other monster franchise that was coming over from Japan at that time – and it showed in my writing. There were monsters and monster trainers/tamers/friends everywhere, and as I continued to flip through these notebooks, I realized that decades later, I’m still into these kinds of franchises.

After all, as of recently, Jacob and I have been spending our weekends competing in Digimon Card Game tournaments, and even before that we spent most evenings playing Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise together!

It was then that an idea hit me, and would not let go until I’d brought it to realization – a series that pays loving homage to all those monster franchises in much the same way The Wizard’s Way did to steampunk fantasy.

And so, without further ado, I present to you Monster Punk Horizon, a GameLit fantasy adventure comedy coming soon to Kindle Unlimited! 

Cover art by Jackson Tjota

Monster Punk Horizon #1

🌟 GameLit 🌟 Fantasy 🌟 Adventure 🌟 Comedy 🌟

✨ Coming October 14th, 2021! ✨

Audio Release Date TBA

🐉🐉🐉

Monster Hunting for Fun and Profit!

Pix and Jaz are two girls who just want to hunt monsters, craft armor, and pay off their college loans—but when a colossal new monster falls through the portals in the Dazzling Skies, it’ll take all their skills to survive it.

Their skill levels? Slightly above noob.

Fortunately, they have their oversized swords, a lot of sass … and one giant monster friend who might help them out.

For a price…

Preorder Here!
Or Read a Sample Here!

The eBook is already up for preorder on Amazon (and paperback and audio are coming), but if you’d like to be one of the lucky people to read it early, be sure to join the Pug Scouts – our VIP Street Team! 😀

Join our Street Team Here!

I’ll be sending review copies out to Street Team members soon, and all you have to do in return for your free copy is post a review online once the book releases! 😀

In the meantime, keep an eye on the blog for next week’s cover reveal for Monster Punk Horizon #2! 😄

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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

The Valkyrie Protocol is now available in audio!

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It’s turning out to be a good summer for audiobooks – especially for our Gordian Division fans. 😀

This one came as a surprise to even us! 😮 But after a long wait, the audiobook version of The Valkyrie Protocol (Gordian Division #2) (once again published by Baen Books and narrated by the excellent Gabriel Vaughan) is finally out and ready to entertain your eager ears. 😄

We’re excited to finally tell you about it, and hope you find it worth the wait! 😊

You can currently find it on:

AUDIBLE
AMAZON AUDIO

Also, if you haven’t yet started your adventures through time and alternate history, The Gordian Protocol (Gordian Division #1) is out and ready for the listening on:

AUDIBLE
AMAZON AUDIO

Enjoy! 😄

Vote for The Valkyrie Protocol in The Dragon Awards!

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Hey, readers! If you’re a fan of things and like to wield your fan power in fun ways, then let me introduce you to The Dragon Awards.

Hosted by Dragon Con, The Dragon Awards are annual awards given to the year’s best in science fiction and fantasy entertainment – that’s books, movies, television, comics, the whole shebang.

What makes them stand out from other awards of their ilk? They’re entirely decided by you, the fans. 😀 You don’t even have to have a Dragon Con membership to vote!

That said, The Dragon Awards nomination period is open now and will run through July 19th, 2021, but the earlier you get your nominations in, the better.

And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that Jacob and David’s The Valkyrie Protocol is eligible this year for Best Alternate History Novel. 😉 *wink wink*

To submit your choices, visit this page on the Dragon Con website before July 19th.

Remember, nominations need to have been released between July 1st, 2020 and June 30th, 2021, and you can only nominate a title in one category. (If you nominate it in multiple categories, then all are rejected. 😧)

The Valkyrie Protocol aside 😉, what are you voting for this year?

Bane of the Dead is now available in audio!

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Surprise, Seraphim Revival fans! 😀 You asked, we listened, and now here it is, the first audiobook in the Seraphim Revival trilogy: Bane of the Dead!

I spent the past several months working with our narrator, Justin Ross Mascorro, to bring this book to perfection. He may be new to the audiobook scene, but I think he did a fantastic job bringing all Jacob’s characters to life, and we’re excited to finally release it into the wild for you to enjoy. 😄

You can currently find it on:

AUDIBLE
AMAZON AUDIO
APPLE BOOKS

Throne of the Dead will follow close behind – in fact, I’m listening to Justin’s recordings right now! – and Disciple of the Dead will come a few months after that.

It’s hard to plan for specific release dates, as that comes down to how fast our distributor can approve the audiobooks once submitted, but we expect the entire trilogy to be out by Late Fall/Early Winter (and hopefully much sooner than that).

Also, to celebrate the release of our shiny, new audiobooks, I’ve given the eBooks some shiny, new covers! 😀

I’ll also be updating the eBooks themselves to remove some tenacious little errors we discovered during recording that somehow managed to escape our initial copyedits, way back when we first released the series.

The print versions will be updated, too, but that won’t be until we’ve finished the Disciple of the Dead audiobook.

Until then, we hope you enjoy listening to Bane of the Dead! 😀

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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

David Weber and Jacob on the Baen Free Radio Hour!

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It’s time for another Valkyrie Protocol interview! 😀

This time, David and Jacob chat with Baen Books editor Tony Daniel over on the Baen Free Radio Hour. The YouTube link is embedded below, but if you’d like to listen to the podcast version, you can find it here (or wherever you download your favorite podcasts)! 😄

David and Jacob chat the Gordian Division series at ROFCon!

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If you were at the first virtual ROFCon this weekend, you were treated to a whole bunch of sci-fi and fantasy authors doing what they do best (well, other than writing that is 😉) – including David and Jacob chatting about the Gordian Division series.

If not, it’s archived below for your viewing pleasure! 😄

And there’s plenty more where that came from! If you need to scratch that con itch, go check out the Ring of Fire Press channel on YouTube for a collection of panel videos from the con! 😀

David Weber and Jacob are coming up on Publishers Weekly’s Books on Tap Live!

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Publisher's Weekly presents Books on Tap Live: An Author Event Series

Rejoice, Gordian Division fans, for there’s another live stream in your future! 😀

On Wednesday, October 7th @ 4pm EST, David and Jacob will chat The Valkyrie Protocol on Publishers Weekly‘s author event series Books on Tap Live! If you’re up for a chill evening hanging out with authors through the magic of the Internet, check it out on Facebook, YouTube, or the official Books on Tap Live page.

You can also enter to win a signed copy of The Valkyrie Protocol – and, while you’re at it, submit questions for Publishers Weekly to ask David and Jacob!

If that’s your style, click here or on the image below for more information. We hope to hear from you! 😊

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UPDATE: Here’s the archived video! 😀

David Weber and Jacob talk The Valkyrie Protocol on the Weberverse!

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Here’s even more from The Weberverse! This time, David and Jacob chat The Valkyrie Protocol together, from how the whole adventure started to the details of the writing process.

Signed Preorders and Author Chats over at Mysterious Galaxy!

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Mysteriouys Galaxy presents David Weber and Jacob Holo discussing The Valkyrie Protocol: October 4th @ 2pm PT

We’re less than a month away from the release of The Valkyrie Protocol, which means it’s almost time for interviews and live streams galore! 😀

For our first, the booksellers over at Mysterious Galaxy will be hosting David and Jacob for a discussion about all things Valkyrie on October 4th at 2pm PT (5pm EST). The event requires signup, so don’t forget to hop on over to the event page to register!

They’re also accepting preorders for signed copies of The Valkyrie Protocol, so if that sounds up your alley, be sure to order from their website! (You’ll want to scroll down to see the order option.)

We hope to see you then! 😀

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UPDATE: Here’s the archived video!