Colin F. Barnes

In short, A.C. Hadfield is me.

It didn’t start out that way, though.

A few years ago, while I was writing post-apocalyptic fiction with my Code Breakers and Last Flotilla series, I had an idea for a space opera series. I worked with a co-author on it. Because we weren’t sure whether it would work out well, we decided to use a pen name to differentiate it from our other works.

My co-author and I published three books under the Hadfield moniker (the Carson Mach series). They did great, but for business reasons, we decided to go in different directions. It wasn’t acrimonious in the slightest; we decided to split our shared backlist, and I took control of the Hadfield name and books.

I then added three more volumes—Two Blackstar Command volumes and another called Vanguard Rising. As of Feb 2021 there are plans for a third Blackstar Command book to come out in the summer and perhaps even a couple more Vanguard Rising books later in the year if all things go well.

Moving on, I shall be keeping the A.C. Hadfield branding for all space opera books. Everything else will be under my name. That said, I’ll be using the same social media and newsletter for everything so as long as you’re signed-up, you’ll get any updates for Hadfield books.

To a number of my readers, it must seem as if I had entirely disappeared over the last couple of years. That’s partly due to my social media aversion (and nuking and un-nuking of my various accounts) and partly because of a range of things that interrupted my flow. These include, but not limited to:

• Spending 18 months dealing with a traditional publisher for a deal that ruined my productivity and kept me from indie publishing for a variety of reasons that are legion in number.
• A couple of collaborative projects that unfortunately didn’t work out as hoped. This took up about 8 months with ultimately nothing to show for it.
• Confusion over what I should write next and whether or not to use a pen name.
• A number of family deaths, an extended bout of mental illness.
• 2 house moves.
• The 2020 apocalypse.

All that combined to derail me and made it incredibly difficult to get back to previous years of productivity. That said, the worst is behind me, and for most of 2020 and 2021, I’ve been busy working on a new project, despite the wildfires, murder hornets, explosions, riots, plagues, and those four dudes on horseback traipsing all over the countryside.

I’ve so far written three books in a new urban fantasy series, Steve the Paladin—part of the Arkane Academy for the Gifted and Strange universe. The plan is to fill that out with multiple volumes and multiple interconnected series.

I haven’t completely abandoned science fiction, however. I’m currently planning on adding new titles to the various series as written by A.C. Hadfield. Oh yeah, if you didn’t know, A.C. Hadfield is me. There’s a little bit of a story there. You can read about it here.

As of writing this, I’m currently in the process of re-branding  and re-launching the Hadfield books ahead of the new additions.

Hopefully, world-shattering events aside, 2021 should see a glut of releases from here on in.