Seven years ago, Tom Abrahams was a successful reporter and Channel 13 anchor who wanted to be a novelist. With some encouragement from his wife, he decided to plunge in and wrote ​Sedition​, a political thriller. The self-published ​novel​ was soon followed by a second and then a third title. Fast forward to today, Abrahams has written and released 23 books, many of which hit the top 100 list on Amazon. Oh, and a production company recently optioned one of his three-book ​SpaceMan​ sci-fi series.

This month Abrahams closes out his ​Traveler​ series, an eight-book, post-apocalyptic adventure collection set in Texas, saying goodbye to his dark hero Marcus Battle. Abrahams admits it’s a bittersweet moment. “It's hard to let go of something that I enjoy writing,” he tells us.

The series is action-packed, starting in what Abrahams calls “pre-scourge” days, before the onset of a global epidemic that wipes out most of the population, including Battle’s wife and young son. The government collapses in the wake of the plague, leaving the few remaining survivors at the mercy of brutal cartels. Ensconced in his fortified and isolated compound near Abilene, Battle manages to avoid any contact with the outside world until a woman runs onto his property screaming for help.

Realizing she’s being chased by cartel soldiers, Battle kills her pursuers and saves her life. It’s a choice that changes Battle’s solitary existence forever. One soldier escaped the confrontation and returns with reinforcements.

Abrahams says it takes him about 90 days to write the first draft of a book. Then it goes to his editor is in Washington, D.C. and proofreaders in Canada and the U.S. His cover artist is in Bulgaria, and his formatter is in England. From start to finish, it takes him about five months to get a book complete and out to readers. In 2019, Abrahams will release four books. Last year, he released six.

Yet still: “There are people who are publishing faster than me,” he tells us.

Readers have changed, he says. Folks both like to binge watch and binge read these days, making the demand for more words ever greater. It’s only the big-name authors with big publishing houses behind them that can release one book a year. “I wish I could write faster, but I have a job and a family,” he says.

Even at such a breakneck pace, he still tries to strike a balance between what his audience wants to read and what he wants to write. For example, he removed a Make America Great Again T-shirt one character was wearing after readers commented on it as pro-Trump propaganda. “The book was written before Trump was the nominee, much less the president,” explains Abrahams. “I don’t want my books to be political.”

How will readers react to the end of the ​Traveler​ series when the final book, ​Harbor,​ is released later this month? How will they—and Abrahams—feel about saying goodbye to Marcus Battle?

“[Marcus Battle] is still active in my head," he says. "But he's tired. He wants a break. I’m ready to let Marcus rest.”

For info about Tom Abrahams and his books, including the Traveler series, visit p​itonpress.com​.