So we are more or less moved into our new (old) house, though there is this overdue kid’s book from the library that somehow got lost during the move, and we haven’t been able to find it… but aside from that, we are more or less settled in. Our five year-old has started kindergarten, my wife is starting her new job, and by the time this post goes live, we will have acquired office chairs from the BYU surplus sale, so I won’t have to be standing all the time like I am as I write this.
I’ve already gotten back into writing my epic fantasy, The Soulbond and the Sling, and am making steady progress on it again. The AI draft is about 66% complete, and it’s good enough that if I were writing it under a secret AI-only pen name, I would feel comfortable publishing it as-is. But my personal standard of quality is higher than that, especially for epic fantasy, so after the AI draft is complete, I will rewrite the whole thing without any AI, to put it in my own voice (and will probably add a whole lot of other stuff to it too—you know, the kind of setting and character details you’d expect in a proper epic fantasy, giving it much more depth).
(Also, as a side note, I do not have a secret AI-only pen name… though I must admit, a part of me kind of wants to start one. With a little bit of market research to figure out the pulpiest genres where I could really excel… but no, with two (soon to be three) small kids and a wife who works full-time, there are only so many projects I can work on at a time.)
I’m also working on The Road to New Jerusalem for my J.M. Wight pen name, though that one has been going much more slow. I really have no idea how much market appeal this one is going to have, and doubt it will do much more than help me to flesh out the world for a potential series in the same universe (a post-apocalyptic Mormon polygamist romance, which also probably has limited market appeal). However, I feel impressed that this is a book I need to see through to the end, so my goal is to finish it before October, at which point I will probably focus on The Soulbound King.
Beyond that, I’m also working on two other novels that I hope to finish before the end of the year (or, more realistically, sometime early next year, since I’m sure the new baby will throw things off for a while. The first is The Unknown Sea, a Sea Mage Cycle book, which is going to be a lot of fun. The rough AI draft is already done, and I had a real blast writing it.
The other one is Captive of the Falconstar, the sequel to Queen of the Falconstar. The rough AI draft is also done for this one, but the revised AI draft is going to take a bit more work. Also, I need to redo the cover and blurb. But I’m really looking forward to getting this one out, and completing the trilogy, which has stood unfinished for nearly a decade now. Yes, I really need to finish these unfinished series, and fully intend to do so—not just with this one, but for all of them.
Over the next year, I hope to transition from being a science fiction writer who occasionally writes fantasy, to a fantasy writer who occasionally writes science fiction. My two big unfinished sci-fi series are the Falconstar Trilogy and the Outworld Trilogy. The plan right now is to finish Falconstar first, knocking out the last two books almost at the same time (the rough AI draft for Lord of the Falconstar is also complete), and then spend a little more time on Return of the Starborn Son to finish that trilogy strong. For a long time, Star Wanderers was my flagship series, so I want to do right by it. But I haven’t even outlined book 3 yet, so it’s going to be a while.
And when Return of the Starborn Son is done, I will probably release another volume of my author’s notes, since hey, why not? But that won’t be for a while—probably not until this time next year, at the absolute soonest. However, Return of the Starborn Son probably will come out before The Soulbond and the Sling, since for marketing reasons I don’t want to release an epic fantasy trilogy until all three books are ready to rapid release. And yes, I fully blame George R.R. Martin for conditioning epic fantasy readers not to try out a new series until it is complete. It is what it is.
So that’s the long-term plan. I will probably start a few new projects as well, including a relaunch of my Christopher Columbus stories, once I figure out what I want to do with that series. But for now, I’m just going to focus on The Road to New Jerusalem and The Soulbond and the Sling, until we are back into a new routine. BYU classes start on September 3rd, so it will probably be a little crazy until then. And the way things are shaping up, I half-expect they will induce my wife at the tail-end of September. So maybe we won’t actually get into a new routine until sometime next year. But either way, I’ll do my best to keep writing.
