Category: Falconstar Trilogy

Crunching data and rethinking plans

So for the last week, I’ve been having some long reflections with ChatGPT (I say “reflection” instead of “discussion,” because generative AI is more like a sophisticated mirror than a mind) and crunching a bunch of the data that I’ve accumulated over the course of my career. It’s fascinating, because one of the things that generative AI is surprisingly good at is crunching large amounts of data and extracting interesting patterns from it. It’s less good at drawing useful conclusions, but that’s what God gave us humans a mind for.

One of the more interesting data points is that the ideal frequency with which to release new full-length novels is once every 3-6 months, ideally every 3-4 months. After 6 months without a novel release, sales tend to fall off, and after 9 months, they fall completely off of a cliff.

From this, I’ve decided to rework my release schedule, so that every January, May, and September, I have a new novel coming out. The goal is to have the next novel ready and up for preorder before the current one goes live. Between new novel releases, I plan to rerelease short stories, bundle and release box sets, or release new original short stories and novellas, with something coming out each month.

It’s an aggressive release schedule, but with the way I’ve incorporated AI into my writing process, I think I can manage it. It took me about 120 total writing man-hours to write Captive of the Falconstar, and with practice I can probably get that down lower. During the school year, while my wife is teaching or researching and I’m generally the one watching the kids, I can only get about an hour of work in each day, but I can do more like 2-3 hours in the summer, so that’s when I plan to catch up. That comes to about 400 man-hours of writing time in a given year, which is more than enough to write three 120 man-hour novels.

I’m going to try to give myself a bit of a buffer, though. After Captive of the Falconstar comes out in July, I plan to wait 6 months and publish The Unknown Sea in January 2027. The next release will be Lord of the Falconstar in May 2027, concluding the Falconstar Trilogy. After that, I plan to launch the Rise of the Falconstar Trilogy in September 2027 with The Soulbond and the Sling, following up with books 2 and 3 in January and May 2028.

My big summer project this year is The Unknown Sea, which I will probably finish sometime next month. After that, I’ll work on Lord of the Falconstar with a goal of finishing it well before the end of the year. Should be very doable. And since the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling is already complete, it shouldn’t take more than a few months to finish it. So by the time January 2027 rolls around, I may be more than halfway done with my September release for that year.

That’s the plan, anyway. I may want to experiment with crowdfunding some of these novels, especially The Soulbond and the Sling—which is another good reason to push it back to September 2027. But we’ll see how it goes.

Full steam ahead!

I’ve been making good progress on The Unknown Sea this week, pushing forward at a very good rate now that my wife is at home watching the kids. She’s got the next couple of months off for the summer, allowing me to write full-time, and I plan to take advantage of that as much as I can. This was the first week of that, and while I still feel like I’m ramping up to full speed, I did get quite a bit of writing done.

Right now, The Unknown Sea is at about 50% for the AI draft, 28% for the rough human draft, 22% for the revised human draft, and 11% for the final polished draft. I’m experimenting with pushing through all of those draft phases at once, obviously with different parts of the novel being at different stages. If everything proceeds according to my outline, the final draft will clock in at around sixteen chapters, 53 scenes, and between 65k to 70k words (or around 180 – 220 pages).

I probably won’t be able to finish it before the end of May, but I do think I can finish it by mid-June. It’s going to take a lot of work, but I’ve got the time now, so it’s mostly just a matter of buckling down and making it happen. It’s about the same length as Captive of the Falconstar, which took about 120 writing hours to finish, and I’ve already put in about 50 writing hours. To finish The Unknown Sea by May 15th, I need to average about 3.5 writing hours per day, which is going to be a bit tricky since 1) I still have a bunch of publishing tasks to work on, and 2) we have a family trip to Coeur D’Alene in the middle of that, but I think I can manage it.

I would really like to have it sufficiently finished so that I can start work on Lord of the Falconstar before Captive of the Falconstar releases in July. That way, I can estimate how much time I need to finish Lord of the Falconstar and have it up for preorder. But I may go ahead and put it up for preorder anyway, just with a long enough lead-time that I know I can have the book done before then.

What I’ll probably do is put The Unknown Sea up for preorder with a release date around October-November 2026, and Lord of the Falconstar up with a release date around January-February 2027. I’ve got a rough AI draft done for Lord of the Falconstar, but not much more than that, and I probably need to update some of the character cards and chapter prompts, which is also going to take time. So Lord of the Falconstar probably won’t come out until sometime in 2027, regardless.

Writing full-time over the summer

My parents were both high school teachers, and they told me that the three best things about being a teacher are: June, July, and August. My wife is a BYU professor, so she’s got a two month break instead of a three month break, but she can take it anytime over the summer, and she’s decided to start it next week. That way, she’ll be watching the kids from the end of BYU kindergarten to the week after Writers Cantina in July, giving me all that time to write full-time.

I am really looking forward to it! With luck, I can finish The Unknown Sea and push far enough into Lord of the Falconstar that I can put it up for preorder before Captive of the Falconstar is released. It’s going to take a lot of work, but I think I can do it. Captive took me a total of 120 hours to write, and I’m already about a third of the way through The Unknown Sea, so I can probably finish that by the first half of June. And then, I’ll go full ahead on Lord of the Falconstar to have that trilogy well and truly done by the end of the summer.

Looking forward, we have a wedding at the end of May, and a family trip up to Idaho in the first week of June. Coeur d’Alene is a solid 10 hour drive from Orem, Utah, which is one heck of a crazy haul, but we’ve done it before, though not with three kids. We’ll only be there for a weekend. Other than that, we’ll be at home for most of that time. So that’s the plan.

As for The Unknown Sea, it’s coming along very well, but I only have another half hour to work on it before it’s time to put the kids to bed, so I’d better get back to that now.

Is Captive of the Falconstar For You?

Is Captive of the Falconstar for you?

Captive of the Falconstar is a dark, character-driven space opera about captivity, ambition, survival, and the brutal politics of power among the Hameji star clans. It follows Zenoba as she tries to secure her place as Queen of the Falconstar, while Sonya—still trapped as a captive servant—clings to the hope of freedom, home, and revenge. This is a tense, intimate, politically charged story for readers who like their space opera full of court intrigue, moral danger, starship raids, and emotional betrayal.

What Kind of Reader Will Love Captive of the Falconstar?

If you love dark space opera with dynastic politics, warrior star clans, arranged marriages, captivity, espionage, and power struggles inside a ruling household, then Captive of the Falconstar is probably your kind of story. This book is especially for readers who enjoy morally complicated female characters, ruthless survival choices, political marriages, pregnancy and succession stakes, revenge arcs, and stories where personal relationships become battlegrounds for control, loyalty, and identity.

What You’ll Find Inside

Inside Captive of the Falconstar, you’ll find a former captive who has remade herself into a queen, a still-captive servant who refuses to forget who she was, and a weakened star clan fighting to restore its lost power. The story moves between intimate household tension, religious prophecy, starship combat, espionage, and political maneuvering, with a mood that is dark, intense, sensual, and increasingly dangerous. The pacing balances character drama with bursts of military space opera action, making the book feel both personal and epic.

What Makes Captive of the Falconstar Different

Where many space operas focus mainly on fleets, empires, and battles, Captive of the Falconstar puts dynastic survival and household politics at the center of the conflict. It has the clan warfare and starship action of military science fiction, but the emotional engine is closer to a dark court-intrigue fantasy, where marriages, heirs, names, servants, concubines, and rival queens matter as much as weapons and ships. Readers who enjoy the political intensity of royal fantasy, but want it transplanted into a star-spanning frontier setting, will find a lot to sink their teeth into here. What sets it apart is the way it refuses to make power simple: survival, loyalty, ambition, love, and coercion are all tangled together aboard the Falconstar.

What You Won’t Find

This is not a light, cozy, or comfort-read space adventure. It deals directly with captivity, slavery, sexual power dynamics, coercion, polygyny, pregnancy, revenge, and morally compromised choices, so readers looking for clean-cut heroes or a straightforward romance may not be the right fit. You also won’t find a simple “escape from the villains” story—the book is much more interested in what captivity does to identity, and what people become when power is the only protection they can find.

Why I Think You Might Love It

I think this story matters because it pushes the questions from Queen of the Falconstar even further: what happens when a woman survives by becoming ruthlessly competent, only to discover that the system she has mastered can still turn against her? Zenoba fascinates me because she is brilliant, dangerous, and deeply human, while Sonya gives the story its wounded conscience and its hunger for justice. If you like stories about power, identity, survival, and the terrible cost of becoming what the world demands, I think Captive of the Falconstar will stay with you.

Where to Get the Book

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Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for the Falconstar Trilogy.

Return to the book page for Captive of the Falconstar.

Back to writing fantasy

Now that I’ve finished Captive of the Falconstar, I’m back to writing fantasy again, this time The Unknown Sea from the Sea Mage Cycle. I was going to focus on The Soulbond and the Sling, but this book is much shorter, and I think I can have it up for preorder by the time Captive goes live. It’s also about a quarter of the way finished already, so finishing it will only take a little push.

What I really don’t want to do is spend six months working on a WIP that I won’t be able to release this year, or maybe even next year, only to have my sales fall off a cliff because I haven’t been publishing anything. Which means that there may never be a good time to work on The Soulbond and the Sling (or The People of the Last Harvest, for that matter), but if I can set up a few long-term preorders, that may give me the space I need. I’m also going to try making it a side project and working on it on the side, for those rare times when I get an extra hour or two.

There are two more science fiction books that I plan to write: Lord of the Falconstar and Return of the Starborn Son. Both of those will complete a trilogy (The Falconstar Trilogy and the Outworld Trilogy, respectively). But I plan to intersperse those projects with fantasy WIPs, so that I’ll alternate between fantasy and science fiction until those unfinished trilogies are all complete. And then, I’ll focus exclusively on writing fantasy.

The Unknown Sea shouldn’t take long to finish, though the AI draft is rougher than I remember it being. I suppose that means I’m getting better at this, since my older work now seems so much worse. All that really means is that the human draft will take longer, since I’ll fix it all up and make it good for the final draft. But I don’t think I will be finished with this WIP until at least the end of June, and probably the end of July.

My wife plans to fill out her 10 month contract on schedule, giving her two months off in the summer. That should give me July and most of August to write full-time. Perhaps that will be a good chance to work on The Soulbond and the Sling, or finish up Lord of the Falconstar quickly enough that I can put it on a long-term preorder and spend the next six months working on the Soulbound King books. We’ll see how it goes.

Captive of the Falconstar is complete!

I just finished it this morning. The final draft clocks in at twelve chapters, 63 scenes, and 64,372 words (or approximately 220 pages, though I still need to typeset it). I’ll send it off to my editor later today.

Next WIP(s): The Soulbond and the Sling and The Soulbond and the Lady.

Ruthless Female Competence in Queen of the Falconstar

What does it take for a woman to survive when every safe, familiar, and comfortable part of her life is stripped away? In Queen of the Falconstar, Zlata is not the strongest person in the room, the most powerful, or the most protected—but she is often the quickest to see the truth of a situation and adapt to it. Her story is about ruthless female competence: the kind of intelligence, self-control, ambition, and strategic courage that can turn captivity into opportunity.

Where the Idea Came From

The part of this story that excited me most from the beginning was Zlata herself. I wanted to write a heroine who was crafty, pragmatic, resourceful, slightly pessimistic, and above all realistic—someone who accepts the world as it is, even when that world is ugly, and prepares herself to deal with it accordingly. She is ruthless when she needs to be, but not because she enjoys cruelty. Her ruthlessness comes from clarity: she sees what is happening, measures the danger, and does what she believes must be done. That made her a fascinating character to follow into a story full of slavery, sex, power, polygamy, captivity, and survival—dark material that I struggled for years to handle tastefully, but couldn’t quite let go.

How Ruthless Female Competence Shapes the Story

At the beginning of Queen of the Falconstar, Zlata is trapped in a small, stagnant world where competence is useful but unrewarded. On Graznav Station, she works under people who are lazy, complacent, or protected by patronage. She understands how fragile the station really is. She knows how to solve problems that other people ignore. But she has no real authority, no path upward, and no way to become the woman she knows she could be. Her frustration is not simply that she wants adventure; it is that she wants a life where competence matters.

That changes when the Valdamar star clan raids her home and carries her away captive. On the Falconstar, Zlata enters a brutal hierarchy where weakness can destroy you, but usefulness can raise you. She studies the ship, the clan, the customs, the politics, and the people around her. She learns when to submit, when to resist, when to speak, when to remain silent, and when to strike. Her rise from Zlata to Zenoba is not a simple empowerment fantasy. It is a dangerous transformation. She survives by making herself indispensable, but every step upward requires her to become harder, sharper, and more willing to play by the rules of a ruthless world.

That is why her relationship with Sonya is so important. Sonya reminds us what captivity costs emotionally, while Zlata shows what it takes to survive strategically. Zlata protects Sonya, but she also frightens her. She becomes powerful enough to save her friend, but also powerful enough to command her. By the end, Zlata has not merely escaped victimhood—she has become Lady Zenoba, Queen of the Falconstar. The victory is real, but it is not innocent. Her competence saves her life, earns her a place, and gives her power, but it also changes the way she sees herself and everyone around her.

What This Theme Says About Us

Ruthless female competence speaks to a deep human question: what do we do when the world does not reward goodness, innocence, or fairness? Some people break. Some people retreat into fantasy. Some people become cruel. But others learn to see clearly, act decisively, and carve out a place for themselves without waiting for permission. Zlata’s story does not pretend that power is clean or survival is simple. It asks whether a woman can become strong enough to rule without losing the part of herself that first made her worth following.

Why This Theme Matters to Me

Zlata mattered to me because she would not leave me alone. Even when I had doubts about the story, even when I trunked the project, even when the darker material made me question whether I could handle it the right way, I kept coming back to her. I loved the challenge of writing a woman who is not soft, sentimental, or conventionally heroic, but who is still deeply compelling because she sees reality and refuses to be crushed by it. In many ways, Queen of the Falconstar exists because I wanted to know what would happen if a woman like Zlata were thrown into one of the harshest societies I could imagine—and whether she would survive it, escape it, or learn how to rule it.

Where to Get the Book

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for the Falconstar Trilogy.

Return to the book page for Queen of the Falconstar.