Category: Queen of the Falconstar

State of the Vasicek 2015

I recently read a post over on Brandon Sanderson’s blog where he did an exhaustive recap on his writing and update on all of his WIPs, and called it State of the Sanderson. Since it’s the end of the year and I’m already looking back in order to make some new resolutions for 2016, it seems like a good opportunity to do something similar myself.

In 2015, I managed to publish five books, including two novels, a novelette, and two short stories:

In addition, I wrote a number of short stories that are currently on submission to the major markets, and will probably be published (by myself or in the magazines) sometime in 2016. These include:

  • Killing Mr. Wilson — Time Travel (950 words)
  • My Name Is For My Friends — Sword & Sorcery (2,000 words)
  • Utahraptors at Dawn — Cyberpunk (1,950 words)
  • Welcome to Condescension — Sci-fi Humor (750 words)
  • A Less Than Perfect Game — Sword & Sorcery (1,250 words)
  • Elusive Eden — LDS Science Fiction (2,200 words)
  • The Janus Anomaly — Space Opera (4,400 words)

All of these stories will get out eventually, though it may take a while. I’m putting them on submission to the short story magazines and anthologies that pay at least semi-professional rates, since none of them buy exclusive rights to the stories. Why rush to self-publish if I can get paid twice?

In a lot of ways, it was a pretty decent year. In other ways, I wish it had been more productive. I didn’t publish anything for the first six months, except for A Hill on Which to Die, which I later unpublished in order to take it out of Kindle Unlimited (the first and probably last time I will ever experiment with exclusivity). I made up for it later, but still.

Next year is going to be a lot more productive, I hope. I started a lot more projects this year than I finished, so in 2016 I plan to refocus on the writing and substantially increase my output.

As for writing projects, here is what I’m working on:

Major Projects

Sons of the Starfarers

There are five more books before this series is complete, and while I know more or less how the series is going to end, I’m still in the process of writing it. However, I’m making good enough progress to publish at least two more books in the series this year, possibly three or four.

Captives in Obscurity (Book V) is already written and ready to send off to the editor. Trouble is, cash is kind of tight right now and I probably won’t be able to send it off until after I’ve filed my taxes, which I hope to do early February (I always try to get a jump on tax season each year). For now, that means I’m looking for a launch in May.

Patriots in Retreat (Book VI) is my current WIP, and I hope to have the first draft finished before the end of January. A lot of stuff happens in this book—it’s kind of like the Empire Strikes Back episode, where crap hits the fan and things get real. Then again, Friends in Command (Book IV) was kind of like that too, and Captives in Obscurity has some really crazy developments… point is, I think you guys are going to like these books.

Haven’t outlined any of the other books in the series yet, but I’m a pantser so that’s normal. I do have a climactic ending that I’m working toward, which will tie in this series with all of my other books in the same universe. It’s going to be great to see it all come together, and I expect it will over the course of the next year!

STATUS: Book VI currently in progress.

Gunslinger to the Stars

I started this book in earnest a few months ago, then hit chapter 2 and realized I had a beginning and an end but no idea what to put in the middle. So I put the project on the back burner, letting the ideas percolate until I’m ready to pick it up again and go full throttle. With luck, that will happen very soon.

This is a really awesome project, and one of the ones I’m most excited about. I’ll post a few excerpts in the next few weeks to give you guys a taste, and I think you’re really going to like it!

STATUS: On the back burner, will resume again soon.

Queen of the Falconstar

A few of the readers who enjoyed my Star Wanderers books have mentioned that they wish Jeremiah, Noemi, and Mariya had ended up in a polygamous relationship. While I don’t think that would have worked for that particular story, in Queen of the Falconstar, it’s a major plot point. In addition, the book is an origin story for the Hameji, which should be a lot of fun for readers of my other books as well.

I’ve been working on this project off and on for the last year or so, and while I have a pretty good handle on the main storyline, I’m still a little iffy about how to proceed. It may have some promise as a hybrid between Space Opera and Sword and Planet (sword and starship? Is that even a thing?). The Princess of Mars books are on my reading list, so I’ll probably revisit this project after reading through some of those.

STATUS: On the back burner.

The Sword Keeper

I really need to finish this book. It’s already more than half written, and has some really fantastic potential. For the last three years, I’ve been working on it off and on, but 2016 will definitely be the year that I finish it (though it might still be a while before it’s published).

STATUS: On the back burner.

Secondary Projects

Starship Lachoneus

In spite of finishing the prologue and publishing it as “Worlds Without Number” under my J.M. Wight pen name, I haven’t yet made a serious attempt to write this book. The main reason is that it’s a passion project that I don’t expect to pay off very well or earn me much prestige. Still, when my career is at a point where I can afford more time for a passion project, I will probably pick it up.

STATUS: On the back burner.

The Genesis Earth Trilogy

Genesis Earth is a standalone book, but I realized soon after finishing it that I could easily turn it into a trilogy. Back in 2011, I even started writing the second book: Edenfall. But one thing led to another, and it got put on hold in favor of Star Wanderers.

The trilogy is still on hold, but if there is enough interest, I could certainly resume work on it. I made Genesis Earth free for the month of December, and it’s had a much stronger free run than I’d anticipated (especially with almost no advertising). Depending on the feedback I get from readers, I’ll finish this project sooner or later.

STATUS: On hold, may resume soon.

Mercenary Savior

This is a prequel to Bringing Stella Home that I’ve had kicking around in my head for the last two years. The interest in Heart of the Nebula has been surprisingly steady, even more than a month after publication. If either of those books starts to break out, then I will definitely pick up this project. Otherwise, I can’t justify making it a priority.

STATUS: On hold.

Empress of the Free Stars

Empress of the Free Stars is a sequel to Stars of Blood and Glory that I started back in 2013 but never got further than the prologue. Again, unless my Gaia Nova books start to break out, I can’t justify prioritizing this over my other WIPs.

STATUS: On hold.

Children of the Starry Sea

This one is a novelized sequel to Star Wanderers, with all of the major characters from that series. I know there’s some interest in this one, but for now I think my time would better be spent launching new series rather than returning to old ones. But in 2016, that may well change.

STATUS: On hold.

Lifewalker

This is a standalone I started back in 2013, and I even got several chapters into it before I put it on the back burner. Haven’t touched it since, so right now it’s really more on hold, but my Dad keeps bugging me to finish it (he read the first chapter and really liked it). So yeah. Someday.

I will say this, though: if the short story that’s derived from this book gets picked up by one of the magazines, I will definitely move it up in the writing queue.

STATUS: On hold.

A Brotherhood of Swords

This book is supposed to be a Sword & Sorcery prequel to The Sword Keeper, but since I already have plans for that book, this one is on hold. I did get a really good short story out of it, though.

STATUS: On hold.

That pretty much does it. This next year is going to be super, super busy, and hopefully productive as well. My goal for 2016 is to get back in the saddle, writing full-time again as soon as I can. There are other resolutions I plan to make as well, but those can wait until Thursday.

It’s done!

Yesterday I finally finished the second draft of Friends in Command (Sons of the Starfarers: Book IV)! I know I’d said I was working on other projects, but those were intermittent—this was the main one I was focusing on. I still need to run it by my first readers, but I’m pretty sure this is the version that I’ll publish. If all goes well, you can expect to see this go up on pre-order before the end of March.

While working on the revisions for Friends in Command, I more or less plotted out the rest of the Sons of the Starfarers series in my head. There are going to be nine books total, most of them around 40,000 to 50,000 words (or 150 to 200 pages). It will probably take me between two and four months to write each of them, including sending them off to first readers and implementing their feedback. If my first readers come back with problems, though, it might take more like five or six months.

While I’m definitely committed to finishing up this series, I’m probably not going to work exclusively on Sons of the Starfarers. As much as I would like to wrap up this series and get it all out there, there are a lot of other projects calling out to me—projects that I’ve been putting off for far too long. Here are just a few of them:

STAR WANDERERS: CHILDREN OF THE STARRY SEA

Yes, I have another story in the Star Wanderers series to tell. This one is a full-length novel, though, and it takes place about sixteen years after the events of The Jeremiah Chronicles. It’ll be fun to bring back all the old characters, but this story is mostly about their children (hence the title). This WIP is still in the early outlining stages, but I have lots of ideas with where to take it. I’ll probably write it sometime over the summer, unless there’s enough demand for me to write it sooner.

THE SWORD KEEPER

This is my epic fantasy novel that I’ve been writing on and off for the past two and a half years. I put it on the back burner last summer after I got blocked, but just last month I figured out what I needed to change to get the story flowing again. I could probably finish this one in a month if I focused on it. Hopefully, this is the year that I’ll finally get this one finished and publish it.

QUEEN OF THE FALCONSTAR

This is the passion project that distracted me while I was working on Friends in Command. I wrote about three chapters, put it on the back burner, and then daydreamed the whole rest of the book. Needless to say, I’m eager to get back to this one. I think it has a lot of potential—Star Wanderers was an unplanned passion project just like this one.

KING WASHINGTON

This is a new project that I haven’t blogged about yet. I’m collaborating on it with a friend (the story was actually his idea), and we’ve spent the last two or three weeks plotting out the entire series. All that is done now, so all we have to do is figure out our collaboration style and write the thing. We’re doing it in season/episode format, with five seasons of 12 episodes each. The episodes are each going to run about 20k to 30k words, so once we have our workflow down we should be able to pump out an episode every four to six weeks.

Lots and lots of stuff to work on—that’s partially why I haven’t been blogging much in the last few weeks. I hope to change that soon, though. And even if I’m not quite so active online as I have been, don’t worry—I’m still writing!

Squirrel!

So a couple of months ago, I set aside the first draft for Friends in Command (Sons of the Starfarers: Book IV) in order to let the story percolate a little in my mind. I do this from time to time, especially between deep revisions, in order to step back approach the story with a fresh mind. I’ve found that doing so tends to improve the quality of the story immensely.

I was fully intending to get back to Friends in Command this month (and still intend to do so eventually), but just as I was finishing up the 4.0 draft for Heart of the Nebula, I had this crazy awesome story idea pop into my head and I couldn’t not write it. It actually came to me right before I got to the last chapter, which led to this exasperated tweet:

So anyways, the working title for the squirrel! project is Queen of the Falconstar. It’s a sci-fi action & adventure standalone (for now, heh) that takes place in the same universe as Sons of the Starfarers, but a few hundred years into the future. The Outworld frontier has been more or less tamed, and the Hameji are beginning to establish themselves on the outer reaches of human space. It’s a brutal and dangerous universe outside of the major stellar empires—which of course is where this story takes place.

It’s the main character, Zlata, that I’m really excited about. She’s crafty, pragmatic, resourceful, and slightly pessimistic, a little like Mara from Sons of the Starfarers but without all the trauma and daddy issues. She’s ruthless when she needs to be, but can be quite altruistic whenever it’s practical. Above all else, she’s a realist, accepting things as they are and preparing herself to deal with them accordingly.

The story starts when pirates capture her home station and carry her and her best friend off as slaves. It turns out, though, that these aren’t ordinary pirates—they’re Hameji tribesmen from the Outer Reaches. The captain, Lord Khasan Valdamar, is a young Hameji commander trying to establish himself and build a war fleet to his name. He doesn’t have much to work with, though, and in the brutal world of intertribal Hameji politics, a single miscalculation could lead to the annihilation of his small clan.

Through a daring combination of intrigue and romance, Zlata convinces him to take both her and her friend as wives, thus raising their status and securing their future. But this sets off a tribal war, which she soon discovers is far more of an adventure than she ever bargained for.

That’s the basic story idea that I’m working with, at least. Like I said, I’m way excited about it! I don’t have any idea how long it’s going to be or what it’s going to turn into, but this is basically how Star Wanderers got started and that turned out rather well.

So I’ll probably dive into this rabbit hole for the next month or so to see what’s down there. But don’t worry, I fully intend to write Friends in Command as well. At the very latest, that one should be out sometime in the summer, though it will probably be ready much sooner. And when Queen of the Falconstar is finished, I think you’re really going to like this one as well!