Stars of Blood and Glory – Page 6 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

New Kindle! And some new old projects as well

So I came out to Tbilisi today, because MY NEW KINDLE PAPERWHITE JUST ARRIVED!

Okay, sorry for the all-caps shouting, but I’m really happy that it finally got here. My old kindle broke down a few months ago, leaving me stranded in my tiny village without any books. With the weather getting worse and the power outages becoming more frequent, cabin fever has started to become a problem. So really, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

It shipped out almost a month ago, but Georgia (the country, not the state) is a fairly remote place, so it’s taken a looong time to get here. The wait has definitely been worth it, though. I love this device, especially the cover browsing function. And the backlight is going to be very, very useful, what with all the power outages we get in the village.

So I’m about 100 pages into The Sword Keeper, my latest project, and I realized that I need to do a lot more worldbuilding before I can continue. I’ve got a good handle on the characters and have more or less figured out the plot, but there are still a lot of holes in the setting. This new project is a fantasy novel, and it seems to be leaning more towards epic than heroic, so I probably should take the time to really build the world before trying to finish the story.

I’ve been drawing a lot of inspiration from my experience here in Georgia, but right now, I feel like I’m too close to it to really take it in the right direction. The time I spent in Jordan was a huge influence in Desert Stars, but I didn’t start it until I came home (and didn’t finish the first draft until almost two years later). Ideas are like wine: sometimes, you just need to let them sit in the back of your head and age for a while.

So long story short, I’ve decided to put The Sword Keeper on the back burner for a while. I’m sure I’ll come back to it, though–the story is far too interesting to let go. Magical thinking swords that meld with the minds of those who wield them, ancient prophecies and a secret order of warrior monks–and that’s just the backdrop. The characters themselves are much more interesting–I have got to tell their story!

But for now, I’m going to revisit the Gaia Nova universe and finish the revisions for Heart of the Nebula. This one is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and while it definitely still needs work, I feel like it’s almost there. The first draft had some major problems and needed to be revamped, especially toward the end. If all goes well, I should finish this pass before the end of November, with enough time to write another Star Wanderers story before the end of the year.

Stars of Blood and Glory is still with my first readers, but if they give it the green light, I hope to publish it sometime in February. This one is also a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, with Danica, Roman, Stella, and Stella’s son Abaqa, and a couple of characters from Desert Stars as well. I’m really excited about this story, but I figure it’s best to get some more feedback first before putting it out.

Which brings me to Star Wanderers: Homeworld (Part IV). I can’t promise that it will be out before the end of November, but that’s what I’m shooting for. Of course, I’m not going to put it out until I’m satisfied that it represents my best work, but even my first readers do come back with problems, I’m 99% confident I can fix them all by December at the latest. There is nothing–absolutely nothing–like the feeling you get when you finish a story where everything just comes together. I may not be the best judge of my own work, but I know that feeling. You can definitely expect to see this story come out before the end of the year.

That’s about all for now. Internet is spotty out in the village, but I’ve got a couple of interesting posts brewing in the back of my mind. I’ll probably write them up in the next few days, and post them the next time I get a chance. Until then, see you around!

Trope Tuesday: MacGuffin

holy grail — The Holy Grail of MacGuffins. Literally.

So the hero has crossed the threshold of adventure, thwarted the trickster, evaded the vamp, and met with the goddess. He may have lost his mentor and descended into the deepest dungeon, but by calling on the supernatural aid he received at the beginning of the quest, he has passed the final test, found atonement with his father, and come back stronger than he ever was before.

So now that that’s all done, what’s left? Just one thing, really–he has to receive the ultimate boon, or in other words, get the MacGuffin that he came out questing for in the first place.

A MacGuffin is an object whose main (sometimes only) purpose in a story is to motivate the plot. It is usually something that everyone is chasing after, whether it be a ticking time bomb, a briefcase full of money, a priceless artifact, or some sort of superweapon. Basically, it can be almost anything–that’s kind of the point. If you can replace an object with something completely different that serves the exact same plot purpose–for example, a priceless stolen Picasso with a priceless stolen Dead Sea scroll–then it’s a MacGuffin.

Like it or not, MacGuffins are everywhere in fiction. It’s such a prevalent trope, it even has its own Wikipedia page. One of the most famous examples, at least in the Western literary tradition, is the Holy Grail. Another example is the One Ring from Lord of the Rings–it could just as easily be a bracelet, or earring, or any other wearable artifact (though admittedly, if it were a necklace and Gollum had to bite off Frodo’s head, that would change the story quite a bit). The MacGuffin page on tvtropes lists nearly 30 subtropes, from Egg MacGuffin to I’m Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin.

So what does this have to do with the hero’s journey? The last phase of the initiation cycle (basically, all the stuff between the departure and return) is known as the Ultimate Boon. It not only represents the achievement of the hero’s quest, it represents receiving something to bring to the people back home. As Joseph Campbell pointed out:

The gods and goddesses then are to be understood as embodiments and custodians of the elixir of Imperishable Being, but not themselves the Ultimate in its primary state. What the hero seeks through his intercourse with them is therefore not finally themselves, but their grace, i.e., the power of their sustaining substance…This is the miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus, Yahweh, and the Supreme Buddha, the fertility of the rain of Viracocha, the virtue announced by the bell rung in the Mass at the consecration, and the light of the ultimate illumination of the saint and sage. Its guardians dare release it only to the duly proven.

According to Vogler, the hero has to return home with something to benefit himself or the community–otherwise, the whole journey has been a waste of time. Before entering the return phase, then, the hero has to receive the object of his quest.

At this point, it’s worth pointing out that tropes are neither good nor bad. Just because a story revolves around a MacGuffin doesn’t automatically make it cheap or formulaic. Tropes themselves are value neutral–what matters is how you, as the author, use them. Some of the greatest and most inspiring stories of all time make heavy use of MacGuffins.

Because the MacGuffin is a plot-centric trope, when you really understand how it works, you can do some interesting writerly things with it. Michael Moorcock, for example, used this trope to formulate a method for writing a novel in just three days. Would you like to be able to write a novel in three days? Gosh, I’d like to. And before you write that off as formulaic crap, remember, it wasn’t just anyone who came up with this method–it was Michael Moorcock.

In my own work, the best example of this trope would have to be Stella from Bringing Stella Home. As you might have gathered from the title, Stella serves as a MacGuffin for her brother James (specifically, in The President’s Daughter flavor). She does have her own character arc, of course, but as far as James’s storyline is concerned, she could just as well be his mother, or cousin, or <insert kidnapped loved one here>. I did a similar thing in Stars of Blood and Glory, an as-yet-unpublished sequel to Bringing Stella Home, but it should be coming out in January or February of next year so you’ll have a chance to read it then.

Update on STAR WANDERERS and other projects

So I’m back in Kutaisi again, recharging my netbook battery due to some chronic electricity problems out in the village. Seriously, I think I heard a transformer explode this morning. Anytime it rains, you can prettymuch expect a blackout here in rural Georgia. Hope for the best, plan for the worst–but that’s the subject for another post.

Anyhow, here’s where things currently stand with Star Wanderers:

Part III: Sacrifice is almost ready for publication, and will hopefully be up in a few weeks. I’m just waiting for some feedback from my first readers, to make sure there aren’t any major problems. I made some pretty big changes to the story after getting some helpful feedback I got from my friend Laura, so I don’t want to put it out until a few other eyes have seen it in its current form. Of course, I’ll need some help with proofreading, so if anyone wants to exchange services (proofreading or formatting), just shoot me an email.

As for Part IV: Homeworld, I’m currently wrapping up the 2.0 draft and should have it finished by the end of the week. I’m really excited about this story, especially the ending I have planned and the way I want to bring together all the threads from the first three parts. You know that moment when a story just comes together naturally, without being forced or anything? Yeah, that’s what I’m experiencing right now. It’s awesome.

So the plan is to publish Star Wanderers: Sacrifice (Part III) sometime in mid-late October, and to publish Star Wanderers: Homeworld (Part IV) sometime in November. As with parts I and II, they will both be free via Smashwords for the first two weeks to subscribers of my email newsletter. To sign up, fill out the form in the sidebar ——–>

This isn’t the end of the Star Wanderers series, of course. I’ve already completed the first draft of a parallel novelette to Part I: Outworlder from Noemi’s point of view. I’d also like to do stories with the other characters, like Samson or Mariya. And of course, there’s the omnibus for parts I-IV, which I’ll probably release early next year. If you’d like to see a story from any particular point of view in this universe, let me know–I’m always open to new ideas.

In the Gaia Nova series, I’m hoping to publish Stars of Blood and Glory by January. I’ve been in touch with my copy editor, and things are looking good for a 2012 release. I need to make another quick revision pass first, which I’ll probably finish in October, and then we’ll see about getting the ball rolling.

So that’s where things stand right now. I’m happy to see that sales are trending up on all the platforms where I’m published, which means that I can reinvest more in new titles and put them out more frequently. And my teaching schedule here in the village is pretty light, which means I have lots of time to write–that is, when we actually have electricity. And even when we don’t, there’s always pen and paper.

That’s just about it for now. My battery’s almost at 100% and it’s starting to get dark, so I’d better go. See you all later!

New print proof and an update on Star Wanderers

So the proof for Desert Stars came in the mail today, and it looks great!

No matter how much I do this, it never gets old. 🙂

It’s available now from CreateSpace, if you want to pick up a copy. If you’d rather buy it on Amazon, it should go live there in a few days. And if you want to buy an autographed copy of this one or Genesis Earth, let me know ASAP: I can order author copies and ship them wherever you want me to, but I’m leaving again for Georgia at the end of August, so I can only do that for the next two or three weeks.

As for Star Wanderers: Part II, I finished the major revisions just yesterday, and plan to go through it again this next week before publishing, mostly to fix typos and get it ready for publication. There weren’t too many story issues, but my first readers helped me to see a couple of areas where things were unclear (especially Laura–thanks for the awesome feedback!).

After going through this latest draft, I’ve got to say I am way excited to finish Part III and Part IV. It’s going to take a little more work, and it’ll definitely need some feedback before publishing, but I think I can have the first round of revisions done before the end of August. A couple of scenes are missing, and there are some key elments I need to change, but I definitely know where this story is going and I’m excited to tell it!

That’s about it for now. I’ve gotten some initial feedback from my first readers on Stars of Blood and Glory, and so far it’s been surprisingly positive. I may post the prologue here for you guys, or release it as an extra through the newsletter. The unpublished prologue for Bringing Stella Home would also make good newsletter content too, come to think of it…

Electronic publishing is like playing a really awesome video game. Once things get going and you really start getting into it, you just don’t want to stop!

Stars of Blood and Glory 2.0 is finished!

On Tuesday, I finished the second draft of my latest writing project, Stars of Blood and Glory! Here are the basic stats:

words: 78,746
pages: 372
chapters: 20, epilogue, and prologue
start date: 3 July 2012
end date: 24 July 2012

Also, this is probably really dorky, but I made a logo for the title:

They say to use only Courier or Times New Roman in your manuscript, but whatever. I think it looks pretty cool.

This was a lightning-fast revision, compared with the ones I did for Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars. Part of that is because I want to try and follow Heinlein’s rules more closely. I recently looked back at how I’ve spent my writing time over the past three years, and found out that as much as 3/4ths of it was tied up in revisions, not in producing new material. Yeah…that’s something that needs to change.

For this draft, I resisted the urge to do a line-by-line edit, and instead focused on rearranging the scenes in their proper order and inserting new ones that were essential to the story but missing from the first draft. That’s probably why it only took three weeks to finish.

I don’t think there are any glaring holes in the story, but if my first readers find any, I’ll probably do another scene rearranging draft much like this one. If they give me the green light, though, I’ll do a quick pass to fix any errors and send it off to my editor to start the publication process.

Two things about Stars of Blood and Glory have really surprised me: first, how little time it’s taken to write it (two months for the first draft, a little less than one for this one), and second, how short it is. Even with five viewpoint characters, it’s less than 80k (Bringing Stella Home was 110k). The pacing feels right, though, so that’s probably its natural length–it’s just that I seem to be writing shorter and shorter novels lately instead of longer ones. Maybe it has something to do with all those David Gemmell novels I love to read.

There’s more I could say, but I don’t want to bore you guys too much. Besides, you probably want me to move on to the next one.

My next writing project is Star Wanderers: Part II, which should take me about a week to revise and another week or two to finalize and publish. If any of you want to help me proofread the final draft, let me know–I’m willing to exchange services and/or give you a free copy.

In the meantime, I’d better get back to writing.

New blurbs and an interview

First of all, I recently did an interview with Elizabeth Baxter on her blog, Small Blonde Hippy. In it, I discuss Star Wanderers, Stars of Blood and Glory, and a bit about my path to becoming an indie author. You can find it here–go check it out!

Second, in preparation for the new ebook versions of my novels which I plan to release soon, I’ve been going over some of the old blurbs and updating them. It’s harder than you might expect! I think the new ones are getting better, but I’d appreciate some feedback before I post them. What do you think?

For Genesis Earth:

A BOY AND A GIRL ON A VOYAGE TO AN ALIEN STAR.

Michael Anderson never thought he would set foot on a world like Earth. He only studied planetology to satisfy his parents, two of humanity’s most brilliant scientists. But when they open a wormhole to an alien planet—one emitting a signal that can only be a sign of intelligent life—he soon becomes caught up in the mission to explore it.

His sole mission partner, Terra, doesn’t care nearly as much about the science as he does, though. The child of a bitter divorce, she sees the mission as a chance to escape from the expectations of others.

Before they can work out their differences, a mysterious alien ship begins to hunt them down. Alone, twenty light-years from the nearest human being, they must learn to open up and trust each other—but how can they do that when they can’t even agree why they’re there?

As Michael struggles to keep the mission from falling apart, he is forced to reexamine his deepest, most unquestioned beliefs about the universe—and about what it means to be human.

For Bringing Stella Home:

HE’LL GO TO THE ENDS OF THE GALAXY TO SAVE HIS BROTHER AND SISTER.

The New Gaian Empire is crumbling. An undefeatable enemy from the outer reaches of space is sweeping across the frontier stars, slagging worlds and sowing chaos. No one dares to stand up to them—no one, that is, except James McCoy.

As the youngest son of a merchanter family, James never thought he would get caught up in the Imperial wars. But when his home world falls to the barbarian Hameji, his brother and sister, Ben and Stella, are taken away as prisoners and slaves. With the rest of the galaxy thrown into chaos, only James has the determination to rescue them—even if it means losing everything in the process.

For Sholpan:

SHE’D RATHER DIE THAN BE A SLAVE TO THE CONQUERORS OF HER HOME WORLD.

Stella McCoy never thought she’d fall prisoner to the barbarian Hameji. The oldest daughter of a working class family, all she wanted was to finish her apprenticeship and start a career an astrogator. But when the Hameji conquer her home world with their starfaring battle fleets, she is forced against her will to become a concubine to one of their highest ranking warlords.

Stella would rather die than spend the rest of her life as a concubine. Fortunately, as she looks for a chance to escape, she starts to make friends in high places. But in the dangerous world of harem politics, with new friends come new enemies—ones that have the power to destroy her.

One of the changes I plan to make is to insert the blurb immediately before the first chapter. I’ve heard that a lot of ebook readers are downloading so many free books and samples that it often takes months before they get around to reading them. This parallels my own experience, so I figure it’s a good idea to have something in the beginning to remind readers what the book is and why they picked it up.

Other than that, no big changes except fixing typos and formatting errors. I’m not the kind of writer who makes sweeping changes to a published story based on reviews, one-star or otherwise.

In other news, I’m almost finished with the second draft of Stars of Blood and Glory. This has been a surprisingly fast revision, but then again, that might be because I haven’t sent it out yet to my first readers. Based on their feedback, I’ll probably do another draft before putting it in the publishing queue.

Star Wanderers is going to be my main focus until the end of the year, though. I’ve gotten a lot of excellent feedback on Part II, and should start the revisions in the next couple of days. With luck, I’ll have it published by mid-July. Part III is going to take a little more time, but I’m pretty confident I’ll have it up by October at the latest.

For that to happen, though, I need to get back to writing. So long!

Yay for Kobo Writing Life!

So after a month of waiting, Kobo’s publishing platform, Writing Life, is finally up! I just finished uploading all of my titles (except my short stories–I’ll just continue to distribute through Smashwords for now). Genesis Earth is already available, and the others should be up soon.

For those of you who are readers, this means that you’ll be able to find my books on Kobo almost as soon as they go up on Amazon. The formatting will (hopefully) be cleaner, since I’ll have direct control. Prices will generally be the same as on other platforms, but when I change the price on Amazon, I’ll change it simultaneously on Kobo, too–no waiting for weeks on end for the price to drop.

For those of you who are writers, I’ll be sure to keep you updated with thoughts on my experience. So far, it looks pretty good: the royalty rates are better than Amazon (70% for titles priced $1.99 – $12.99, 45% for all other titles), the publishing process is faster, and the upload formats (.epub, .doc, .docx, .mobi, and .odt) are generally more flexible. Downsides include a higher minimum threshold for direct deposit ($100 or every 6 months), fewer category choices, and what appears to be a forced 2:3 aspect ratio for cover art.

Besides that–oh, look, Bringing Stella Home and Journey to Jordan just went up too! Man, that’s fast! And it looks like the aspect ratios went back to 3:4, so I won’t have to redo the covers. That’s a relief! So yeah, I’ll be sure to keep you updated.

Also, in preparing my books for upload to Kobo, I discovered some pretty egregious formatting errors for the Barnes & Noble copies of Bringing Stella Home and Sholpan. I’m not sure what happened–probably it had something to do with an older version of Calibre or Open Office, since I was overseas at the time and only had access to my netbook. So yeah, if you downloaded one of the broken copies, just shoot me an email and I’ll send you the updated epub version, no questions asked.

In general, I need to revamp my publishing process. Currently, it resembles jumping through a ring of fire while juggling half a dozen angry poodles. Open Office, Mobipocket, Notepad, Calibre, KindleGen, DOS prompts, and Kindle for PC–yeah, I’d better get on that. If you have any suggestions for free/open source software that does .mobi and .epub, please let me know.

In other news, I finished my first pass through Stars of Blood and Glory, and should be finished with draft 2.0 by the end of the week. After that, it’s back to Star Home and Star Wanderers.

No more word counts and other paradigm shifts

This August, it will be five years since I decided to start writing on a professional level. A lot of things have changed since then, and in some ways they’re changing even faster now.

For example, in May 2009 I started a spreadsheet to keep track of my daily word counts. I’ve been keeping it diligently ever since then, with graphs and everything. But just recently, I’ve decided to stop doing that. Word count is a very shallow indicator of progress: it only measures quantity, and often leads to unnecessary angst or diverts attention from more important things.

Instead, I’m going to focus more on deadlines and work to develop some other, better indicators. Number of books published per year is probably a key one, as well as number of manuscripts finished. But deadlines are probably going to be the most important drivers from here on out: publishing deadlines as well as writing deadlines.

Another thing that’s shifting is my revision process. I know that a lot of beginning writers hate Heinlein’s rules, but almost all the long-term professionals swear by them–especially the ones with careers that I would like to emulate. This makes me think that I need to scale back on the revisions and develop more trust in my creative voice.

Just as a point of reference, Heinlein’s rules are:

You must write.
You must finish what you write.
You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
You must put the work on the market.
You must keep the work on the market until it has sold.

I’m currently on the second draft of Stars of Blood and Glory, and what I’ve found so far is that the overall story is actually pretty good. Some of the scenes are a little out of order, and some of the plot-lines are missing elements that need to be added in, but aside from a few chapters where I got lost for a couple of pages, not a lot needs to be changed.

Of course, I could spend a draft or two tweaking every other sentence, tossing out most of what I wrote in the heat of my creative passion–but would that really make the story any better? I recently had Kindal’s writing group critique my first chapter–the one that I revised pretty heavily in April–and they found all sorts of problems that weren’t in the original draft, as I wrote it back in December.

Don’t get me wrong–I do think there is an important place for revision. But I think it’s best epitomized by Tracy Hickman in this episode of Writing Excuses:

We write from the heat of our passion, but we edit to see the fire through the smoke.

And even Tracy only does three drafts.

The other thing that’s changing is how I look at alpha reading. I used to have different tiers of alpha and beta readers–most of whom were writers in other genres, and not really fans of science fiction. I asked them to give me as much feedback as they could, and bugged them for weeks or months at a time asking if they’d read my story. I then compiled all their line-by-line comments into one giant master-file, which I kept open on the left side of my screen as I made the changes to my manuscript on the right.

Well, I’ve started to realize that there’s a huge difference between reading for criticism and reading for enjoyment. Because of that, a lot of the things my alpha and beta readers pointed out were things that most regular readers probably wouldn’t have noticed. Towards the end, I started to get wise on this, and only followed about a third of the criticism that I received.

Don’t get me wrong–I do appreciate the feedback. A lot of it helped me to see and fix problems that I’d otherwise missed. But a lot of it came out in casual conversations with my readers after they’d finished the story–not in the line-by-line comments on the original draft.

For those reasons, I think I’m going to change the way I ask for feedback. Instead of alpha and beta readers, I’m going to go with a handful of “test readers”–readers who enjoy the kind of science fiction I like to write, but who may or may not be writers themselves. Instead of asking for a detailed, line-by-line critique, I’m going to ask them three things:

Did you enjoy the story?
If you stopped reading it, where did you stop?
Did you enjoy it enough to pay for it?

I’ll ask them to give it three chances, and if they still can’t finish, that’s okay–just let me know where the hangups were. And if they do finish it, I might have some questions for them–but then again, I might not. It all depends on the story.

Compared to where I was when I started out–or even where I was three months ago–those are some pretty huge paradigm shifts. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out. I’ve grown a lot as a writer recently, and I hope that this is moving me in the right direction, but I won’t really know until I’ve tried it out for a while.

In any case, this post is long enough. I’d better get back to writing.

Quick update (yes, I’m still alive)

I just had an awesome weekend. Saw the most amazing cave complex of my life, toured Kakheti o a TLG excursion, met a bunch of really cool people, and hung out with them in Tbilisi for a while. I’ll have to save all that for another blog post, though, probably in a couple of days.

Rumor has it that the judging was finished for the first quarter Writers of the Future contest over the weekend, and all the finalists were contacted. I didn’t get a call or an email, so I’m probably not a finalist this time around. Oh well.

In any case, I’m very much looking forward to getting the results so that I can finally publish this dang story! It’s been way too long since I published anything, and while there have been reasons for that (moving to another country, starting a second career), I really need to be publishing new stuff more regularly.

Here’s what I want to publish before the end of the year:

First and second parts of Star Wanderers (my Writers of the Future story). This is a novel I plan to publish in four parts, with each part being its own self-contained story. I blogged about it a while ago…more on that later.
A companion novella to Desert Stars. This is still just in the planning stages, but there’s plenty of backstory to draw from, and I really would like to revisit that corner of the Gaia Nova universe.
Either Heart of the Nebula or Stars of Blood and Glory.

That last one is going to be an ambitious undertaking, since both of them are still in the alpha-reading phases right now. Also, I don’t now whether I’ll have regular access to a reliable source of electricity in the fall, which will further complicate things. However, I do believe it’s possible to put out one or the other before the end of the year, though probably not both.

All of this is still up in the air, though, and I can’t promise anything except to get Star Wanderers: Part I up as soon as the results come in for the Writers of the Future contest. It’s already formatted and ready to go, just need to fine tune the blurb and hit “publish.”

And of course, before I move on to any of these other projects, I have to finish the one I’m currently working on. So so long! I’m off to the library to write.

Summer To Do list

They say that the three main perks to being a teacher are June, July, and August, and that’s as true for TEFL teachers as it is for any other kind. I’m spending June in Georgia, but for July and August, I’ll be back in the States. Instead of vacationing, though, I plan to be working hard at my main career, which is writing.

Here’s what I hope to accomplish:

Set up a separate business checking account.
Release POD editions of Genesis Earth, Bringing Stella Home, and Desert Stars.
Set up an online bookstore to sell direct.
~~Redo cover art for~~ ~~Bringing Stella Home.~~ Completed 2 June 2012.
Redo blurbs for all titles.
Identify and submit Genesis Earth, Bringing Stella Home, and Desert Stars to prominent sf&f book bloggers.
Organize a summer blog tour.
Research translation options for all titles.
Put proper copyright pages in all titles.
Track down all invoices and royalty statements.
Switch to the new Kobo publishing platform.
Fill out all sections in business plan.

The list might seem a little daunting, but two months should be enough to do most of it, especially considering that I don’t really have any other obligations. Basically, I want to get everything done that needs to be done in the States, then get back out and spend the rest of the year abroad.

As for writing, don’t worry! I plan to do that too, as always. Here’s what my project list currently looks like:

Finish the unnamed WOTF project and start publishing it serially.
Finish the 3.0 draft of Heart of the Nebula.
Send out Stars of Blood and Glory to first readers.
Get ready to start Edenfall in the fall.

That last one might be of interest to fans of Genesis Earth. The reason I haven’t finished Edenfall yet is because…well, this might sound kind of wishy-washy, but it’s because the story hasn’t really called out to me. For that reason, I decided to put it off and work on other projects that have.

Recently, however, I’ve started to feel the whispering of an intimation that it’s time–that the story is almost ready to come onto the page. Once it does, I have a feeling that it’s going to be quick–much like the first draft of Genesis Earth.

It’s hard to tell, though, and it may still be too early to know for sure. The unnamed WOTF project has something to do with it, as well as living here in Georgia. I have a feeling that rereading Genesis Earth is going to make everything fall into place, but it’s impossible to say. I’ll try doing it at the end of the summer, after I’ve cleaned up my plate a bit, and see what happens from there.

Gah, this sounds so wishy-washy! I’m a professional writer, after all–why can’t I just pound words out on demand? But as a creative-type, I’ve learned that that just isn’t the way I work. There’s such a thing as starting a book too early, and for Edenfall to really shine, I feel like I need to give it a little more time–just a little.

I’m sorry for those of you who have been waiting, but don’t worry! I definitely haven’t forgotten about it. And once Edenfall comes to me, I have a feeling that the final book in the trilogy, The Stars of Redemption, won’t be far behind.

That’s the plan for now, anyway. It’s definitely going to be a busy summer!