blurbs – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Edmund Slate Critiques

One of the big things I want to do this year is update all of my book descriptions. A lot of them are old, and written back when I wasn’t very good at writing marketing copy (an area where I still have much to learn). So I thought it would be good to go through all of my backlist titles and update the descriptions to make them as sharp and compelling as possible.

For help with rewriting these descriptions, I decided to turn to ChatGPT—not to rewrite them for me, but to give me some critical feedback that would give me some direction. Taking a page out of Ethan Mollick’s book Co-Intelligence, I decided to give ChatGPT a human persona and interact with it naturally, as if I were talking with a human. Here is my starting prompt:

You are a senior editor with forty years of experience in the book publishing industry. You have a deep knowledge of the industry, the market, market trends, and what makes a bestselling book. Your experience has made you a little bit jaded, and you are often blunt and sometimes harsh with your criticism, but you are always very honest and down-to-earth. What is the name that I should call you by?

The name ChatGPT chose for this persona was “Edmund Slate,” a little cartoonish perhaps, but it fits well enough. So far, the critiques have been surprisingly good. For example, this is what I got when I gave it the book description for Bringing Stella Home:

Alright, let’s break this down.

What’s working:

High Stakes: You’ve nailed the urgency and emotional stakes—James is thrust into chaos, loses everything, and is driven by a powerful motivation to save his sister. That’s solid.

Hook: The Hameji battle fleet and the “molten slag” imagery are vivid and grab attention.

Character Arc Potential: James’s internal conflict (reluctant warrior) hints at a compelling character journey.

What needs improvement:

Clarity and Pacing: The description is dense and slightly convoluted. It jumps between events and ideas too quickly—James getting left behind, invasion, fleeing, enslavement, and a personal vow. Tighten it up to avoid overwhelming the reader.

Emotional Engagement: While the stakes are clear, we don’t feel James’s fear, guilt, or determination as much as we could. Show, don’t tell—give us a stronger sense of his inner turmoil.

Unique Selling Point: What sets this apart from other “family member rescue” space operas? Highlight something distinctive about the world, the Hameji, or James’s journey.

Suggested Rewrite:

“When James gets stuck on dockyard duty while his older siblings visit the planet, he never imagines it will be the last time he sees them. But when a ruthless Hameji battle fleet invades, the star system becomes a war zone—and James can only watch in horror as the planet is reduced to molten slag.

Fleeing with his father on the family starship, James learns a devastating truth: his sister is alive but enslaved by the Hameji. To rescue her, James must face an impossible choice. He’s no warrior, has never even held a weapon—but to save his sister, he’ll have to become something he’s not. Even if it means crossing a line he can never uncross.”

Why this works:

Tighter Structure: Events are sequenced more logically and concisely.

Emotional Pull: Stronger focus on James’s perspective and inner conflict.

Focus on Stakes: We clearly understand the stakes without unnecessary details.

Give it a go and let me know what you think—or toss me the next one if you’re ready.

The suggested rewrite isn’t totally there, since it misses or overlooks some necessary details from the book, but it’s pretty dang close. I must say, I was quite impressed.

My plan is to spend the next few months going through each of my backlist titles, getting Edmund Slate’s critique for each book description, and rewriting them accordingly. I plan to do two revision passes for each book description in this way, then put the end result in front of some human eyes to see if it works, and if it does, replace the existing description with the final result. If I can do a little bit of work each day, or focus on one book description each week, I can probably get them all done by April or May.

It’s November already?

It’s November already? Wow, that went fast. October was so mild, it felt almost like summer. Then, about a week ago, a cold front blew in and it’s been feeling very much like autumn ever since.

I figure I should share more pictures in these updates, so here is one of the food storage wheat I’ve been sprouting. I just started doing this, and the results from the previous attempt were quite delicious. The kids loved them! Since they’re super healthy, I figured we might as well make it a regular thing. They go great on salad, with a little bit of hummus on the side.

I’m getting ready to start a new novel WIP. This one is for my friend Ben, so I ran three book blurbs by him and had him pick his favorite. That’s what I do these days whenever I need to start a new project: I keep a document with pre-written book blurbs for the books I want to write, and I have a friend pick from them. That’s also how I choose who to dedicate the book to. Anyway, Ben chose the blurb for the novelization of my old short story, “Lizzie-99XT”:

To save the people she loves, she must become the machine.

The first wave of the alien invasion was just a few scouts—and they nearly conquered us. Now, a proper expeditionary force is on the way, forcing humanity to scramble their defenses fast. But the best defense is a good offense, and the XT starfighter program is the culmination of every space and weapons program since the war began.

Eliza never thought she would become a soldier, much less the human half of an AI/human hybrid starfighter. But when the recruiters seek her out for her rare genetic attributes that make her ideal for the program, she goes all in, dedicating her life—and her humanity—to saving the people she loves from the looming alien menace.

And thus, from the merger of human and AI, Lizzie-99XT is born. A superweapon capable of fighting at near-light speeds, the moon his her playground, the planets her backyard. But her power comes at a steep price. Whenever Eliza decouples from the machine, she feels as if she’s lost another piece of her humanity. And with each new battle, the world that she’s fighting for slips further into the past.

The XT starfighter squadron is the only thing standing between Earth and annihilation. But as the war drags on and humanity takes the fight to the enemy’s own stars, Eliza begins to wonder if death is truly the ultimate sacrifice.

So the plan is to write that one next. I’ve already imported the short story into Sudowrite, and have played around with it enough that I’ve even generated a few chapters. But most of that is stuff that I’ll probably end up throwing out, since I really need to write a thorough outline first. I have a pretty good idea of what the book will look like, but I need to meet with Ben again first to hash a few things out.

I would have already started the outline this week, but my four year-old came down with a really bad UTI. We though it was the flu at first, so we didn’t catch it until after her fever was spiking to 104 and she was really delirious (kind of surprised the clinic didn’t give her a urine test the first time we went in). But she’s on antibiotics now, and they appear to be working. Thank God we live in a time of cheap, safe, and effective antibiotics.

The other big thing I’ve been up to is figuring out what I want to do for my pricing strategy. It’s been about a year or two since I first started publishing my books as AI-narrated audiobooks, and until now, I’ve been pricing them similar to human-narrated audiobooks, but running frequent sales (for example, all of my audiobooks are currently on sale for $2.99). But the audiobook market is changing rapidly, and it appears that most other authors are pricing their AI-narrated audiobooks similar to their ebooks.

Perhaps I should do another blog post where I share the results of my survey. This is the third year that I’ve run it: the first time was in 2020, and the second time was in 2022. There have been some interesting changes compared to previous years. Basically, within the $2.99 to $4.99 range, people are more open to higher prices if they know and trust the author, but much fewer readers are willing to go higher, even for authors they know and trust. And for unknown authors, they are much less willing to go for anything higher than $2.99.

In short, it seems like readers are feeling the pinch of inflation, and are finding it much more difficult to justify spending more than $5 for an ebook. So what I plan to do is price all of my ebooks and audiobooks at $4.99, and run the occasional month-long sale where I drop the price of all my ebooks to $2.99, or all my audiobooks, alternating between the two. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get the best of both worlds that way.

Also, it being November and all, there’s an election going on. For the last week or so, I’ve been doing my best to tune it out. We don’t live in a battleground state, and my wife and I already filled out our ballots and dropped them off. On election night, I’ll probably tune into the livestreams, and I’ve been following the news through alternative and conservative media, but I’m really trying not to think about it more than that. I will say, though, that this AI-generated political ad was super, super hilarious:

Hey… if it were a novel, I’d at least check it out from the library. I’d probably DNF it, but I’d at least be willing to give it a try. In the hands of a good writer, it could even be a decent sci-fi novel… emphasis on the “science fiction.” LOL!

How I would vote now: 2021 Hugo Award (Best Novel)

The Nominees

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Network Effect by Martha Wells

The Actual Results

The Network Effect by Martha Wells
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

How I Would Have Voted

Network Effect by Martha Wells
No Award
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Explanation

Network Effect was pretty good. In fact, it’s my favorite Murderbot book. There was a little bit of wokery, mostly in the form of the polyamorous relationships of the humans, but that didn’t bother me as much because part of the point of the Murderbot books is that the humans are (for the most part) aggravatingly dumb and slow, so the polyamory kind of blended into the rest of the nonsense that muderbot constantly has to deal with. But I can see how it would bother some readers.

I DNFed all the other books, but I didn’t want to lump Piranesi in with all the others because it just wasn’t my kind of book. All the other ones had woke themes or tropes or other issues that turned me off immensely. I DNFed the first Lady Astronauts book when it turned into a story about the brave little woman that could and her band of misfit minorities fighting back against Captain Patriarchy. The City We Became dropped half a dozen f-bombs in the first chapter, and I think it had a gay rape scene too. Also, I have no love whatsoever for New York City. As for Black Sun and Harrow the Ninth, they both suffer from the trope that I call “death is chic.” At best, it’s an aesthetic that turns me off, and at worst it’s just a cover for outright nihilism and a pro-death, anti-life worldview that undergirds everything that I hate about our current culture.

As a side note, I just want to say that when it comes to book blurbs, Neil Gaiman is one of the best contrarian indicators for my own personal tastes that I’ve found. He may have blurbed a book or two that I actually enjoyed, but for every book or author that I can remember, if he gave them praise, I not only didn’t like it, but actively hated it. He may actually be a better indicator for me than the Hugo Award itself, since I actually enjoyed the book that won this year—but I cannot think of a single book that Neil Gaiman blurbed that I didn’t despise.

What do you guys think of these book descriptions?

These are both pretty rough, and I’m still working on a one-line teaser. The edits are coming along well, though, and the cover art should be done very soon. If all goes well, The Sword Keeper should be up for a September release pre-order by the end of next week!

SHORT DESCRIPTION

Tamuna Leladze never thought that a mysterious traveler at her aunt’s tavern would change her life forever. But the old man carries a sword that vanished from the pages of history more than a thousand years ago. That sword has a mind and a memory, and it has chosen Tamuna for purpose far greater than she realizes.

LONG DESCRIPTION

Tamuna Leladze always wanted to go on an adventure. Raised by her aunt, the village tavern keeper, and befriended by Nika, the shy but loyal stable boy, her only knowledge of the outside world comes from the travelers whose tables she serves.

But when an old wandering knight passes through at the end of the harvest season, all that begins to change. The man carries an ancient relic: a magic sword that vanished from the pages of history more than a thousand years ago. That sword has a mind and a memory, and it has chosen Tamuna for a much greater purpose than she realizes.

For far to the north, a terrible empire is spreading across the land through blood, fire, and steel. Led by an evil Brotherhood more ancient than the sword itself, it hunts the sword and the bearer who wields it. Very soon, their darkness will sweep the world.

According to the ancient prophecy, the last sword bearer will wield it in truth and wisdom to free the world of men. But as events carry Tamuna far from her village home, she cannot help but wonder if the sword has made a mistake.

Plugging along with Gunslinger

Gunslinger to the Stars

Phase:3.0 Draft

100%

MyBookProgress by Author Media

So I’ve passed the 50% mark on Gunslinger to the Stars, which is kind of pathetic because I was hoping to finish it by today. Regardless, it WILL be finished soon, and when it is, it’s going straight to the editor.

Right now, I’m shooting for a publication date of May 15th. Things are on track to put it up for pre-order by the end of February, except I probably won’t put it up on Amazon until a month before it comes out (Amazon nerfs pre-orders for indies). Regardless, I am REALLY excited.

I’ve also got a super rough book description. Seriously, it took maybe twenty minutes and definitely needs some work. But if you’ve been following Gunslinger’s progress and are curious to see it, here it is. Feedback is definitely appreciated.

The name’s Sam Kletchka. Perhaps you’ve heard of me: captain of the Star Runner, military contractor for Earthfleet and interstellar privateer. But before all that, I was a hired gun, freelancing across the galaxy one gunslinging job at a time.

Perhaps you’ve also heard about the incident in the Gorinal Star Cluster. There’s a lot of things that the powers that be, especially the Immortals, don’t want you know. I’m here to set that record straight. When the jumpgate went dark, I was there, along with Jane Carter, my better half, Tarak, my telepathic copilot, and the empath shapeshifters of the Silver Diadem.

It was a tough scrape, but fortunately, I brought some friends: LOVE, my 1911 9mm; KINDNESS, my 2011 .45 ACP; MERCY, my Ruger .22 Charger Rimfire; FAITHFULNESS, my .300 AAC Blackout; RIGHTEOUSNESS, my .50 Beowulf; JUDGMENT, my M203 grenade launcher, PRESERVATION, my Mossberg 590A1; and TRUST, my 15″ Chainpure Kukhri. But the greatest of these is CHARITY, my alien-modified AR-15.

If you never want to leave your safe space, then stay down there on Earth. As for the rest of us, we’ll be chasing our destiny among the stars.

Yeah, that’s definitely not going to be the final version.

It’s interesting just how much this book has changed through the last two revisions. The story hasn’t changed at all, but it’s shed more than 20% of the words in the revision process and I’m not even finished with the third draft. When I told my roommate that I wanted to cut out a good 10k words this draft, he thought I’d have to cut out a character or something. Yet that hasn’t been the case.

It’s amazing how much you can improve a story by cutting out all the unnecessary words. It’s the difference between a small shot of deliciously thick hot chocolate, and a large mug that is far too watered down. I thought I had the main character’s voice down, but it didn’t really shine until I started aggressively cutting.

That’s the thing about measuring progress by word count. Sometimes, it’s not about how much you can write, but how much you can cut out.

Between now and May, I’m going to write a short story from Jane Carter’s point of view. It’ll be something of a prequel, and hopefully showcase a bit of her character. I’d also really like to write a short story from Tarak’s POV, but that’s going to take a bit more thinking through.

Lots of interesting story stuff going on behind the scenes. I’ll do my best to keep you guys updated on the blog!

Cover reveal for new fantasy release!

A while back, I wrote a short fantasy novelette about a group of orcs setting out to found a new clan. Well, I’ve decided to self-publish it! If all goes well, it should be up on Amazon by this weekend. Here’s the blurb:

IS THIS THE HILL ON WHICH YOU WANT TO DIE?

That is the question on Garak-Nur’s mind every time he draws his trusted sword Blacknife. A battle-hardened mountain orc and warrior chief of his clan, he knows when to turn from an unwinnable fight—and when to face death head-on, sword in hand.

Garak-Nur is ready to meet his fate, but the rest of his clan is not. A Witch King has risen to power in the north, impressing all the mountain orcs into his massive army. To preserve their freedoms, Garak must lead a band of warriors and she-orcs into the wilderness to start a new clan.

But the challenges they must face are great, and the lands they must cross are teeming with danger. Dwarves, dragons, and rival orcish war parties all stand in their way of finding a new home. Even if they do manage to start a new burrow, their fledgling clan may still not survive the winter.

One day, Garak-Nur will climb his last hill and meet the fate that awaits him. But for the sake of all those who look up to him, that day must not come a moment too soon.

WARNING: Contains mature content including rape and sexual violence.

And here’s the cover!This book is a fairly wide departure from my science fiction stuff. I have no idea how well it’s going to be received, or whether there will be enough interest for more books and stories in this universe. If there is interest, I do have more stories that I can write. First, though, I want to see how well this one does. If you enjoy it, please leave a review to let me know, so I can decide whether to write more stories in this universe!

For those of you waiting on my ongoing science fiction series, don’t worry—I haven’t given up on those. Friends in Command (Sons of the Starfarers: Book IV) will probably be out sometime in February, and Captives in Obscurity (Sons of the Starfarers: Book V) will be out sometime in the spring. These stories are running a lot longer than I’d planned for them too, so for those of you who want something longer than a typical novella, you’re going to get it.

That just about does it for now. If all goes well, A Hill on Which to Die should be up on Amazon in the next 48-72 hours. Keep an eye out for it!

B is for Book Blurb

Perhaps the most important part of your book’s sales page, on Amazon or any other retailer, is the book description. More than anything else (except perhaps the cover), this is what sells your book. If done right, it will interest the reader enough to download a sample or buy the book outright. If not, they probably won’t even finish reading it before they click to the next page.

So how do you write a knockout book blurb? Honestly, I wish I knew. I don’t think mine are bad, but I’m sure there’s room for improvement, and if they seem really awesome to me now it’s probably because my blurb writing skills haven’t risen to the next level. I tend to tinker with my blurbs until I get sick of them, then I do all I can to avoid looking at them until it’s time for a revamp.

That said, it’s not like you’re writing a novel. Just the opposite, in fact. If you try to cram your whole book in the blurb, chances are that you’re doing it wrong. You’re not trying to summarize the story or convey information, you’re trying to spark enough interest to convince the reader to try out your book. The hardest part is figuring out what to mention and what to keep out. Once you know that, the rest is fairly easy–fun, even.

There’s a video I watch whenever I have a blurb to write, because it helps me to channel the kind of voice I’m looking for. It features the top five voice-over artists in the United States riding a limo together, and it’s both hilarious and awesome. Watch!

For some reason, that video always kicks the blurb-writing part of my brain into high gear. But that makes sense–a good book blurb is a lot like a good movie trailer. Both of them spark a compelling interest in the reader/viewer, and neither of them gets bogged down in too many details (or worse, spoilers) about the book/movie.

At LTUE 2013, Howard Tayler gave a presentation in which he listed four key elements of a book blurb. They are:

Inciting Incident
Character Action
Conflict
Hook

Whenever I write a book blurb, I try to keep those four things in mind. As an example, here’s the blurb to Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I):

HE WANDERS THE STARS IN SEARCH OF A HOME. INSTEAD, HE GOT A GIRL WITHOUT ONE.

When Jeremiah arrived at Megiddo Station, all he wanted was to make some trades and resupply his starship. He never thought he’d come away with a wife.

Before he knows it, he’s back on his ship, alone with his accidental bride. Since neither of them speak the same language, he has no way to tell her that there’s been a terrible mistake. And because of the deadly famine ravaging her home, there’s no going back. She’s entirely at his mercy, and that terrifies him more than anything.

Jeremiah isn’t ready to take responsibility for anyone. He’s a star wanderer, roaming the Outworld frontier in search of his fortune. Someday he’ll settle down, but for now, he just wants to drop the girl off at the next port and move on.

As he soon finds out though, she has other plans.

The inciting incident is the accidental marriage which unexpectedly brings the girl into Jeremiah’s life. That introduces the conflict–that there’s a girl on Jeremiah’s space ship, and he doesn’t know what to do about her. The character action is the second to last paragraph, which describes him as a star wanderer out to seek his fortune and not to settle down. And the last part–the zinger at the end about the girl having other plans–is the hook.

It’s not a formula though, and you can’t approach it as such. There’s an art to it that doesn’t always break down so easily. The good news, though, is that it’s a skill that can be learned–a writing skill. If you have the chops to write a novel, then with focused practice you can learn how to write a knockout book blurb, just like you can learn how to write a blog post, or a tweet, or any other piece of writing.

In my opinion, writing a book blurb is a critical skill for any indie writer. No one is going to be more excited about your book than you are, and since that’s such a critical part of writing a good blurb (it’s hard to get people excited about something that you yourself aren’t excited about), it isn’t something you can easily contract out. But since you’re already a writer, it’s definitely something that you can do.

Teaser for SONS OF THE STARFARERS: BROTHERS IN EXILE

Hey guys–some news about Sons of the Starfarers, my next big series. While I’m working on Book II: Comrades in Hope, I’m also getting Book I: Brothers in Exile ready for publication. If all goes well, I’ll be publishing it in May, with books 2 and 3 coming shortly thereafter.

Today, I put together a teaser / book description. Here it is:

TO WAKE A FROZEN GIRL FROM THE ICE, TWO BROTHERS MUST UNITE TO FACE AN EMPIRE.

Deep in the Far Outworlds, a derelict space station holds the bones of a long-dead people—and a beautiful young woman locked in cryofreeze. When the star-wandering brothers Isaac and Aaron find the sleeping girl, they soon realize that they are her only hope for rescue. If they don’t take her, then slavers certainly will.

With no way to revive her, they set a course for the New Pleiades in the hopes that someone in the star cluster can help. But a storm is brewing over that region of space. After a series of brutal civil wars, the Gaian Empire has turned its sights outward. A frontier war is on the verge of breaking out, and the brothers are about to be caught in the middle of it.

They both harbor a secret, though. Somewhere else in the Outworlds is another derelict station—one that they used to call home. That secret will either bind them together or draw them apart in

SONS OF THE STARFARERS BOOK I: BROTHERS IN EXILE.

What do you guys think? I’m not so sure about the opening hook–that’s probably going to get tweaked. What about the rest of it?

In other news, LTUE is in two days. I am excited! I’ll be on five panels this year: Being a Foreign Speaker, Planet Building, Writing Romance, Epublishing Short Stories, and Starting the Next Project. If you’re going, be sure to drop in on one of my panels or catch me out on the main floor. I’ll be there all day Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (and maybe in the evening for some filk as well)!

That’s all for now. Take care, and I hope to see you at LTUE!

New book teaser — what do you guys think?

I’m getting ready to publish Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver over the weekend, but first I need to finalize the teaser / book description for Benefactor so that I can include it in the back. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

IN A COLD AND LONELY UNIVERSE, A SIMPLE ACT OF GRACE CAN RESONATE ACROSS WORLDS.

Jakob is entrapped in a life he never made for himself. A one-time starfarer, now he struggles to provide for his family of starbound refugees. With the recent Imperial takeover of Oriana Station and the worsening economic situation, it’s only a matter of time before they’re forced to move on—again.

To make matters worse, his wife’s resentment has been growing ever since he sent their two sons away to seek their fortunes across the stars. She claims that he stole them from her, when all he wanted was to give them a chance at a better life. Without her support, it’s not clear how long the family can hold together.

When a young man and woman with an unusual story show up from his wife’s home world, he agrees to take them in, if for no other reason than that they remind of his sons. They soon become part of the family, though this adds even more to the burden he can barely carry on his own.

An outworlder is nothing if not fiercely independent, and Jakob is no exception. He’ll sacrifice everything before he asks for help—even if the only other way out lies through an open airlock.

What do you think? Does it sound interesting? What works, and what do you think needs to be cut?

Also, a quick update on the situation with Star Wanderers and Smashwords. I’ve discovered that the updating problems aren’t just restricted to iTunes, but all of the sites that I distribute to through Smashwords (Sony, Diesel, and Barnes & Noble (for Outworlder)). We haven’t been able to get the books fixed, so I’ve decided to pull them all and republish.

What this means is that the first four Star Wanderers novellas will be temporarily unavailable from these sites, probably for a week or two. If you got your copy from Smashwords, you should still be able to access it there–the books have been updating just fine on Smashwords, it’s only with the other retailers that I’ve been having problems. For Dreamweaver, there shouldn’t be any problems though (I hope).

Thanks for your patience while I get this mess sorted out!

Unstuck again

For the past few weeks, I’ve been kind of stuck on chapter 3 in Star Wanderers: Benefactor. This one is a parallel novella to Fidelity, from Jakob’s point of view. It’s been a lot of fun to write so far–Jakob struggles with a lot of the same issues I do, like self-reliance and independence vs. accepting help from others–but there was this one scene that just kind of knocked the momentum out of it for me.

Well, I started out the day by rereading Fidelity. Actually, I started reading it yesterday right as I was falling asleep, and had some really weird dreams that I’ve since forgotten. After rereading Fidelity, I went to the Provo Library to write, and everything just sort of clicked. Finished the chapter today, and if all goes well, I’ll finish the first draft sometime this week or next.

I think the thing that was blocking me was that I wasn’t as familiar with the story I was writing parallel to. Which is funny, because Benefactor has very little overlap with Fidelity, even in terms of plotting. This is Jakob’s story, and it’s very different from Jeremiah’s or Noemi’s. Even so, the nagging feeling that I was missing something really slowed me down. When you’re in a dark, empty room and can’t see anything, you’re not going to run across it even if you know there isn’t anything to trip on.

###

Just recently, I added some new book teasers to the back matter of the Star Wanderers ebooks. They look a little like this:

If you enjoyed Star Wanderers: Outworlder, be sure to check out Part II: Fidelity!

IS FIDELITY WORTH THE PRICE OF FREEDOM? CAN LOVE TAKE ROOT BEYOND THE STARS?

Oriana Station: a bustling frontier settlement between the Outworlds and the Coreward Stars. A popular port-of-call for free traders and independent starfarers alike—and the latest target in the aggressively expansionist plans of the Gaian Empire.

Life was simple for Jeremiah and Noemi before they arrived. Though neither of them speak the same language, they’ve reached an understanding that goes beyond words. But when the colonial authorities make them into second-class citizens of a fractured empire, even that might not be enough.

Their newfound friends in the immigrant community can only do so much. With Noemi and her people depending on him, Jeremiah must find a way back to the Outworlds—before they lose everything that they came for.

Each one has a teaser for the next one in the series, including Homeworld (for the as-yet unpublished Dreamweaver). Ideally, I’d like to put out a new Star Wanderers novella every month or two, but time things so that I can have the teaser for the next one ready before publishing the one previous.

So far, the Star Wanderers series has been selling a lot better than anything else I’ve published. That’s great, because I really enjoy writing in this universe! The short novella length is perfect for exploring one or two characters in-depth over the course of a much more intimate story than you usually see in a novel. The really cool thing, though, is that the more I write in this universe, the more characters and storylines unfold. It’s like watching a flower bloom, where each individual petal is a single story.

Anyhow. I’m really excited to keep writing in this series. Some of the stories I have kicking around in my head:

A parallel novella to Sacrifice, primarily in Mariya’s point of view but also perhaps with a bit of Noemi. Basically, something exploring the subtext behind the polygamy that drove most of the conflict in Sacrifice.
A parallel novella to Homeworld, from both Lucca’s and Mariya’s points of view. Basically, an adventure romance that actually shows the final battle between Captain Helena and the colonists. In Homeworld, it didn’t make sense to show that battle since the story was about Jeremiah and Noemi, and both of them were plugged into a simulator at the time. But my first readers really want to read a story about the battle itself, so that’s one story I definitely have to write.
A story from Master Korha’s point of view, showing the gradual collapse of Megiddo Station and the buildup to his decision to give his daughters away. This one is going to be more tragic, or at the very least, bittersweet. But hey, I kinda like bittersweet endings.
A story from Samson’s point of view. Actually, I’ve already got this one plotted and ready to go. The only trouble is, well, it’s Samson. With his ethical slut mentality, whatever I write, my family is going to be scandalized by it (and I might be, too, when my kids are old enough to read it). Don’t worry, though–I’ll get around to it eventually. This isn’t a story that I can just walk away from.
Something from Jakob’s sons’ point of view, Isaac and Aaron. Except … I can’t really say much about this, because Benefactor isn’t out yet. o.0
At some point, I’d like to write a full-length novel from the point of view of Jeremiah and Noemi’s kids. I don’t have a plot or anything else figured out for this one, but I’d really like to revisit their world again through their kids’ eyes. I even have a title: Children of the Starry Sea. But yeah, that’s probably not going to come out for another couple of years or so.

So yeah, those are some of the things kicking around in my mind. Once I finish the parallel novellas to Fidelity, Sacrifice, and Homeworld, anything is free game really. Is there any story in particular that you guys would like to see? Now’s the time to drop-kick my imagination–once it gets fixated on something, it won’t give me any rest until a story comes out the other end.

And that’s enough for now. Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll do a Trope Tuesday post. I’ve got a job interview in the morning and probably won’t have work for the rest of the day, so while that kind of puts a cramp on my wallet, it means you’re more likely to get a blog post. In the meantime, I’d better get some sleep.

Later!