New Additions to the Vasicek Free Library!

Every month, I try to rotate a couple of titles in and out of the Vasicek Free Library. This month, I’m republishing my old short story “Prison of Dreams,” and setting my novella In the Wake of Zedekiah Wight to free. Check them out!

Prison of Dreams: A Short Story

A boy, a girl, and a starship gone mad.

As the colony mission's historian, Hazel thought the voyage would be as uneventful for her as going to sleep and waking up on the new, alien world. She was wrong.

It's unclear whether the ship's AI is crazy or merely lonely, but for whatever reason, it is convinced that it needs to feed on her dreams. But the colony mission is still centuries from arrival, and Hazel will live out her natural life and die alone if she cannot convince the ship to put her back into cryosleep.

There are alternatives, however. If the ship manages to awaken the right person for her, none of them ever have to be lonely again.

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About the Book

A boy, a girl, and a starship gone mad. As the colony mission’s historian, Hazel thought the voyage would be as uneventful for her as going to sleep and waking up on the new, alien world. She was wrong. It’s unclear whether the ship’s AI is crazy or merely lonely, but for whatever reason, it is convinced that it needs to feed on her dreams. But the colony mission is still centuries from arrival, and Hazel will live out her natural life and die alone if she cannot convince the ship to put her back into cryosleep. There are alternatives, however. If the ship manages to awaken the right person for her, none of them ever have to be lonely again.

Details

Author: Joe Vasicek
Series: Short Story Singles
Genres: Action & Adventure, FICTION, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Stories (single author), Space Exploration, Space Opera
Tag: 2026 Release
Publisher: Joe Vasicek
Publication Year: June 2026
Length: Short Story
Narrator: Auto-narrated
eBook Price: free!
Audiobook Price: free!

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Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek fell in love with science fiction and fantasy when he read The Neverending Story as a child. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Genesis Earth, Gunslinger to the Stars, The Sword Keeper, and the Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic at Brigham Young University and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus Mountains. He lives in Utah with his wife and two apple trees.

Other Books in the "Short Story Singles"

What Hard Times Hath Wrought: A Novelette

The New Covenant: A Short Story

Lord of the Slaves: A Short Story

The Paradox of Choice: A Short Story

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Some of the links in the page above are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. You will not receive any additional charge. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

In the Wake of Zedekiah Wight

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil!

When Captain Victor Andrecek and his crew of down-and-out smugglers respond to a deep space distress call, what they find shocks them to their very core. The victim is dead, his EVA suit nailed to a cross and launched on the head of a repurposed missile, with the words of an ancient scripture burned on a plaque at his feet. And he is not the only one.

The madman behind the murders is a privateer known as Zedekiah Wight, and the reward on his head is more than enough to tempt Andrecek and his struggling crew. With it, they can finally get back on their feet again—not to mention, rid the galaxy of a very dangerous man.

But Andrecek can't help but wonder: what was Zedekiah's reason for crucifying those men? With the showdown rapidly approaching, the answer might make the difference between being in the right, or being dead.

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About the Book

Details

Authors: Joe Vasicek, J.M. Wight
Series: Zedekiah Wight, Book 1
Genres: Action & Adventure, Christian, Crime & Mystery, FICTION, Futuristic, General, Military, Science Fiction, Space Exploration, Space Opera
Tag: 2022 Release
Publisher: Joe Vasicek
Publication Year: January 2022
Length: Novella
ASIN: B09Q52BK88
eBook Price: $2.99
Audiobook Price: $4.99 Sale!

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Joe Vasicek

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.

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.

Sorry

Wow, it’s been a while since I posted to this blog. I was just about to get back in the saddle, after finishing the rough human draft of Captive of the Falconstar, but then things got a little crazy and I dropped the ball.

What happened? Well, I got into a minor accident where I bent the family car’s door out of shape, and that took about a week and $1500ish to solve. Our 6 month-old also came down with croup (again) and an ear infection, so that wasn’t fun—he’s much better now, though, fortunately. Classes ended for my wife, and now she has to grade a bazillion papers. And finally, we had taxes, which were so complicated this year that we found the limit of what Free Fillable Forms can and can’t do. So that was crazy.

On the writing end of things, I tried and failed to juggle four different projects at the same time, so that threw things off a ton. So instead of trying to keep that up, I decided to focus on Captive of the Falconstar and all the prewriting/outlining for The People of the Last Harvest. Both of those projects went really well, actually, and I’m back at a place where I think I can start doing some token work on the other two WIPs as well.

Basically, the plan is to cut the daily workload for Captive in half, and put off Last Harvest until Captive is done and off to the editor. At that point, I’ll turn my focus to The Soulbond and the Sling and The Soulbond and the Lady. Until then, I’ll just do token work on those two—just the minimum amount to keep my writing skills warm enough that I can hit the ground running once Captive is well and truly done.

I guess I just thought I could do all the revisions and polishing work for Captive of the Falconstar in two short weeks. I’ve done it before, for some of the Sea Mage Cycle books, but those were super short and I also didn’t have nearly as much family stuff going on at the time.

So yeah, underestimating the workload was probably what led to crashing out. But I’ve got a much better handle on it now, and I think I can finish Captive before the end of the month, even while doing token work on the other WIPs. And I also need to catch up on some publishing things, like writing and sending out another author newsletter, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. Just an hour a day should catch up with that in about a week.

As a side note, I am SUPER excited to work on The People of the Last Harvest. I’ve got all the Sudowrite fields filled out (except the outline, which won’t take long), so now all I have to do is go through and write the scene prompts to generate each chapter. Once I’ve got a rough AI draft, I plan to run it through a bunch of the Author Media Patrol Toolbox tools, like the Zeitgeist Vibe Checker, the Not A Developmental Editor, and the Roast Engine to figure out which changes to make. With that, I’ll go through and make the necessary changes to generate a better AI draft, and go from there.

Also, I should probably mention that I’m planning to attend the 2027 Novel Marketing Conference in Austin this coming January. Just bought the tickets for that. And of course, I’ll be at Writers Cantina in July, as a panelist.

The kids are screaming, so I’d better go check on that and make sure my wife isn’t too overwhelmed. Take care! I’ll start posting regularly again next week, probably.

Playing Catch-up

It’s been a crazy week. On Tuesday, I had a minor accident with the family car, where I tried to step out while the car was in reverse, and the front door impacted a wall and got bent out of shape. So that threw off the whole day, and put us out more than a grand, which is why I haven’t gotten back to blogging daily. But hopefully that will change as I catch up on things.

Right now, I’m juggling three WIPs, which is a little crazy. Fortunately, two of them are in the same series/world, which makes it a little easier, but not by much.

I was hoping to finish this WIP completely by the end of the week, but now that’s obviously not going to happen. With my wife busy finishing up her classes for the semester, leaving me to watch the kids most of the day, it’s realistically going to take the rest of the month to finish this book. Which is fine, but a little frustrating.

First, I need to finish the revised human draft. I’m currently in chapter 2 out of 12, but if I push I can probably finish that next week. Then, I need to do a final polish, cutting the word count down by about 10%. That might take longer, but it will probably require less brainspace, since it’s mostly just looking for unnecessary words and cutting them.

This book is currently up for preorder, so it needs to get done soon enough that I can send it out to my editor for a copy edit. It is set to release in July, which gives me three months, but the sooner it’s done, the better. For that reason, this book needs to be my priority.

This is a quick cover mock-up I made for The Soulbond and the Sling using ChatGPT. I will probably make this a J.M. Wight book, but it’s good enough for now. Definitely captures the tone and genre.

I’m working on the rough human draft for this one, which is probably going to be the most difficult draft. My hope is to finish it by June, leaving another month to do the revision draft and the final polish. So far, it’s going well, but juggling this one with the other projects is starting to get a little difficult.

I’m going to be on the Blasters and Blades podcast soon, talking about this new series, so I want to get the first four chapters to a state where I can put them into a sample excerpt, hopefully before the end of the month. That way, people who hear the podcast (or find out about it in other ways) can download the sample and sign up for my email list to be informed when the full book comes out.

I am very excited for this book, and hopeful that it will turn out well! The AI draft is already done, so I just need to translate that into the actual human draft and make it shine.

I’m also working on the AI draft for The Soulbond and the Lady, book 2 of the series, though this is a much lower priority. Basically, I’m doing just enough to keep my AI writing skills honed, and when I start the human draft of this book, after finishing The Soulbond and the Sling, I’ll focus more on finishing the AI draft for this one. But I am very excited to finish this WIP as well, since I hope to release the first three books in this series all at roughly the same time. So the sooner I can finish this one, the soon I can publish the first book.

As if that’s not enough, I’m also working on an outline for another fantasy trilogy, which I hope to generate in Sudowrite before the end of the month. Gotta use those credits before I lose them. But that’s more of a fun side project at this point—something to do after the work has been done on everything else.

At some point, I’m probably going to drop the ball on one of these WIPs. That, or I’ll put everything else on hold to finish Captive of the Falconstar, but I don’t want to do that until I have a good stretch of time and know that I can finish it quickly. In the meantime, I’m backed up on all of the regular publishing tasks, which is why I haven’t posted a new short story for the Vasicek Free Library for this month yet, but that’s coming soon. And hopefully I can get caught up on this blog too.

The rough draft of Captive of the Falconstar is complete!

Good news! The rough human draft of Captive of the Falconstar is now complete! I finished it just this morning. It clocks in at:

12 chapters

63 scenes

84,786 words

The AI draft was a little bit longer, at 85,055 words. I finished that last week (I’ve been working on the AI draft and the human draft concurrently). But the AI draft was never going to be good enough to put out into the world on its own. There were definitely parts that I needed to rewrite in my own words, in order to work out the finer details of the story. That’s one of the reasons why I always do a complete human rewrite of everything I generate with AI.

The next step is to make a revision pass through the book, to check for any plot holes or loose threads, and to make sure that all of the scene and chapter transitions work the way they’re supposed to. Then I’ll make a final polishing pass, where I cut the word count by at least 10%. At that point, all it needs is a copy edit and/or a proofreading pass, and it’s ready to go out into the world!

If you want to preorder this book, you can already do so at most of the major online retailers. It’s set to release on July 11th, which is plenty of time to finish all the revisions and edits.

Captive of the Falconstar

Freedom is a fantasy—but revenge is forever.

Sonya tells herself she wants freedom—that she dreams of returning to her homeworld. But the truth burns hotter: she wants revenge. The problem is Zlata—once a captive like Sonya, now queen of the Hameji star clan. As rival wives circle for power, pressuring Zlata to produce an heir, she turns to a dangerous solution that will force her to use Sonya in ways neither woman expected.

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About the Book

Freedom is a fantasy—but revenge is forever.

Sonya tells herself she wants freedom—that she only dreams of returning to her homeworld. But the truth burns hotter and darker. She wants revenge.

The problem? Zlata stands in her way. Once a captive like Sonya, Zlata clawed her way to become queen of the Hameji star clan—and now she keeps Sonya as her slave.

But as the Valdamar Clan rises to threaten everything Zlata has built, the queen faces a brutal dilemma: rival wives circling for power, a warlord husband who needs an heir, and a dangerous solution that will force her to use Sonya in ways neither woman expected.

In the ruthless game of Hameji clan politics, captivity takes many forms—and freedom may cost more than either woman can pay.

Details

Author: Joe Vasicek
Series: Falconstar Trilogy, Book 2
Genres: Action & Adventure, FICTION, General, Military, Science Fiction, Space Exploration, Space Opera
Tag: 2026 Release
Publisher: Joe Vasicek
Publication Year: July 2026
Length: Novel
eBook Price: $4.99

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Joe Vasicek

Other Books in the "Falconstar Trilogy"

Queen of the Falconstar

Going Dark

I thought I was at least a month from finishing my current WIP, Captive of the Falconstar. But I made some really good progress over the weekend, and now I think that I may be able to finish it before the start of April—but only if I push really hard to finish it.

So I’ve decided to put off everything else that doesn’t absolutely have to get done, in order to focus on that WIP. Part of that means putting off this blog. Whether or not I finish Captive of the Falconstar, I’ll be back in April, but this is going to be the last post for a while.

By the way, if you want to preorder Captive of the Falconstar, you can now do so on Amazon and most other stores! The book description isn’t that good, so I’ll definitely update it before the book goes live, but other than that it’s basically good to go. And if you want to pick up book 1, it’s currently available for free.

Captive of the Falconstar

Freedom is a fantasy—but revenge is forever.

Order Now!

About the Book

Freedom is a fantasy—but revenge is forever.

Sonya tells herself she wants freedom—that she only dreams of returning to her homeworld. But the truth burns hotter and darker. She wants revenge.

The problem? Zlata stands in her way. Once a captive like Sonya, Zlata clawed her way to become queen of the Hameji star clan—and now she keeps Sonya as her slave.

In the ruthless game of Hameji clan politics, captivity takes many forms—and freedom may cost more than either woman can pay.

Details

Order Now

Joe Vasicek

Other Books in the "Falconstar Trilogy"

Queen of the Falconstar