Update: June 2022

Summer has finally arrived, bringing with it quite a bit of good news.

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If you follow me on social media in general or this blog in particular, you’ve probably already seen my latest announcement: my fantasy mystery novelette “The Skull in the Tree” has been accepted as part of Fantastic Detectives, an anthology from Tannhauser Press and Worlds Enough!

This acceptance almost didn’t happen. As I mentioned a couple months back, my initial submission vanished without a trace on the publisher’s end. Their web and email host went out of business during the pandemic, and they’d set up a system to forward submissions from the original email address to their new one. But even though I received a confirmation email, the original address must have decided my submission was spam and chucked it into the junk folder…which emptied after thirty days.

Fortunately, I noticed the announcement from Worlds Enough that rejection and hold notices had been sent out to everyone who’d submitted. After getting in touch with the editors, they invited me and a few other authors to resubmit. “The Skull in the Tree” was the only one of these submissions to be accepted, and for that I am profoundly grateful!

On the writing front, most of this month has been consumed by worldbuilding for my upcoming military sci-fi romance. Everything from the politics and history of this region of space to the technology behind space combat. These notes total somewhere around 13,000-14,000 words. I think worldbuilding is done for now, but I might work on a simple map just to keep the geography (astrography?) straight once the actual writing starts.

My next step is character sheets and an outline. Most of the plot has already taken shape in my head, and I feel my vision of the lead characters is pretty clear. They don’t have names yet–names usually come to me pretty late in the process–but I already know what makes them tick. Still, it’ll be nice to put all these thoughts on paper.

Once all this is finished, I plan on circling back around to complete my outline for Law, Love and the Whippoorwill before deciding which project to write first. Novelizing Law, Love, and the Whippoorwill might be easier in some ways because I can reuse most of the novelette, but I feel like in-person cultural research might be necessary for a deeper portrayal of Topsannah. Research for the sci-fi romance would be much easier, but I’d be starting from nothing.

Right now, I feel more fired up for the sci-fi romance, but only time will tell.

In other writing related news, I recently did an interview with Dragon Soul Press. No release date yet, but we were looking at some time around the end of the month to coincide with the launch of Organic Ink: Volume 5, which will make me a published poet. Keep an eye out here for more details!

My June reads have been a pretty diverse bunch. The Shadow of Saganami for some plot inspiration with its thrilling single-ship action and unique romance subplot, Scatter for both personal enjoyment and my professional interest in seeing how other authors have written superhero romance, and Warleader to check out some military sci-fi romance.

Warleader had an excellent romance, but I couldn’t help wishing the external subplot was stronger. Meanwhile, I’m exactly two-thirds of the way through Scatter and a little over halfway through my reread of The Shadow of Saganami.

Once I finish those, I plan on tackling Games of Command by Linnea Sinclair, His Secret Illuminations by Scarlett Gale, and The Tyrant Baru Cormorant. The latter might actually be first, just because I suspect I’ll want to save the fluffier books for after such a heavy read.

June also means it’s primary season here in Oklahoma. I’ll be glad once next week rolls around and we get a brief reprieve from all the campaign ads before the general election season starts. Of course, some of these races seem guaranteed to be headed for a runoff, so maybe we won’t get a break after all.

Speaking of bad news, our air conditioner died earlier this month…right before the summer heatwave started. We’re lucky it turned out to be a relatively cheap and easy fix. Nevertheless, that week was miserable. Hopefully the rest of the unit holds up for a long, long time.

On that note, stay cool out there, and I’ll see you in July!