Update: October 2022

Halloween is just over a week away, and I have some good news to share ahead of the holiday!

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Most of my focus this month has been on my military sci-fi romance novelette “The Captain and the Crown”. Based on the length of the first scene, I might actually have a novella on my hands. My main characters haven’t even met in person and the story is already pushing 2000 words. This means my original target market, a sci-fi romance anthology from Dragon Soul Press, might be out of the question. My outline has fourteen scenes; if they’re all this length, the story could come in around twice the max word count of that anthology.

Fortunately, there are quite a few romance publishers out there who accept novellas. Hopefully one like my final product.

Like I mentioned last month, “The Captain and the Crown” takes place in the same setting as A League of Honor, but a few decades earlier. This will be another enemies-to-lovers story, with a prince fleeing an arranged marriage and civil war crossing paths with a captain whose family emigrated specifically to escape those royals. A tense diplomatic situation, lots of bad blood, and more than a little attraction should make for an interesting recipe.

Last week, the publisher where I submitted “A Helping Hand” came back to me with a revise and resubmit. The requested revisions were pretty minor, so I was able to rewrite a couple sections and beat their deadline with a few days to spare. Writing superhero stories again took a little getting used to, but I appreciated the opportunity to flesh out Whippoorwill and how she comes to adopt her daughter. Nobody has given me a precise timeline for a final response, but the urgency they were moving with makes me suspect sometime in the next week or two. Fingers crossed for another acceptance!

Aside from writing new material, I’ve also been handling edits on “The Skull in the Tree” for Fantastic Detectives and “Rekindling” for It Takes Two. There does seem to be a little more schedule slippage on Fantastic Detectives, it’s understandable when you’re working on a big project with lots of authors. Once the anthology goes on pre-order, I’ll be sure to post an update.

Anybody who follows this blog probably already knows, but my heroic fantasy short story “Warden of the Wex Wood” earned an Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future Contest for the Third Quarter of 2022! This is my second, so I’ll have another certificate for my wall. Like I mentioned in the original announcement, this story is already back on submission and has made it through the first round of consideration at Savage Realms Monthly.

I haven’t heard anything more since the blistering progression from sample submission to full submission to passed up to the Editor-in-Chief, which just goes to show you how much waiting is involved in publishing as an industry.

Going forward, I plan to keep working on “The Captain and the Crown”. My goal is to finish by the end of the year, but we’ll see what the future holds.

For me, October has been a month of sword and sorcery. The Blood on the Blade anthology, catching up on Savage Realms, and a bit of Conan are all on my reading list. With Halloween on the way, I think I’ll probably throw in a bit of horror. And, finally, I signed on for an ARC of an upcoming YA fantasy romance novel. I’ll probably spend a good chunk of this week working my way through that to be sure I have enough time to write my review. Once I’m finished, I’ll be sharing the review here in addition to Amazon and Goodreads.

Last month, I mentioned spotting a possible galaxy while observing Jupiter. Today, I’m pretty sure I’ve identified which one it was: NGC 428. Its position right on the boundary between Cetus and Pisces, the off-center galactic core, one ragged edge formed by a trailing arm…everything fits. Here’s what it looks like with a telescope and imaging equipment far beyond mine.

Besides pinning down my mystery object, I also managed to catch Neptune! Hunting it took a few nights, but the go-to functionality of my telescope and a guide from Astronomy Magazine ultimately put me in the right spot. Very faint, and hard to distinguish from the surrounding stars, but its bluish tinge gives the planet away.

The only planets I have left are Mercury and Uranus, though I might have caught Uranus the same night I found Neptune. My telescope mount came loose right after I had the go-to drive slew toward it, so I can’t be sure the planet was actually in my eyepiece. If we can get some clear skies, I’ll try again. Mercury might actually be the bigger challenge, though. It’s close enough to the sun that it rarely comes too high above the horizon.

I’m thinking about getting a dedicated astrophotography camera, so I might have some nice pictures by the end of the year. Keep an eye out in my monthly updates for November and December!