What Am I Doing: April 2025 Edition

I’m back on my usual side of the world… so what now?

Well to nobody’s surprise I have a lot of writing to do. Two major projects are set to consume me for the foreseeable future, and my return to my homeland has been accompanied by progress on the first: I have my first batch of proofreading notes for The Owl in the Labyrinth ready to peruse. I still need to prod one of my readers for their input, but it should be soon in coming, and I am assured by him that there’s not too much in error that he’s spotted.

The notes I do have are rather good, which is pleasing: as ever I have enlisted a dear old friend, giver of the best feedback a fantasy author could wish for because he does not, in fact, generally read fantasy. Or even like a lot of fantasy. So if he enjoys reading my work despite this unfortunate condition, then I know I’ve probably done a good job. And he did like this one, a lot. The Owl in the Labyrinth is, apparently, the best Boiling Seas book so far, which is very nice to hear indeed. I’ve been writing this series for a very long time, after all; it’s nice to think that I might have improved somewhat as a writer in the process.

So I have those notes to do: largely a couple of pages of actual spelling mistakes and other mishaps, but some very good suggestions to improve the last act in particular and tweak my worldbuilding, all of which sound good to me and also eminently doable. Once that’s done, and the notes have met with approval… well, it’s map-drawing and formatting time, because creating a paperback always takes forever no matter how many times I do it. I think I know what I want the maps to be, which is a good start, and of course my cover is mostly done – I just need a proper blurb and to know the spine sizes and tedious things like that.

Am I committing to a release date yet? Definitely not. Am I confident it’ll be ready by the summer? Definitely.

But my actual writing time, alongside polishing off this short story (or possibly novella) I’ve accidentally started, is going to be for Salvage 7. I have excellent agent feedback to tackle – and tackling it is a big job. Not a full rewrite of what’s already there, but a lot of augmentation of it, and a lot of writing on to turn a quite short novel into a much beefier and complete piece. Once I thought of doing a trilogy, but no longer: one reasonably sized brick should do. I have an almost-completed part/book 2 to draw on, and though I suspect most of that will end up on the cutting-room floor I want to preserve the bones of it while still speeding on through to reach a proper conclusion.

It’s a big job. I intend to spend some time going back through those original drafts and re-familiarising myself with the miserable, muddy SF world I cooked up those years ago, and the unfortunate bastards with whom I populated it. The Boiling Seas is an optimistic series for the most part: Salvage 7 really isn’t, on any level. I have darlings to kill and other darlings to make suffer terribly, before the end.

It’s a daunting task, this, but I know it’ll be worth it. Salvage 7 has potential. Let’s see if I can unlock it.

And while I’m doing all this, there is another project that I need to tinker with. But this one, I’m not doing alone. And nor is it words on paper. Not just on paper, anyway. Not anymore. It might be a little while in the making… but I am rather excited by the sound of this.