Update on The Fifth World 3, New Novella Series, and More
With the first quarter of 2015 coming to a close, I feel good about the progress made so far. The Fifth World 3 is being reviewed by the first group of beta-readers as we speak. In a few weeks I am going to go through it again myself, with feedback in hand, to do a round of revisions. Next step is to give it to a professional editor. The timeline for its publication is moving a bit due to some financial issues. Namely, we haven’t decided how much we have to spend on developing and promoting the new book. Right now my best estimate of the release date is sometime in August or early September.
Lately I’ve done a lot more reading, trying to make some progress on my 35 book goal for this year. I am behind schedule but closing the gap. Right now I am reading Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, and The Peripheral by William Gibson. After that it is Lock In by John Scalzi and The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. My reviews will follow soon after.
On the writing front, I’ve drafted two new short stories and begun revising an older third one. One is about first contact with a new intelligent alien species that would much rather be left alone. The second is about a utopian city in the near future that is zero emission and near zero impact on the environment around it. The third is about the first artificial intelligence general of the US military.
Of the three, the AI story is the closest to being completed and shared with others. My interests lately have moved away from space travel and far future stories and moved closer to today.
Meanwhile the Mech series is coming along as well. Three episodes are complete with an outline for a fourth and the beginning of a fifth. My hope is to have them ready to come out in the Fall, possibly October. If not, I will be preparing them for the beginning of the new year.
The challenge with the mech series is the story arc is a lot longer than a novel. My hope is to keep writing episodes for a while, which means some serious world-building, plot development, and character development needs to go into it before the first one is officially released. I’m becoming a perfectionist on certain things, particularly planetology, culture, and the characters themselves. I want the story to have all the awe of a brand new, detailed universe, but it is equally important, if not more important that the characters drive the story and keep readers interested and wanting more.
There are a lot space operas and military science fiction out there with plenty of spaceships, aliens, new weapons, and oddball characters. As such, the world-building alone won’t win the day. The focus is to find ways to separate myself from the stiff competition.
I say “I” won’t publish it because I am leaning hard towards self-publishing it. It comes down to cash. Namely if the publisher of my first two novels is not willing to commit sufficient resources to the new series, I might as well do it myself. Part of the reason for going to a publisher is their advertising and marketing resources after all.
Well that is all for now. I’ll report back when I got news.
J
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