Seaflame! Archives - Forgotten Stars.net

April is here, and so am I

Greetings, programs! Last time I checked in I was gearing up to do a burst of edits for The Savior Worlds, as part of my effort to get it release-worthy for launch in May.

Well.

As I’m sure you’re all well aware, a month later…the world happened.

The plan was to release at Buffalo’s Nickel City Con in May, but now, because of Covid-19, Nickel City Con isn’t happening this year. And that’s not the only hiccup in the works. My wonderful cover artist got her work done and we were just starting to talk about when we could meet up to make the transfer of the art, when the world locked down.

A friend and editor at The Geekiverse, who provided one of my big sets of edits for the book, was going to meet with me to discuss plans for a whole relaunch of The Song of Forgotten Stars along with the release of Savior Worlds, but that hasn’t happened yet, either.

So, when will any of this stuff happen? I have no idea. When it does, I want it to be right. I’ll be revising the existing editions of Stardancer, The Wisdomfold Path, and Amongst the Stars; among other things, I will be adding character lists to each book and synopses of the previous volumes in each book after Stardancer. I’ll also be tweaking the book covers, fixing font and color issues to make them “pop” more.

And let’s not forget, The Savior Worlds needs to come out, taking the story into a new era! So exciting! And so very, very frustrating to have a world-wide pandemic basically force me to slam on the brakes.

But, slam them I must. Everything will be fine, eventually, and if I take an optimistic view, I’ve been given the gift of more time to get everything done right. That’s big.

So what am I doing in the meantime? Well, my plan was to get the Forgotten Stars books revised and Savior Worlds launched, and then move on to finally drafting Seaflame! Book II (actual title TBD). Instead, I’ve moved that drafting process onto the front burner. I did a round of edits on Seaflame! Book I last fall and winter, so that story is fresh on my mind and I’m looking forward to completing that adventure.

And that’s where things lie right now, writing-wise. (As for personal observations from our Coronavirus-ridden world, I’ll save those for Byzantium’s Shores at some point. For now, we’re fine here. We are, it turns out, deeply cut out for social distancing.)

Until later, see you ’round the Galaxy!

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Looking ahead: setting goals for the rest of 2016 and into 2017!

As we head into the final third of 2016, it’s worth looking ahead, both to the conclusion of this year but into the next. So here’s what I hope to get done over the next sixteen months and change!

via GIPHY

:: Publish Amongst the Stars (The Song of Forgotten Stars, book III). This is a no-brainer. This book has to get out there! I hope readers will enjoy what’s in store for Tariana, Margeth, Lt. Rasharri, and their friends this time out. The series does not end with this book, but we do reach the end of the larger story’s first act.

Sadly, there will almost certainly not be a Forgotten Stars book in 2017. I haven’t even started drafting Forgotten Stars IV (although I do have some notes and some ideas for what happens in it), and I’m not sure how soon I’ll be getting there.

:: NaNoWriMo: my project this year will be my new space opera series! I’ve been doing a lot of background work and brainstorming for this one, since it’ll be a more character-driven series and more episodic in nature than the Forgotten Stars books. I’ll also be writing in a more adult tone for this one, which I’m looking forward to doing.

:: Signed copies of all existing books. This is something I’ve meant to do ever since I released Stardancer, and I’m frustrated that I haven’t got there yet. I really truly mean to do it soon! Hopefully in the next few months, once I get a chance to restock my supply of my own books. Stay tuned for details, but if you’ve ever wanted a signed copy of one of my books, you’ll soon be able to have precisely that.

:: Publish GhostCop and start editing its sequel. I had originally planned to get GhostCop out this year, but I decided to push it to 2017, because otherwise I wasn’t sure if I’d have anything ready for release next year, and I don’t want to go more than an entire year without anything coming out. Since I’m not sure when the next Forgotten Stars book will be on the docket, this looks to be my best bet.

As for the sequel? As of this writing I am now wrestling with that book’s climax and I have high hopes for making my deadline to finish the first draft by August 31. Yay! After that, I will let the manuscript lie fallow until March 1, 2017, at the earliest. (I am a staunch believer in letting manuscripts sit for a long time before attempting edits.)

:: Lighthouse Boy. Ahhh, now here’s a bit of a problem: I’m still not sure where I’m going with this one. The problem is the structure of the entire project: it’s one large book, kinda-sorta split in two. (The framing device is that the book is a autobiographical manuscript left behind by Our Hero later in life, which has just been found in two parts by an academic dude who leaves annotations and stuff all over the manuscript.)

So while I have the first draft of the first half done, I’m waffling currently on whether I write the second part and then edit the entire thing en masse, or edit the first part and then write the second. For various reasons, I’m leaning toward the former – mainly because if I need to change anything in Part One to reflect and/or anticipate the events of Part Two, I can’t do that if I’ve already edited and released the first one.

I am also really considering serializing this book, once it’s done, on Wattpad prior to publishing the entire thing, or maybe as a series of chapbooks. We’ll see. In any event, if I go the way I’m leaning, I won’t start drafting Book Two of Lighthouse Boy until some time next year, and then return to Forgotten Stars after that.

:: Attend local cons! I need to do more of this. Buffalo Comic-Con is coming up in September, and I’ll be in attendance, albeit as a ticket-buying fan. But I’ll be there, sizing things up and hopefully doing some interacting. Next year, once I have four books out, I’d love to be able to set up a dealer table of my own. We’ll see.

Locally, there are a surprising number of cons right now. Buffalo Comic-Con has been growing for several years, and this year it was joined by a new one, Nickel City Con, which was just held last weekend but next year apparently shifts to May. There are also UBCon and EerieCon, neither of which I’ve yet attended. (I can’t attend EerieCon this year because its dates coincide with an annual getaway trip The Wife and I take every year.) I do wonder if the Buffalo con scene is getting a little oversaturated, but as long as they all exist, I’ll try to attend as many as I can.

:: Short fiction. I’ve been thinking that it might be time to start writing some short fiction again. Right now I don’t really have any ideas ready to go, but that’s never a problem. I can walk down the street and spot ideas to write. What would I do with short fiction? I’m not sure. If nothing else, I can post it all on Wattpad, which I’ve already started doing with some of my older stories.

So there are some of my “stretch goals” for the next year-and-change. Will I make them all? Maybe, maybe not…but I’m going to have a hell of a time trying! Onward and upward! Zap! Pow!

Because in my head I'm still twelve. #AmWriting #overalls

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DEE-YOU-ENN

I haven't been posting much because I'm THIS CLOSE to finishing the first draft of SEAFLAME, Book One. TODAY I FINISH WRITING THE THING, fellow writer-warriors!!! #amwriting

My intent has been to post here at least once a week, but obviously that hasn’t happened lately, and the reason is my usual one: I’ve been really focused on cranking out the words on SEAFLAME!, and guess what! Today I finished the first draft!

So…how did it come out in the end? Well:

I’m not gonna lie, folks: while I gave myself permission to write a long book, mainly because I wanted to write a long book, I didn’t quite expect it to be this long! That’s a lot of words. It’s about 60,000 words longer than Stardancer‘s first draft, about 50,000 longer than The Wisdomfold Path‘s, and it’s about 30,000 longer than what was my longest book to date yet, Amongst the Stars. Plus, this is only the first book in a duology, and I plan to take a break from this project before I draft Book II, so it’ll be a while before this book sees the light of day beyond my own eyes. Sorry, folks, that’s just the way of it. But I will say this: I think I’ve done some really nifty work here, if I do say so myself. Certainly there’s some very strong character writing, and I look forward to seeing how it’s received!

SEAFLAME! is my Dumas-inspired adventure novel, and it’s a “fantasy” by virtue of taking place in a completely imaginary world, and there is no magic in it at all. It was a lot of fun to write, and I’m really glad to have a draft complete, because this is a project that I’ve started three times already. Third time was the charm, though!

So what’s next? Ghostcop II (more on Ghostcop to come in the next few months), and then the first draft in a new space opera series (which will be set in the same universe as The Song of Forgotten Stars, but the stories won’t intersect), and then either SEAFLAME! Book Two or Forgotten Stars IV. I like having my work planned out way in advance. Almost makes me feel like a real writer!