[As usual, two weeks lag here, if you aren’t reading this on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/blazeward). If you’d like your news fresher, and the monthly Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef newsletter, all I ask is a buck to help keep the lights on around here.]
Still working Uly and Dan. Just over 50k of an expected 80k, so that’s good. About to start the long set-piece that the front half telegraphed, which them splits the story into two big parts (Uly and Dan separated by ten thousand light-years, sort of thing), leading into book 7. Hadn’t really expected to do 6 & 7 as a duology, but what the hell do I know? Writer-brain doesn’t always tell me things ahead of time.
Then, as I’m falling asleep last night, a whole new story slams into my head. Big. Not huge, but something entirely new. Fun. Funky, but one of my first decision points is whether I want to write it as straight SF or roll it sideways into the erotica SF. (If anybody actually read the erotica I’d put out, it might be a most obvious point, but both of you don’t count, so I intend to leave it open for a bit.)
Whole damned book one. Possibly the overarching plot to a long Book One or a trilogy, with the back end open to all manner of follow-on stories, once I get the two main characters resolved.
Not Romance™, but assuredly following many of those same plot arc elements, which is extra weird for me. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl exchange fish out of water adventure sequences. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. HEA. Or something.
Now add a hundred thousand words of hijinks or something in the middle, and Bob’s yer uncle.
Or something like that. Writer-brain obviously wants some sort of break from the stuff I’ve been writing. And I’m ALMOST back to perhaps something approaching normal. Whatever that is.
Going down to see Fabulous Publisher Babe™ again this week. She comes home on the 17th of May, and will be utterly exhausted. Niece is doing well, but the Babe is doing 100% caregiving, and her niece is as stubborn as she is.
Also working on what will be the third Swordmistress Zhen story, with #1 out and #2 currently available in Thrill Ride Magazine 05, Sisters In Arms. I’ll get the rights back this summer, so I’d like to be able to extend the series. Folks have responded well to Swordmistress Zhen and Archer Zhen. I had fun with them.
Should finish Corsac 6 in a couple of weeks. Then, obviously, on to something new. Not Science Officer 15 or Corsac 7, but maybe these new things. Got time to think. Busy taking notes on the new one, but no idea if it starts as a short story, or I just drop into novel mode and run with it.
I’m just looking forward to life somehow getting back to some sort of less stressful normal. If possible. I always knew 2024 was going to suck. Gotta keep grinding to get to 25 and hopefully we survive as a civilization. Because, unfortunately, that seems to be where we are, when one group has decided to burn it all to the ground if they can’t be in charge. And yes, I’m a little salty this morning. Comes of not enough sleep and being without my sweetie for several weeks.
More news when I know.
shade and sweet water,
blaze
West of the Mountains, WA
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