[As usual, three 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.]
So I mentioned last week that I was reading Walter Jon Williams’ Dread Empire’s Fall series. Ended up DNF at exactly the 50% mark of book two, when it turned into Pride and Prejudice. (Not a compliment, by the way.) FMC discovers YET ANOTHER REASON WE CAN NEVER BE TOGETHER and runs. MMC flounces off an is engaged to someone else in three pages.
Now, given 1.5 books, we know that MMC and FMC will eventually find a way to get back together, but only after another round of angst that frankly was verging over onto TSTL. Aristocracy is a bad idea and I’m of the opinion that most of those folks should be turned out of their palaces to starve. After all, if they were that genetically superior, being dropped with $5 in their pockets in the favelas of Rio means that they will be kings of Brazil in less than a year, right? That’s what they’ve been telling me for all these years.
TSTL, but really, 20k+ words of FALSE TENSION because we know they will “Find A Way To Overcome” this next setback. But now the author has promised me that he’ll do it again. After all, it’s a trilogy, so of course they will AGAIN be separated by family and aristocratic privilege, before True Love™ finally overcomes.
Pardon me as I get my stomach to stop turning over. The Will They/Won’t They? got desperately overplayed and turned into not a problem to be solved but histrionics to be listened to as the two characters throw childish tantrums.
DNF. And unlikely to pick up another WJW book because of that. Pity, but you’ve burned me as a reader.
Writing: Finished Belle 1 last week. Right at 40k. New series, new universe, new fun. I consciously chose to write it because I want to create more entry points into my catalog. After all, RAN Stormhawk (Dec 2026) is book 26 in the overall RAN universe. Copy editor demanded an Author Note on the front for folks picking it up and a little lost as we’re 28 years forward from the beginning of Auberon and the Jessica Keller Chronicles.
Can do.
Sent Red Branch 6 off to copy editor over the weekend. Sometime in the spring. Researching what will turn into Book 7, and planning to join a “Team Kickstarter” project with several other thriller writers, where Red Branch 1 is part of it.
And started Scattered Tribes 4 yesterday, for those of you who have met Holden and the gang. Gonna run 5, each around 90k, and planning to drop them in the fall/winter next year. Then eventually expand that universe by writing the series my friend Tom’s wife asked for, where she wanted “Harry Potter Meets Star Fleet Academy” (this before they announced the reboot of the former and the series of that name). Got plans.
Swords, Sorcery, and Starships.
Just gotta resolve everything to save the galaxy from ancient dark gods manipulating people for their own reasons. (Boredom is always a threat, if you intend to live forever, after all).
More Belle, because I want three of those before I publish. Maybe a fourth Harri, because I have a plot in mind. More Red Branch. More A’Zedi Survey Corps, because book 3 sets up some interesting follow-ons (you’ll see in November)
And more Mick, because having fun exploring some darker topics there.
Hope y’all are staying cool on this nasty hot Tuesday in the PWN. Staying in the AC myself and doing stufffff.
For those of you who have been around long enough, what’s the series (novel or short) that you would most like to see me extend? Always looking for how I might provide better fanservice for you weirdos.
🙂
shade and sweet water,
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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