[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.]

I’m that writer that lays down in the evening and lets backbrain grind and churn as I relax and start to fall asleep. In the old days, I worked out most of Javier and Suvi long before I discovered that I could make money writing about them. And Uly and Dan.

These days, I’ve trained myself to listen and remember the good bits. Usually, little chunks or scenes will come out of such things.

Then there’s last week.

Wednesday night, a new character started yammering at me. I mean YAMMERING.

Thursday, he would not shut up, so I started taking notes on my phone. I have immense numbers of worlds and settings I have documented that way. Less than half of them ever turn into books, though sometimes three ideas will cross-fertilize and mutate into one thing. Those are usually the ones that gestate.

Yammering.

Friday, I opened up the writing phone and let him run. I mean, I already has the entire damned plot in my head. Usually, I have character/setting/problem and maybe a couple of milestones to touch on as we go, with a fair estimate as to how it ends. Usually not where, so I let any Book One establish itself and dictate what the rest of the series should strive for in length.

No. I know how the villain gets it. And why. And what happens in more than a dozen points along the way that I had a hard time figuring out which of three different points to start from. Ended up with the first of them, chronologically, just so I could run like hell forward without stopping to flashback or info dump later.

Sometimes, you start in the middle, then use those flashback moments to slow the pace down and give the reader a moment to breathe.

Fuck that. You are going to start a four minute mile with this one. Hope you’re ready.

Started writing Friday. Mind you, I’m still churning happily along on Scattered Tribes 3 in the morning. This is sitting on the couch or in the chair in the afternoon/evening, furiously typing on a virtual keyboard with autocorrect off and suggestion on. I have gotten really fast on that phone, because it has learned my vocabulary now.

So Friday-Monday, while doing things like going to a book fair in Pyuallup or the BBQ event in Enumclaw or hanging out with the boyz, I have over 12,000 words on Harri done. And I’m just going to write the damned thing and get it done with so he’ll shut up for a while. Probably the start of a new series because hello, have you met me?

It will come out at some point. Might finish it and throw it to the wolves just because. Not like I’m not into my 2027 publishing schedule at this point. Got all of 2026 nailed down. And Harri is novel #11 this year, with three months to go. And plans for more Last Stand novellas, which go really fast.

You will be entertained. I just have to get Harri, Dash, and Royce to shut up for a while.

🙂

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

—————————-

Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.

[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.]

Got a little carried away and didn’t write a blog post this morning. So the alarm at 2 as I was driving to the hardware store was a jolt. After 4 now and possibly in the process of getting my shit together.

Near a I can tell, I haven’t been Raptured. Nor has anyone else but Robert Redford, for what it’s worth. We’ll check in again next week, just in case.

Not a lot to say, but that’s exhaustion of spending the hot afternoon putting screens on the gutters finally, so that they MIGHT NOT plug and clog when the rains start. No leaves around here, but a metric shitton of pine needles and they get in there and I end up having to go out in the rain with a ladder and stick a hand in the cold muddy water to pull the gutter clean.

Hoping not this winter.

Writing: Finished RAN Stormhawk last week and started Scattered Tribes 3.

Am also in the process of test-driving two new copy editors after my last one passive-aggressive quit on me this last spring. Hopefully, both will work out and I can have better confidence in things I put out than having a couple of First Readers (both good, but not perfect) look at things.

Am exhausted, so not a lot of words at the moment. Writing is going well, I just haven’t slept all that great the last couple of nights and shit has ground me down a little. Fell asleep early last night and slept the usual 630 this morning. Might do that again in a few hours.

What are you going as for Halloween?

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

—————————-

Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.

[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.]

Weather up in this corner of the Cascades has been weird this year. Not bad, but weird.

In the spring, we had a two week stretch of warm and dry where everybody’s allergies went insane from the tree sex. I ended up with three trees FULL of cherries instead of a handful. Good.

Been warm but not hot that often, which I prefer. Moved up here for 62 and drizzly, y’all.

Had a long stretch of wet last week to the point we wondered if fall had come early. Usually Oct 1, BTW.

Harvested all the grapes saturday and am making various wines and brandies now. And a lot of wind last night is bringing in hot today. Supposedly 85-90 down in the valleys, so maybe 5 degrees cooler up here. Got apples and aronia left to harvest. And maybe some mowing for the first time in 6 weeks (when it gets dry, it gets really dry.) Lots of green today and various dandelion variants flowering for the late season bees packing away honey for what promises to be a cold and kinda wet winter. I’ll apologize when I mow it all off.

Books. I am going to finish RAN Stormhawk this week and rotate into the third Scattered Tribes. Picked up my old omnibus edition of the Black Company (first three books) and might only reread book one just for the epic fantasy feel to the language.

I find that WAY too much Epic Fantasy these days tends to be Tolkien with the serial numbers (mostly) filed off and that just bores the shit out of me. I want action. Motion. Stakes and emotional growth. Scattered Tribes I’m leaning into a lot of things, and trying to keep the reader engaged without any long chapters of food porn that do not serve to do anything except infodump all the research the writer did on an obscure topic.

Still writing several shorts in my spare time. Think I have four stories open right now, but all on that spare phone and backed up regularly. Plus I know where each is going and just have to get there.

First Reader finished Ollie 4 and assured me that the ending didn’t work, so I’ll write Ollie 5 after that so I can bring it all home. That gets me through November next year. Lots to publish, and probably two kickstarter campaigns next year as well. The Make 100 is coming into shape nicely, and I might just go ahead and KS the first Scattered Tribes. Dunno.

Not a lot past that, save that it’s tuesday and autumn will be here soon enough.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

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Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.

20250909

[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.]

Because I can. And because it won’t make a damned bit of sense to the rest of you until sometime next year, the novel I am working on this week is RAN Stormhawk. First Reader who understands laughed his fool head off. As intended.

Heather 5 included a section sending Stormhawk off on a mission, but I realized as soon as I wrote it that the tone would need to be radically different from the massive darkness of the Warlord of Yaumgan books. So time to spin off a trilogy or something.

There’s precedent, because that’s why the CS-405 books were pulled out of Jessica 7 & 8. Tone. Lighter here significantly. And runs temporally parallel to the end of Heather 5, then a little beyond.

And both set up two major series that will start up a few years after Heather’s War is done. Veronika Provst Part One and Part Two for lack of a better term today.

Provst. Tom Provst’s granddaughter. In an RAN uniform. At least during Heather’s War. Shit will get more complicated than I care to explain until the rest of you catch up with me, so just know that I’ll be carrying the RAN books another twenty years into the future. Possibly putting them to rest after that. At least for a time. Possibly not.

Just like Science Officer, I have brought Javier and folks to a resting point again with 16, where I can finally go back and fill in what happens to Mina after Way of the Sword. There were five Ways listed, if I recall without looking. Always intended five books.

Eventually. Inshallah and the creek don’t rise, vato.

Then the fun part. (and I do say that tongue firmly planted in cheek.)

The Ambassador noted that I had created one of the single greatest characters in literature and obviously needed to write more about him. At the same time, that character has had his moment in the sun and now casts his tremendous shadow on the kids coming up behind him, so I hadn’t planned on writing more from the POV of First Centurion/Senator Kosnett.

Because he demanded it. That was the email I sent the other day when I spun up a new spy thriller shorts series and cast him and his lovely wife as a team of semi-retired troubleshooters. (She giggled at being a sniper, but you have to know her to appreciate the joke.)

He wrote back that he wasn’t sure if he was being honored or trolled. (Both, natch, ‘cause I love the guy.)

Worse, yesterday, I started the second story in the series. Heh.

He’ll get to read it before the rest of you do, but the first one will be included in the next issue of Thrill Ride Magazine, coming out in December. And there will be more.

September is upon us. Fall. The Glorious Time of Dying, I have heard it called and liked the symbolism.

And, last night, I anti-stodgied.

Background: I grew up on the very eastern edge of Wichita, KS. Literally, across the street from my bedroom was a milo field as long as I lived in the house. (City has moved a couple of miles out in the 30 years since, but this is me as a kid and I moved out in ‘90 for grad school and ‘97 for good.)

Last night, had to walk across a foot bridge over the river. With a tiny creek flowing parallel below us. Maybe eight feet at the widest and one foot deep as a rule.

I have never seen salmon swimming up the river to spawn. Never once. Until last night. Got to stand there and watch them nose around the rocks looking for the entrance from the river itself. Or just being dorks. Whatever.

Really cool, because totally new. (I occasionally have to remind people that I’m not from this planet.)

What utterly new and magical thing have you done lately?

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

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Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.

20250902

[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.]

Gotten over August, I think. It was an ugly one, but not bad.

Just, as noted elsewhere, utterly exhausting. August anyway, plus the barbecue, then the Con, then the recovery.

I managed to not bite anybody in August. Most of you have no idea how important that is.

It is also the start of fall, so a lot of fruit to deal with. Drying it, fermenting it, distilling it in some cases. Took the leftover watermelon and added pineapple to make a wine and brandy it. All the yellow plums are fermenting now and will brandy soon. Got white lightning in a glass jar with oak flavoring pieces added to give it color and flavor.

Even making more shrub now, before all the grapes and apples ripen over the next few weeks, plus Nik and Bry are sitting on eight pounds of cherries they are supposedly getting back to me at some point as booze.

Gonna be a brandy kind of fall. Maybe with hot chocolate when the weather turns.

And shrub, because a hot summer.

Writing.

Hell, I’ve lost count at this point. Tasker is done. Phil and Alison is done. Still have open stories for Zach (8 & 9 I think without looking). Still have open erotica arc.

I am writing what I think will be the last chapter of Ollie 4. Actually hit that and took a break to write this, because I needed time to process how it ended. This is not a car-chase-and-gunfight kind of series, so the climax is entirely emotional and social, but I think it works. And the actual ending, several chapters later, needs to bring it all back to rest and circle it in to resolution.

At the same time, one of my endings actually leaves it all hanging out there, open for people to fill in their own stories, until such time as I actually circle back and write it. All of my series tend to end with enough of an open door that I could go back and write more. Science Officer and Jessica both got that. Captain Daring didn’t, but people have demanded more and I seriously don’t know where to take it in such a way that doesn’t throw out everything we already did for something else.

And I’m past it in my head.

Having finished Heather and about to finish Ollie, I’m facing forward. Heather has two spin-offs, one in the very short term and a second that is the actual sequel series (one of two for Veronika, as I’ve gotten into the details) building up to something that was promised all the way back in Auberon itself. And regularly hinted at since, but only a handful of you have read Heather to understand. (Phil contains all the clues.)

Because I’m having a lot of fun with the RAN books and might actually finish them off at some point, weird as that is to consider.

But I also want to tell Autumn’s story, and it takes place in 15004, or about 1600 years after Jessica. Because Suvi is the Last of the Immortals, and I can carry her forward through history as a narrator. Just gotta fill in the middle bits before permanently hopping into the future.

Busy tonight, so you’ll get Zach 002 tomorrow, I think. Back to normal week, but this is a busy Tuesday and I don’t have to spend all my effort accommodating everyone else.

So there will be more words. More worlds. More stuff.

Hope you folks are all tied in for the next phase, because Holden and the gang will be coming up soon.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

—————————-

Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.

[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.]

Tuesday. The Exhaustion continues. Reread three weeks ago and man, August has been heavy. Mentally okay. (I have a reminder in my phone for Aug 1 to beware rage and depression issues. Those hit in June.)

Just pooped, and haven’t had a “normal” week since July to recover. Might also be coming down with something. Or getting over it. Nothing bad again, just temperature issues this morning.

Got up yesterday and gave myself permission to fuck the day off. And did. Usual Monday stuff, so breakfast, then meet the boys to game. Ended up hanging out with Jon all day, running more errands, and then dojo.

Except that dojo is weird right now. There is a bridge connecting Buckley (Pierce County) and Enumclaw (King County) and it is old and narrow. Iron bridge. Been hit several times. Got hit again.

Closed. Next closest car bridge is about a 40 minute drive, into Auburn. Folks are freaking.

HOWEVER, after years of the Buckley side bitching about taxes and refusing to support a new and expanded modern bridge, a private Rails-to-Trails consortium built a foot bridge nearby. Better, it is rated for fire engines (I know a bunch of fire people these days). People are parking a car on one side and walking to the other to get to work or whatever. LOTS of bikes and scooters. A few folks even polite about pushing their motorcycles across (laws say no vehicles with engines, and cops have been watching, but pushing means safe for pedestrians, which is the point.)

So Sensei and I walked across the bridge to meet the rest next to the river. Full class of folks, in the grass and shade, working. Gonna do this for a few more weeks, then a long break where Sensei is out of town for three weeks. One of the other black belts might do something. Or we might just work at home. Dunno. Don’t gotta know, as I’m not in charge.

Just gotta practice. And be Sensei’s sounding board and training dummy. Which helps me learn because he worked out last night’s training on me in the afternoon.

But tired. Got no spoons, and trying to keep the rage monster mostly chained. Mostly successful.

Writing proceeds. Been working on Ollie 4, but I’m gonna have to go back and do a hard pass at some point because of the long breaks in writing it. Usually, I just go. This time, I have had to pivot off several times. Or take a week off for the con. No writing, come back and try to remember where the hell I was.

Getting close. Think I’m past halfway at this point. Close to 45k if I recall. Got two more major chunks to tell to wrap up everything.

Also working on more Zach. More Altansarnai. More Motley. Most Tasker. Most stuff.

For now, more coffee. Then dive in and try to push Ollie closer to the finish.

Gonna be a long day.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

—————————-

Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.

[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.]

Spent ALL of last week at WorldCon, here in Seattle. And owe y’all a newsletter, but I’m still recovering, so you get the Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef news with the WorldCon edition.

Now I just gotta go write it.

Back in a minute.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

—————————-

Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.

[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.]

It’s always useful to see the three-weeks-lag newsletter show up on Tuesday morning, so I can see where I was at that point. Plus, I open last week’s doc and save with a new date moving forward, so I can glance back.

I’m just over 30k into Ollie 4, which should be the end of the current series. As always, I have an amazingly rich and deep world here to play in. And made it big enough that I could set others here without ever spinning them off from Ollie and crew if I chose. Actually did that a while back with the Roland stories some of you might remember from several years ago. Don’t think I’ve every published all of them. Or maybe even any. I’d have to look.

It is August. My brain made the transition to Con mode midday yesterday, mostly because my normal Monday schedule got blown to hell. It happens. It’s also August, and I have a reminder in my phone to be wary of bouts of extreme depression or extreme xenocidal tendencies.

Woke up angry this morning. Understand that it’s all in my head. Mostly related to the heat and my preference for some rain. I moved up here for the rain. My perfect day is 62F and a little drizzly. That’s Seattle for large chunks of the year, so I’m happy.

Summer up here is hot and dry, generally ranging from July 4 to Oct 1. Hot. Nasty hot some days. Gonna be 90F+ today. Was yesterday. Might cool down some this weekend. Might rain.

This time tomorrow, I’ll be at WorldCon, downtown. We’re staying in a B&B not far from the lightrail line, so we can park once and take the train both ways after that. And be away from people when I’m done. Shortly, I will turn into the carnival barker. I pull him down off the shelf and put him on for cons when I have to people. Be up on stage giving good panel. Being extroverted.

Cost of doing business, and my father taught me how to do it by example. Pretty good at it.

Still a little grumpy.

Started a short story yesterday that I can write on the phone this week. DARK. Been researching the classical definition of Anti-Hero. In the 1990s, the “90’s Anti-Hero” was an asshole who eventually turned out to have a heart of gold. But an asshole still. Not someone I hardly ever wanted to sit down and have a beer with, and that’s the best working definition I’ve ever encountered.

If I don’t want to put up with that bullshit, why am I expecting my readers to? Right up there with folks who write TSTL characters. Too Stupid To Live. Always making dumb choices and SOMEHOW the Deus Ex Machina saves them enough to advance the plot. Dunno. I usually put the book down long before that, assuming I don’t throw it across the room.

Grumpy today. Tasker is a good character to explore, because he just executed three punks in the story. Has a reason. Good one, by his standards. Not a 90s Anti-hero. Maybe not even a classic Anti-Hero, because the definition there is simply a morally complicated character with doubts, hatred, and side hobbies, when the Classic Hero (see most Westerns made before Clint Eastwood) is Superman with a six-shooter. Never doubts. Never flags. Never questions good and evil. Cardboard cutout archetype in a white hat.

As you know, Bob, I write much messier characters. Not Byronic bitches, but messy.

Realistic. People with something interesting to say and more than a wind-up toy. More Batman than Superman. More Daredevil than Captain America.

Messy.

Eventually, you’ll meet Tasker.

And Phil, because the Ambassador made the mistake of DEMANDING more Kosnett stories. He wasn’t prepared for me to turn him and Alison into semi-retired government assassins in a new Action-thriller short series (The Agency, 001 done). Heh. Hopefully he forgives me at some point.

If you are reading this in real time, maybe I’ll see you this week at WorldCon. Otherwise, in three weeks I hope you caught up with me at some point. Got my book for folks to sign. I’ll even sign yours.

Gonna go Tuesday for a while.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

—————————-

Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.

[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.]

Holy shit, I’m exhausted.

Sunday last, we had the Annual Art Colony Barbecue, where we invite all the artists we know. First Sunday in August, mark your calendar and remind me to invite you if you wanna come next year.

30+ folks showed up, including a bunch of writers and at least 4 professional chefs in the mix. Lots of meat, plus folks brought sides of various types. (The reason you make friends with chefs.)

Everyone networked. Phone numbers and emails got exchanged. At least one person got possibly recruited into a new job. Success.

Saturday, we have to drive down to Fife to pick up tables and chairs, so we ate at the Poodle Dogs. As one does.

Monday, had to return everything first thing, so left the house at a little after 7 and got home a little after 7, twelve hours later. In between, dropped things off, then drove back to Enumclaw and had breakfast at Krain. Then gaming with the boyz from 10-1. Then sat in the library and did some writing. Then went over to the brewery because they have really excellent root beer on tap, where I wrote an essay in my black belt journey book (that will, obviously, be a while in the writing stages). Then dojo. Then home and collapse.

I am just now digging out of the last several days. I don’t even remember Friday.

Oh, and the new story went out to everyone (Saturday?) night. Step One in a new arc of SF fun. Currently writing 008 and 009 (two different POVs) that delve really deeply into what might end up being a massively enormous story. And one I have wanted to tell for a long time, but didn’t have the right frame for the characters.

Zach started out as a character in a Villains and Vigilantes game almost 40 years ago. (Superhero RPG we played in the wayback because a lot faster and cleaner than any of the others that existed then. The new version of V&V is 3.0, and they went stupid with the math so we don’t play it. Plus, both of the groups I’m in are Swords and Sorcery Murderhobos™ these days, so they don’t have an interest in any other genre.)

I’m having fun. That’s the point that matters. Hopefully, you will, too. And if you are reading this in a few weeks and want to upgrade your Patreon to $5 (or join at that level), I plan to append each section to the doc, so you can start at the beginning. First seven parts run 45k, so already a first novel worth, but not sure if I break it there, or run to some other natural point. Seven will be a part, at least. An emotional resting point before things rotate into more craziness.

Similarly, also writing the erotica the same way, having just completed the third story of book 2 yesterday at the library.

As noted, just catching up. Those of you in real time on Patreon, I will be at WorldCon next week with a pretty damned full schedule. And I got roped into the dealer room by a bunch of writers selling books to fans, so you might look for me there. Or reach out and arrange something. We’ll be staying in town all weekend and taking the Light Rail back and forth instead of driving, so I’ll be local enough. And flexible in the evenings, thought I might be a little bitey by Sunday.

Not much past that. See you next week.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

—————————-

Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.

[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.]

Got a note last night from a fan/friend in Australia who is finally getting a chance to read Kosnett after he’s gone through some serious health issues over the last couple of years. And he’s really enjoying himself and reminding me of what I wrote.

A little secret that’s part of my success? As soon as I finish a novel, I tend to flush most of the plot out of mind, save for about an elevator pitch worth of stuff. That lets me go back later and edit as if a stranger, because I only start remembering bits as I encounter them.

But it also means that I completely forgot the “Cap, it’s Sam. On your left.” moment from Domain and he had to tell me what chapter it was in (48, by the way).

Also, I have finished Heather’s War, so I’m five books and about ten years past where he is, at least in my head. And setting up a spin-off that “should” be a single long book, though I reserve the right to change my mind later, as all I have right now is a title and a cast. (One that won’t make any sense to you until you start reading Warlord of Yaumgan next year.)

Main timeline will continue outward with Veronika Provst. Eventually, I want to write Kati Wiegand, but she’s got to grow up first. As they do. And as I have time and interest. After all, I’m twenty-five books into Jessica’s timeline so far. That’s a lot of galaxy-shaking content.

At the same time, I have blank spots on the maps to explore.

First Centurion Kosnett takes place in the galactic west from Aquitaine and Fribourg. The pearl that is the Balhee Cluster. Heather’s War moves all the way over to the arm that contains Zerzan, who is bigger than those two combined in overall size and population. About where the Holding of Man was before Moirrey and friends killed the God of Winter.

Along the way, we’ll explore that zone, then go beyond it on the other three sides (farther west, coreward, rimward) and meet people. I have vague notes about what’s well coreward and west of Buran, but have never detailed them. Similarly NovLao (far side of Buran somewhere) has exactly one representative, and a couple of lines of who they used to be before being assimilated.

As the map scales back, I have places to explore. And characters to do it, as the old crew ages out and retires and kids come along to replace them.

One of these days, luck and ability on my side, I have a whole set of notes for Suvi/Summer/Autumn that take place some 1500 years after Jessica. Just need to sort out better what happens in between, because the whole prequel issue is always a pain in the ass for tracking continuity.

If I do something in the future, then hop to the past, I have to keep it all in mind when writing what happened then, so I don’t end up contradicting myself. Suvi, much as I love her, was a bit of a pain to write, since Last of the Immortals was written and published long before I started writing Season Two of the Science Officer (Alien Seas coming forward to Guardians of Tomorrow).

And she’ll have to talk about “what happened?” when she appears on that day in the distant future. I’ll either have to know, or I’ll start painting myself potentially into that corner. With all the risks.

Side notes: Altansarnai and York (the space opera erotica) is up to 8 stories now. And I have about half a million words worth of ideas to explore, depending. Zach is up to 8 stories as well. You’ll meet him this weekend when I send out the Patreon story to everyone.

Both are serialized fiction. Not chapters, because longer, generally running 5-8k, but part of a much larger arc, in the same manner as Scattered Tribes. I’m enjoying the format, and it lets me write three novels simultaneously, which I understand would drive other people a little insane.

Finally, I started Ollie 4 this week. Capstone of that series, which also started out as a series of shorts, but turns into a novel about a third of the way into Book One and runs from there.

The plan (written in pencil as always)

• January: Marrakesh 6
• February: Heather 1
• March: Ollie 1
• April: Heather 2
• May: Ollie 2
• June: Heather 3
• July: Ollie 3
• August: Heather 4
• September: Ollie 4 (complete)
• October: Heather 5 (complete)
• November: TBD
• December: TBD

As you can see, busy.

I’m looking at January 2027 for Last Stand 13 (done and coming in Boundary Shock Quarterly in July 2026) and potentially writing another season there as part of a long story arc broken into episodic television. That might fill 2027 entirely, giving me space to write a whole bunch of other things to fill in/finish series and expand into Action-Thriller and such.

More as I know, but we’re getting there

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

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