What a year, huh?
But I scraped my way through, and so did you. After a long period of churn in which I wrote 60,000+ words of various openings for my next novel, LOSING GRAVITY, I’ve finally slid it into gear and have about 30k of what will be a 90-100k draft that’s due in December for a 2022 release.
I like where it’s going now. It’s set in the same universe as THE STARS ARE LEGION, only deals with another ship with another fate. I think ya’ll will dig it.
This makes TWO books I’ll have out in 2022, after a 2021 break. The first is a short story collection, FUTURE ARTIFACTS, out from Apex Publications in the spring. LOSING GRAVITY is likely to be out in summer or fall of the same year, depending on publication schedules.
I have been productive on other fronts, as well. I’m now on year six of writing a short story every month for Patreon subscribers, and recently posted a new novelette about Nev, my favorite body-hopping mercenary, who many of you will recall from the short story Elephants and Corpses. This one has been in the works for some time.
I call it my “Renfri (from The Witcher)/Nev” fanfic. ?
Upcoming Work
I’ve also been spending time refilling my list of back projects. This includes a novel/potential series about a former assassin-turned-gardener-turned-amateur-detective called THE BODY GARDEN, and a standalone S&S novel about the leader of revolutionary cell who joins with one of her liberators to find her former cell members after the war called THE WOMEN IN THE CITADEL. I may also have an idea for a Gothic horror novel. So, stay tuned!
These are as yet unsold projects, as my agent made me promise to finish this late book before I sell anything else, and she is wise.
Survival Strategies
My goal this last year in particular, and four years in general, was to survive by any means possible. I did not survive these years in the healthiest of ways. It was primarily achieved through drinking copious amounts of gin, gardening, and calling upon my introvert powers to sustain myself while the world was literally and figuratively burning down all around me.
I’m not particularly proud of the person I’ve become or the life that I led to survive, if only because it was both boring and unhealthy in the long term and I find myself unrecognizable to myself in a lot of ways. The one thing I AM proud of is our garden, which we transformed totally the last 18 months or so, adding two ponds, a stream, a whole new front formal garden, and numerous raised beds and planted maybe another… ten? … trees. Every morning I walk out there I can’t believe it’s our yard.
When the world is burning: plant a garden. It helps.
Whatever you did to survive, and continue to survive, know that I certainly don’t judge you. The world is wild and uncertain and stressful. But one thing the world also does is keep on spinning. The seasons keep changing. Winter is inevitably followed by spring.
New bulbs bloom. Trees grow.
We write, and we ride, again.
