March Writing Update

 

There might still be room for one more book...

So what comes after the looming release of my 2023 novel, The Girl on the Kerb on 6 April 2023, you ask. At least for the purposes of this post, you’re asking.

First off, I’m hoping to enter my one “fantasy novel,” Beneath the Lanterns, in the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off this May. I wanted to do so last year but somehow missed the very brief entry window.  I am determined to keep on top of Mark Lawrence's blog so as to not miss it this time. With that in mind, there were several minor things in the book that sort of bugged me about it, so, with nothing more pressing to do, I spent a week reading it over and making some minor changes.

I started with rewriting the opening paragraph, which struck me as rather clunky. Next I felt that the story had gotten a little dated, even after only five years. In the story the daughter of the Empress of Jasmyne is sent to marry the son of the leader of the Azere Empire in an arranged political marriage. This daughter shows up looking like a boy and dressed as a soldier which enrages the groom’s father. I wanted to make it clear that it wasn’t her appearance per se – or what it implied about her sexual orientation – but rather that it seemed to be an act calculated to suggest that if the two leaders were expecting grandchildren – who would have claims to both thrones – they would find themselves disappointed. It is this implied threat that angered the Azerian ruler rather than how, or what she appeared to be. That, and the possibility that he had been tricked into accepting her by the Jasmyne Empress. Beyond that, I fixed sentences here and there that had even me confused when I came upon them. All in all these changes added about two pages to the book, hopefully making it just a little more polished, just a little better.

As for new work… I have pretty much let the winter slide by without working on anything new. I did some work on the third and likely final Tropic Sea book, Passage to Jarpara back in January, adding several new chapters at the beginning of the story I had started last fall. However, upon reaching the parts I had previously written, I lost interest and so far have not continue on. Still, I have some 38,000 words written in first draft that I can return to whenever, if ever, I get in the mood to write again. Right now I’m considering it my 2024 novel so there’s no hurry to finish it. I’ve got 18 months… But who knows? I must confess that with eleven novels and three novellas written in the last dozen years I don’t feel any great urgency. I’m content to let them can stand as my legacy. Still, it has been a habit of a decade or more to spend an hour or two every day writing, so I may well find that I have nothing better to do than to continue to plug away on that story.

As an alternative, I’ve been entertaining the idea of a sort of portal fantasy novella, writing it off and on in my head. However, I am not satisfied with my initial version – it offers nothing new at all and seemed almost too close to Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber's premise, though far less elaborate, of course. If you are going to write something, it should bring something new to the table, which I haven’t found yet. I am not very optimistic about finding that new thing, but I'm still thinking about it.

Looking ahead to summer, I’m planning to play with my back catalog. Once the initial jump in sales that a new book brings, I will release a “boxed set” of my four Nine Star Nebula stories on Amazon. Several of them are not free on Amazon.com and none are free on Amazon’s other stores, as far as I know, so that a boxed set – at a sale price – might lead to some sales. If that generates any interest, an omnibus version of my two Lost Star books might follow as well as boxed set of Some Day Days and A Summer in Amber all aimed at the non-US Amazon market, were most of my books are not free.

To summon things up; if I should find something new in the portal fantasy novella idea, it might see the light of publication this fall. If not, then Passage to Jarpara sometime in 2024 might be my next work. But again, it’s not something I would bet money on

Looks like I'm going to have to update this image