In response to my last progress report, Tasha, over at Goodreads, asked “Does this mean that the series concludes with Silver?”

Maybe? Though I hope not!

Silver gives a proper conclusion to the initial story arc of what might still become a longer series. From the beginning I planned to do two books in the Inverted Frontier series, and then switch to something else. If book sales are enough to support a third or even fourth book in the series, I’d like to come back to it in a year or two — and I do have a few notes on where to go next.

If you’re waiting for the whole series to be out before reading Edges…well, don’t! Because the length of the series is still to be determined. Right now I see it as open-ended. How long it goes on is up to the collective-you. 😉

Just a quick update this time…

Over the weekend, I sent the manuscript for Silver (sequel to Edges) to my freelance editor for her input. So it’s out of my hands for now.

As I wait for feedback, I’m using the time to catch up on chores and tasks, and to start thinking seriously about what to do next. I’ve got ideas for potential novels, but I’m not at all sure what direction to take. I don’t want to chase the market, but I don’t want to ignore it either.

Anyway, do keep in touch by signing up for my newsletter! I’m going to try to make the newsletter a regular thing, sending it out every three weeks. It’ll include news of new publications, discounts, cover reveals, and reading recommendations, along with other writing news. It only takes a name and email address. (You’ll also have to respond to the confirmation email. If you don’t get that email, check your spam folder. And be sure to whitelist me!)

More soon…

In my last progress report I mentioned I needed to add additional scenes for a couple of characters. I finished the last one today! Whew! It’s such a relief to get that done.

The manuscript is now just under 123,000 words — making it about 3,000 words longer than Edges.

The next step is to finish going through my notes and to run some checks to make sure certain aspects are handled consistently throughout.

I’ll probably give the story a quick read-through. After that, it’s off to my freelance editor.

Once again, if you’re not signed up for my newsletter, please sign up! You’ll get news of new publications, discounts, cover reveals, and reading recommendations, along with other writing news. It only takes a name and email address. (You’ll also have to respond to the confirmation email. If you don’t get that email, check your spam folder. And be sure to whitelist me!)

More soon…

So far, July has been a highly productive month for me. On June 30, I reported on this blog that I’d finished a first draft of Silver, the sequel to Edges. Today I finished my first revision. There’s a lot left to do! But at this point, I feel like I’ve got a solid, coherent story.

There are two characters who need a few more scenes, and I’ve got a list of notes to consider, but Silver feels like a real book to me now. My plan going forward is to create the scenes I still need and address the notes. After that I’ll send it off to my freelance editor with fingers crossed!

If you’re not signed up for my newsletter, please sign up! You’ll get news of new publications, discounts, cover reveals, and reading recommendations, along with other writing news. It only takes a name and email address. (You’ll also have to respond to the confirmation email. If you don’t get that email, check your spam folder.)

Once again, thank you to everyone who’s purchased a copy of Edges (or any of my books!), or borrowed copies from a library. I couldn’t (and I wouldn’t) do it without you. 😉

More soon…

My newest short story is out today!

It’s called “Devil in the Dust” and can be found in editor Jonathan Strahan’s newest short fiction anthology Mission Critical.

The story takes place on Mars at the end of a bitter war.

There is action.

Action was a requirement for this anthology. Mission Critical is about things that go wrong. Here’s the back-cover description:

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM…

Life is fragile. The difference between success and failure can come down to nothing – the thread of a screw, the flick of a switch – and when it goes wrong, you fix it. Or someone dies.

Mission Critical takes us from our world, across the Solar System, and out into deep space to tell the stories of people who had to do the impossible.

And do it fast.

Featuring stories by Peter F. Hamilton, Yoon Ha Lee, Aliette de Bodard, Greg Egan, Linda Nagata, Gregory Feely, John Barnes, Tobias S. Buckell, Jason Fischer & Sean Williams, Carolyn Ives Gilman, John Meaney, Dominica Phetteplace, Allen M. Steele, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Peter Watts.

“Devil in the Dust” is, for now, my last short story. I don’t have anymore in the publishing pipeline, and none under submission or in the files, and I don’t plan to write another one anytime soon. I talked about the reasons why in a post from last fall. You can read it here.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll look for Mission Critical. Jonathan Strahan is a terrific editor, and I’m looking forward to reading all the other stories in this volume myself.

Click here to purchase Mission Critical at Amazon.

All other vendors, click here.

In the past, I’ve mostly needed silence to write. The only exception: I’ve sometimes used a “theme song” to focus my mind on a specific project — one song that I’d play on repeat for fifteen or twenty minutes as I settled into a writing session. But I haven’t found an effective theme song for the Inverted Frontier books.

So several weeks ago, I was complaining to a friend that I often had a hard time focusing on the day’s work and she suggested Brain.fm — “Functional Music to Improve Focus.” This friend is a successful nonfiction writer, and she felt that Brain.fm had helped her to be far more productive.

The first five sessions are free, so I tried it.

After those first sessions, I bought a three-month subscription.

Does it help? Yes, I think it does. I don’t listen to it every time I sit down to write, but I’ve listened to it a lot, and I feel like it helped me power through to the end of the first draft of Silver. And I’ve definitely noticed that when my mind goes spiraling off on a sequence of depressing career thoughts, I just have to plug in and it will pull me back into the work.

Real music distracts me. It draws me away from the work. My attention turns to melodies and lyrics. Brain.fm is entirely different. I don’t really listen to it — not with the conscious part of my brain — instead it seems to occupy that part of my mind that likes to fuss and worry over things.

Is it a placebo? Maybe . . . but I’m happy to pay for a placebo that works! 😉

Update: I meant to say that when I use Brain.fm, I generally listen to it for a half hour to an hour at the start of my writing day. That seems to do the trick.

If you’ve read my newest novel, Edges, you know there’s a sequel on the way. Silver is the title of Book #2 in the Inverted Frontier series.

I’m pleased to announce that today I finished the first draft of Silver. It’s a rough draft. There’s a lot of work still to do, but right now I’m telling myself the hard parts are done. Figuring out how to convey things that are not remotely part of our general human experience got to be seriously challenging. Figuring out the particulars of the plot was no easy thing either. But now that the structure exists, I can start filling in the holes and addressing all the notes I’ve left myself. This is my usual procedure for putting a novel together.

Once I’ve got a solid second draft, the manuscript goes off to my freelance editor. A few weeks ago, I told her to expect it around the end of July. As I write this tonight, that deadline feels absurdly short, but maybe it’ll happen.

Oddly enough, I’m feeling a bit dejected over this whole project — not because of any deficiency in the books. Honestly, they’ve turned out better than I’d hoped. Rather, because it’s taken me so long to get to this point.

No doubt I’ll feel better tomorrow.

THANK YOU, to everyone who’s purchased a copy of Edges, or borrowed it from a library (assuming it can be found in any libraries…?) THANK YOU as well to all of you who’ve been inspired to check out my earlier books. I really appreciate it. There’s no point in doing any of this without readers… or listeners. For those of you waiting for an audiobook version of Edges, I’m hoping to have news very soon.

I haven’t posted much on the blog lately. I’m guessing most of you would prefer that I work on the next novel, instead of the next blog post — and that’s what I’ve been doing.

My focus has been on completing a rough-draft of Silver, the sequel to Edges. Yesterday the manuscript finally reached the 100,000-word mark. A novel-sized novel! The draft isn’t quite done yet, but I’m hoping (desperately) that it won’t be much longer.

Once I have a complete draft, I’ll go back to the beginning, fill in the holes, address the notes I made along the way, do the continuity checks, and re-read the whole thing. At that point, it should be ready to send to my freelance editor. (Cue ominous music.)

More soon…

Asimov’s Reader Award Finalist!

A few months ago, my newest short story “Theories of Flight” appeared in the November/December issue of Asimov’s Magazine. I just learned that this story placed in the top five in the annual Asimov’s reader-award poll. This is the first time a story of mine has received that honor from any magazine. Thank you, to everyone who voted for it! 🙂

Sheila Williams, Asimov’s long-time editor, asked if she could post PDFs of all the top-five stories in each fiction category so they could be easily read for Hugo (and Nebula) consideration. I agreed.

Read it online!
If you didn’t get to read “Theories of Flight” when it first came out, here’s another chance. Click here for the PDF. The story takes place in the world of my novel Memory. If you’ve read that, you’ll want to read this story. And if you read this story, I hope you’ll want to read Memory too.

Finally, if you’re eligible to vote in the Hugos or the Nebulas, I hope you’ll keep “Theories of Flight” in mind as you fill out your ballot. Later on, voting will open up for the Locus awards, and that is open to everyone, so expect another post on my eligible short fiction.

At the end of December I posted an assessment of my annual writing goals. I didn’t do very well with my goals in 2018, but happily, I now get to post an addendum.

Goal #5 was to write a hard SF short story, 7,000 words or less. In my assessment, I noted that I’d spent two or three weeks trying to write this story, before giving up on it in early December. In early January, I went back to work on it. Honestly, I spent way too much time on it, but by mid-January I finally had a complete draft. 7,300 words — so it’s a little longer than planned, but close enough.

I wrote the story for an anthology, and it’s been accepted by the editor. So hooray! That’s successfully done.

I expect the anthology will be formally announced in the next month or two; I’ll let you know. It should see publication in 2019.

Now I’m back to work on the sequel to Edges, and so far it’s going well.