Just one week to go until the release of Silver!

Silver completes the immediate story that began with book #1, Edges. So please dive in now! Don’t wait! Because INVERTED FRONTIER is not a trilogy. It’s an open-ended series, whose future existence is up to the collective YOU. 🚀💫

But where is the print edition?!
It’s on the way. I promise!

When I was calculating whether or not I could publish Silver this year — or if I would have to wait until 2020 — I forgot to account for the time it takes for me, here in Hawaii, to receive a proof copy of a new book. I always like to see the physical proof before releasing a print edition for preorder/publication. The proof was supposed to arrive by overnight mail, but when a three-day weekend gets in the way, things really slow down. In theory I should have the proof tomorrow. That means there won’t be much of a preorder period for the print edition, but it should certainly be available by next Tuesday, when the ebook is scheduled to release.

Don’t forget, you can preorder the ebook now! Here are the vendor links:

☆ Amazon†

☆ Apple Books

☆ Barnes & Noble

☆ Kobo

And if you want to get started early, you can read the opening chapters here.

Update:
A few hours after this post went up, I received the proofs from KDP Print (Amazon’s printing company). They look great! Tomorrow I’m supposed to receive the proof copy from Ingram. Once I have that in hand, I can authorize preorders.

Just a quick post to let you know that Kobo preorders of Silver (Inverted Frontier #2) are now available!

HERE’S THE KOBO LINK.

Silver is also available for preorder at:

☆ Amazon†

☆ Apple Books

☆ Barnes & Noble

A print edition is on the way! The layout work is done. I’m just waiting to review proof copies.

For more information on Silver or to read the opening chapters, click here.

Introducing

Silver

Inverted Frontier #2

Click to see a larger image with all the beautiful details…

Here’s the cover copy:

A Lost Ship — A New World
Urban is no longer master of the fearsome starship Dragon. Driven out by the hostile, godlike entity, Lezuri, he has taken refuge aboard the most distant vessel in his outrider fleet.

Though Lezuri remains formidable, he is a broken god, commanding only a fragment of the knowledge that once was his. He is desperate to return home to the ring-shaped artificial world he created at the height of his power, where he can recover the memory of forgotten technologies.

Urban is desperate to stop him. He races to reach the ring-shaped world first, only to find himself stranded in a remote desert, imperiled by a strange flood of glowing silver that rises in the night like fog—a lethal fog that randomly rewrites the austere, Earthlike landscape. He has only a little time to decipher the mystery of the silver and to master its secrets. Lezuri is coming—and Urban must level up before he can hope to vanquish the broken god.

With some tips on revising a novel
September was an incredibly busy month, entirely focused on finishing the revisions to Silver. I addressed almost all of the comments made by my freelance editor, Judith Tarr, which I think has helped significantly to clarify the story. I rejected a few suggestions for various reasons.

For those of you who are writers, you don’t have to follow every bit of advice your editor gives you. It’s your story. You know what you’re trying to achieve, and it’s your name that goes on the work. So weigh the advice, but if it doesn’t feel right to you, move on. (And don’t argue with your editor about it. 🙂 )

Silver is a fairly complex story. There’s a lot of world-building, along with unusual concepts. It’s not a book you can pick up and understand, without having read Edges first. That said, “complex” should not also mean “confusing” or “redundant.” Part of the revision process involves working toward that goal.

So after finishing the suggested revisions, I began a “read through” aimed at looking at the story as a whole. Starting from page one, I read the entire novel out loud to myself, going through it as quickly as I could while still making corrections. The idea behind a quick read is that I’m more likely to perceive the inconsistencies, while reading aloud lets me hear awkward wording and repeated words. And yes, I found a number of inconsistencies and awkward passages, so that exercise was definitely worth it. I’ll read it at least one more time before calling it “final.”

Several times, when pondering how to deal with an awkward passage, I found the best solution was to shorten it — simply cut back on the explanation. Sometimes, less is more — or anyway, it’s less confusing. 😉

Other than my freelance editor, no one has read Silver. Judy described the novel as “an immersive and absorbing read,” which was wonderful to hear, but doubt is always near the surface for most writers. I needed more feedback. So I recruited three “proofreaders” and sent the manuscript off to them on October 2. I’m anxiously awaiting their thoughts. I don’t see myself doing major revisions at this point — the story is what it is — but if there are tweaks that will further improve the storytelling, I’d like to undertake them. Presuming the feedback is mostly positive, I want to try to publish Silver before the end of November. Wish me luck!

Oh, and sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already. The signup form is over there in the right-hand column. You’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. (You won’t be subscribed until you confirm.) If you don’t receive that email, check your spam/promotion folder — and whitelist me!

Whoops. I see it’s been nearly a month since I posted here, but that’s because I’ve been working hard…

Here’s a quick update on Silver:
I received the editorial letter on it at the start of the month, and I just finished my first pass through the edits. Only the hard stuff is left! 🙂 🤔🚀

September 5 Newsletter
My latest newsletter went out last Thursday. If you haven’t subscribed to it yet, please do! Use that form over there in the righthand column of this blog.

Here’s one of the items included in the newsletter:

A Ring-Shaped World

I’ll speak cautiously to avoid any significant spoiler, but towards the end of Edges there is mention of a ring-shaped world, planetary in scale. A few of my longtime readers have already made the connection. This world is the same world featured in my novel Memory.

When I wrote Memory, I thought of it as being apart from the Nanotech books – a separate story world. But as I worked on the new Inverted Frontier series, I realized these two story worlds could overlap in a very interesting way.

Silver is a direct sequel to Edges, but it also works as a sequel to Memory. You don’t need to read Memory to enjoy Silver, but if you like the idea of exploring in this evolving story world, you can drop by my website to learn more about this earlier novel.

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…

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.

The publication of Edges has inspired many readers to check out the earlier Nanotech Succession novels, and this in turn inspired me to pull together an updated edition of The Nanotech Succession Omnibus Edition.

The omnibus has been available in ebook form since 2012, but now I’ve put a new cover on it, refreshed the back-matter, and added a clarifying subtitle: 4 Classic Novels in a Box Set

“Omnibus” used to be the standard term describing a series of novels collected into one volume. In the modern world of ebook publishing, “omnibus” has generally been replaced by the term “box set.” Personally, “box set” makes my grammatical brain twitch, given that there is no box, and if there was, it should be “boxed set.” But the culture has moved past me, and to please the search engines, I’ve conformed.

The omnibus includes the novels Tech-Heaven, The Bohr Maker, Deception Well, and Vast.

Previously, the omnibus was available only at very limited outlets. It’s still not at Amazon due to their pricing model, but you can find it at Apple Books, Kobo Books, Barnes & Noble, and Book View Café.

If you know anyone new to my work, who might enjoy the full Nanotech Succession ride, I hope you’ll suggest this “box set.”

The detail page is here.

Thank you!

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…