Back in 2020 I posted about space opera and Kate Elliott’s novel, Unconquerable Sun — which I highly recommended. It’s been a very long wait for the next book in the series, but I’m pleased to report that Furious Heaven was published last month in the USA and honestly, I think it’s even more impressive than book one.

I so admire the way Kate Elliott can imagine such a diversity of scenes and cultures, imbuing them with all the detail to make them feel real, while not bogging down the story with needlessly extended descriptions. But much more than that, her ability to create a wide variety of characters with complex internal lives is so impressive to me — and to do this in a wide-ranging novel that plays out on multiple stages from many points of view . . . well, simply put, this series deserves far more attention than it looks to have garnered so far.

I do wonder how much the list price of these novels has affected their renown. Tor puts high prices on their books — even the ebooks. Are most readers reluctant to spend $16 for a new novel? I’d really like to know, because if books sell well at that price, maybe I should be charging more for my own? 😉

For myself, I didn’t buy the print or the ebook edition. Instead, I used an Audible credit to get the audiobook version. The narration is very well done. That said, I suspect the story would be easier to follow in print — but if audio is your thing, go for it!

Below are affiliate links to Amazon, but you can find these books at your favorite bookstore or online vendor:
Unconquerable Sun
Furious Heaven

I’ve made it a tradition to list my writing goals for the coming year in a January 1st post. I used to be ambitious and list a lot of goals, but I’ve learned since to keep the list short. After all, there’s more to life than writing. 😉

Here are my goals for 2023:

1. FINISH THE CURRENT NOVEL
I talked about this in my prior post which you can read here. I’m working on the fourth volume of the Inverted Frontier series and if things go well I’ll have a final draft before year’s end. If things go really well, the novel will be done well before the end of 2023.

2. PUBLISH THE CURRENT NOVEL
Will I be able to publish book 4 this year? I don’t know. It feels like a 40/60 chance. In the past I’ve rushed two books to publication (Silver and Pacific Storm), just to get them out before the end of the year, and both did dreadfully from a sales perspective. Silver mostly recovered over time; Pacific Storm never did. So if I’m not ready to go by, say, early September, book #4 will need to wait until 2024. (Write faster, Nagata!)

3. WRITE A “RED” NOVELLA
See my prior post, where I realized that 2023 will be the tenth anniversary of the original publication of The Red: First Light in its indie edition. For years I’ve talked about writing a novella in this story world. I really need to do that. Maybe this year?

Okay. That’s three goals and that’s ambitious enough. If I can do these three things, I’ll be satisfied. But just as a reminder to myself, I’ll mention two bonus projects: (1) Start outlining the fifth and last volume of the Inverted Frontier series; and (2) Put together that third short story collection I’ve talked about over the last few years.

Happy New Year!

Every January I put up a blog post listing my writing goals for the coming year. At the end of the year, I check back to see how I did. That assessment is the subject of this post.

2022 was a decent writing year, better than 2021. I met my primary goal and that did wonders to pull me out of a severe income slump in the first quarter of the year, so I’m not going to complain.

Here are the specifics on how I did, with the goals I set for myself in January in all-caps:

1. FINISH & PUBLISH THE CURRENT NOVEL
Done! This novel was Needle, third in the Inverted Frontier series. I finished a first draft early in the year, had it edited in the spring, and published it in July. Thank you to everyone who purchased a copy or convinced your library to get one. While I am by no means burning up any bestseller lists, Inverted Frontier has been my most successful indie project thanks to all of you, and I’m very grateful.

2. START A NEW NOVEL
Done! That is, I’ve started it. I envision five novels in the Inverted Frontier series. Right now, I’m working on volume 4. I’ve written the beginning of it, maybe 15% of the whole. That doesn’t sound like much, and I admit progress has been slow, but I’m very excited about the ideas I want to incorporate in this story. So many ideas, that I was feeling confused about how to handle them. So in early December I shifted gears and started putting together a new outline, with lots of details and dialog. I’m going through all my brainstorming files, sifting through the ideas, and fitting them into prospective scenes, all in the proper order. Once everything’s in place, I should be able to follow the outline, expanding the story scene by scene. For me, as I write, there’s always the dreaded question of what comes next. Knowing the answer to that, with copious notes to guide me, should help to accelerate my writing pace. Anyway, coming up with this detailed outline has been a fun, creative process.

3. WRITE ONE SHORT STORY (OR NOVELLA)
I really wanted to do this. I thought it would be fun to wade back into the story world of The Red. I even listened to all three audiobooks to try to get back into the series. But even after spending a couple of weeks brainstorming on it, I’m still not sure how to approach this project. Maybe next year.

Good heavens! I just realized that 2023 will be the tenth anniversary of the original publication of The Red: First Light, that is, in its indie edition, by my own Mythic Island Press. Wow. Yes, I really need to do something in this story world.

4. PUBLISH A THIRD SHORT-FICTION COLLECTION
Done, though not in the way I originally intended. I had hoped to add another short story or two (or that Red novella) to the eight stories I have ready to go. That didn’t happen. But I did create a story collection for the United States Air Force Academy’s “One Book, One USAFA” event — and that was such a huge honor that I’m going to call this goal a success. 🙂

Check back here tomorrow, when I’ll be posting my 2023 writing goals.

Hauoli Makahiki Hou! (Happy New Year!)

(This is cross-posted from my newsletter. If you’re not already subscribed, follow this link to sign up.)

The big event for me this fall was my visit to the United States Air Force Academy. As you may remember, a special compilation of my military-themed short stories—the collection titled Attitude and Other Stories—was chosen for the annual program known as “One Book, One USAFA.” The idea is that the entire freshman class is assigned to read this one book together. Copies were issued during the tough initial summer training period. One cadet told me, “Your book was the best part of boot!” Given the general misery of boot camp training, I’m not sure I had a lot of competition for “best,” but I enjoyed hearing it.

I visited the campus as part of the 64th Academy Assembly, a two-day event involving workshops and lectures on space, the Space Force, future conflict (and avoiding future conflict) in space. It was all incredibly fascinating and I was hugely impressed with the cadets, all of whom struck me as very bright, knowledgeable, capable, and composed—far more so than I ever was at that age.

My own role was to conduct a writing workshop on “Future Conflict in Science Fiction.” This was an interesting challenge, because I don’t teach or attend workshops. But I put some notes together, asked the participants to do a little preparatory work, and things went remarkably well. It was also a lot of fun.

I feel deeply honored that I was able to participate and that my work was deemed worthy. If you’re interested, Attitude is available in print and ebook editions from Amazon.

(This is cross-posted from my newsletter. If you’re not already subscribed, follow this link to sign up.)

I had a lovely Thanksgiving planned. My daughter, son-in-law, and my 14-month-old grandson were flying over from Honolulu to visit for several days. And then last Monday I came down with a nasty cold and on Tuesday, I tested positive for Covid-19. I advised the kids to change their plans.

I never had Covid before. I’ve been vaccinated and boosted, and I still mask when I’m out in public, but I caught it anyway. So be careful out there!

This was the first time I’ve been sick since December 2019. I’m recovering now, but still taking it easy.

When the waltz of the absurd began between Twitter’s Board of Directors and Elon Musk, I blithely assured myself it would lead to nothing—so you can see how skilled I am at predicting the future. My own Twitter experience hasn’t really changed, except I’m trying to break the habit and so I’m hardly there anymore. I have been spending time scrolling on Mastodon, though not posting much. It’s a quiet time for me. I don’t feel like I have a lot to say right now—the lateness of this post being evidence of that.

As I come to understand Mastodon, I find the way it works quite interesting. The biggest factor in its favor is that no single person or Board of Directors can ever control it, which is awesome. The confusing bit is that you have to select a server—or be admitted to one—that will be your home base.

A cool thing is that any person or organization willing to take the trouble and spend the money can set up their own Mastodon server, aka “instance.” Why would you want to do this? Probably because you’re a curious techie willing to take on extra work! But the advantage is you can invite only who you like and who you can get along with to be on that server. Why is this good? Well, because Mastodon offers multiple timelines. One of these is “local” and the local timeline lets you follow posts and boosts (similar to retweets) only from those who “live” on your server.

But, whatever. I’ve been looking only at the “home” timeline which shows me posts and boosts by those I follow. This is the same way I interacted with Twitter and it worked for me. So it doesn’t really matter what server I’m on. I think, from my few weeks of observation, that small servers are subject to the same hazard as small towns—content moderation might become overly strict as in “we don’t want to talk about that here.” In contrast, big servers might enjoy the anonymity of big cities and only the most egregious behavior will be called out. But that’s just speculation.

I’m on a big server run by the founders of Mastodon which seemed like a safe and available choice at the time I signed up (though I think it’s closed for new signups now).

If you’re on Mastodon or decide to give it a try, find me here:
https://mastodon.online/@LindaNagata

Or in the Mastodon search box:
@LindaNagata@mastodon.online

I’ve made a start on book 4 of my Inverted Frontier series, but right now I find I’m spending a lot of “writing” time doing calculations, like “How far apart are these starships?” and “How long does it take to get a message from one end of the fleet to the other?” It’s frustrating, but I need to block out events on the stage before I get down to the actual writing. In large part, this is because I have no innate sense of the vast distances I’m dealing with. So I force myself to gauge things comparatively — i.e. radius of Earth’s orbit and Saturn’s orbit — and in multiple units: kilometers, astronomical units, light minutes. That helps me to work with the immense scale of space…and then I try to leave most of those numbers out of the actual story. 🙂

On a tangentially related topic…
I have no regrets about being an independent writer/publisher. Seriously, none. But of course there are drawbacks. For example, very few outlets of scale are willing to consider indie titles for review — a problem compounded when the title is third in an ongoing and little known series. So I am deeply grateful to reviewers who do take the time. The latest is booktuber Michael Everts, who has included my latest, NEEDLE in his top 3 books of the year so far! Thank you, Michael!
Click here to see his review (and subscribe to his channel).

The United States Air Force Academy has an annual program known as “One Book, One USAFA.” The idea is that the entire freshman class is assigned a book to read together. Much to my astonishment I was asked to provide this year’s title.

Attitude and Other Stories is a special compilation of some of my military-themed short stories, along with an excerpt from my novel, The Last Good Man.

Attitude and Other Stories is available to buy in print and ebook editions, but since it’s meant for a limited market, it’s presently only available from Amazon. If you’re interested in a copy, follow this link. Be aware that four of the included stories also appear in my earlier collection, Light and Shadow.

Did you know that long before Inverted Frontier, I wrote another series of novels in the same story world? That series is the Nanotech Succession. It’s a collection of four stand-alone novels exploring the rise of nanotechnology — beginning tomorrow and reaching far into time.

All four novels are available separately in ebook and print editions, with Bruce Jensen’s lovely cover art.

But you can also get all four novels in an omnibus ebook edition — with cover art by yours-truly 🙂 — at less than the cost of purchasing the ebooks separately.

The included novels are Tech-Heaven, a near-future thriller based on the science of cryonics, The Bohr Maker, winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel, Deception Well, a far-future adventure set on an alien world, and Vast, a far-future, space-faring epic.

Unfortunately, the omnibus is not available at Amazon because of their pricing policies. But you can find it at:

Follow this link to my website to learn more about the four Nanotech Succession novels.

My newest novel, Needle (Inverted Frontier #3), is out today.

I know many of you preordered Needle. Thank you so much for that!!

But if you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you can now purchase the ebook edition, or order the print version.

Wait, what? What is this new book?

If you’re not subscribed to my email newsletter and if your visits to this blog are rare you might be surprised to learn I have a new novel just out. But yes, it’s true!

Follow this link to my website to learn more about Needle and to read the opening chapter.

I like to describe the Inverted Frontier series as “sense-of-wonder” fiction — far-future, space-faring adventures unfolding in a very big galaxy (no faster-than-light travel here).

If you haven’t tried the series yet, I hope you will. Edges is the first book. Click here to learn more about it and to read the opening.

Thank you for stopping by, and thank you for your interest in my work!