This is just a quick note to let you know that preorders for Needle (Inverted Frontier #3) are at last available at Kobo. Click here for the US store.

Kobo-folk, thank you for your patience!

Needle publishes on July 12. For more information and links to other ebook vendors, please visit my website.

The print edition should be ready soon. I’ve submitted the files to the printer and looked over the resulting PDF proof. It all looks good, but I’m waiting to see a physical copy before I approve the book for preorder.

More soon…

I discovered just a few weeks ago that a lot of readers thought Inverted Frontier was a two-book series. No! Not at all! That said, the first two books did serve as a kind of market test. Together they make a complete story, and if the duo had sold poorly I could have stopped there. It’s not financially viable to undertake a longer series if only a handful of people are reading it (no matter how enthusiastic those readers are!).

But the first books did just well enough to convince me to try another. That’s book 3, Needle, and it’s available on preorder NOW. And then — maybe — two more volumes after that.

A five-book series? Yes, that’s what I’ve planned, and it’s what I’ve invested in. I already have finished cover art for books 4 and 5. I tell you that, so you know I’m serious. Two more books to go…

But that’s assuming the long tail works — that more readers try the series, and like it, and that Needle (book 3 – the new one) does well enough. We’ll see.

Needle is available for preorder now (ebook edition; print edition to come). Give me a reason to believe, LOL.

More on Needle here.

There have been major disappointments in the garden this spring. One of my two persimmon trees leafed-out only weakly last spring and almost not at all this year. It’ll have to be replaced. A new peach tree that did well last summer also failed to survive. Peaches and persimmons grow in abundance in my neighborhood. Our mountain climate is just cool enough to allow them to thrive, so I’m extremely disappointed with these two. I’ll have to try again.

On top of that, my white sapote tree, which has performed spectacularly for the past several years, is taking a break this year, with no fruit. At least I hope that’s what’s happening. Fingers crossed that it’s not on its way out too.

And it’s been a light year for the avocado tree too, though it looks quite healthy.

But at least my old reliable Miltoniopsis orchid has put on a show! Look at this beauty:

This is one of the first orchids I acquired in my current collection. It’s been around for years and blooms annually, but this is the best it’s ever looked. For some reason, this year, all the flower spikes opened at the same time. Hey, I’ll enjoy what I can.

The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War

Audible has a lot of two-books-for-one-credit sales. These sales are always limited to a select list of titles, a circumstance that has the effect of encouraging me to pick up audiobooks I otherwise would never have thought to try. That’s how I happened to come across The Brothers.

The book is a joint biography of John Foster Dulles, secretary of state during the 1950s and his brother, Allen Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence agency during the same period. The story it tells is both fascinating and horrifying as it details the arrogance of the Dulles brothers, and their determination to disrupt and destroy the governments of countries around the world. We’ve all heard stories of the CIA propping up dictators. This book goes into the details, exploring Foster Dulles’s hostility and calcified thinking, and Allen Dulles’s ill-conceived adventurism. The United States — and many other countries — are still suffering from the fallout of decisions made by these two men.

If, like me, you’re unfamiliar with this era of history, The Brothers might be for you. It’s an eye-opener.

It’s been a long time coming, but Inverted Frontier #3 is real, it’s happening, and it now has a publication date of:

It’ll be available on that date in both print and ebook editions. (I’m hoping there will be an audiobook, but I don’t know yet.)

So without further ado, please allow me to introduce you to…

“Tanjiri is not for you. You are not ready to encounter what exists there.”

So Lezuri spoke in warning, long ago. Urban still possesses the strange gift—the impossible puzzle—Lezuri gave him that day. A needle, ultra-thin and twelve centimeters long, with a silvery surface that slices light into rainbow glints. All Lezuri’s knowledge lies locked within that needle. Urban has only to discover the trick of opening it, to gain that knowledge for himself—but the needle remains an enigma.

Now Dragon and its fleet of outriders has reached the periphery of Tanjiri system. The belt of ruins lies ahead: a chaos of remnant megastructures from a fallen civilization. Farther in, an Earthlike world orbits in the company of a miraculous living moon created less than 4,000 years ago. An entity—one greater even than Lezuri—must have made that moon. And yet the system is silent. No one, nothing, has answered Dragon’s hails.

Perhaps the entity is gone? But Urban doesn’t believe this. He is sure that when the fleet enters Tanjiri system, he will meet this maker of worlds—with the lives of everyone he loves at stake. Better, safer, to encounter this entity from a position of strength, armed with all the knowledge and power contained within the needle.

So he believes.

Are you a Kobo reader? If so, I want to let you know that the ebook will be available at Kobo, though I won’t be able to set up the preorder there until at least mid-June.

Do you prefer the print edition? Once I have the final, copyedited manuscript, I’ll be able to set up a preorder for the print edition. I’ll let you know as soon as that’s ready.

I know it’s been a long time since book 2 came out. I hope you’ll continue with the series — and thank you for your patience!

In short: Expect the next Inverted Frontier novel this summer.

The long version:
Back in February, I sent the third volume of the Inverted Frontier series to my intrepid editor, Judith Tarr. She returned it to me, along with her comments, a couple of weeks ago. Much to my relief, her general assessment was very positive! In summary: “I loved this one.”

Whew!

There are revisions to do, of course. But nothing huge, nothing structural. And I’ve put many hours into them already. My goal is to be done by mid-May, at which point the manuscript will go off to the copy editor, and possibly to a small number of beta readers.

My next challenge is to pick a publication date — one far enough in the future to ensure I have time to both revise the manuscript and to do some pre-publication publicity. But I also want to get the novel out this summer, when people are hopefully taking time out of busy lives to read.

I was originally looking at June 23rd as a potential publication date, but that may not allow enough time. So I’m going to work on the manuscript for another couple of weeks, see where I am, and then decide.

I plan to announce a publication date and to do a cover reveal in my next newsletter. So if you’re not already subscribed, now’s the time. Click here to reach the newsletter signup form.

I’m up by 5:15 most mornings (my dog insists). It’s dark outside, but the stars are bright. For the past few weeks I’ve been watching a dance of planets: Venus, seeming fixed in place, with Mars & Saturn shifting around it. It amazes me, how much they move from night to night. I was able to see the conjunction of Mars and Saturn on April 4, when they appeared closest together, although that was a misty morning and they were just glowing blurs.

Jupiter is supposed to be joining the dance. Four planets, all together! If you can see the eastern horizon, Jupiter should already be visible. But I’ve got a tall mountain in the way, so I don’t know yet if I’ll get to see them all.

Visit EarthSky.org for details.

I love audiobooks, because I can listen to them while doing chores around the house and garden — and there are always a lot of chores. Over the past couple of months I’ve mostly been listening to non-fiction. These are books on history and environment that really captured my attention:

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann
1493 by Charles C. Mann
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow.

For biology nerds, I can heartily recommend: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake (about fungus), and the mind-blowing The Vital Question by Nick Lane, which looks in detail at his theory of how life got started on this planet — and possibly on others.

The two science fiction novels I’ve listened to are:

Semiosis by Sue Burke — a very smart and engaging story about colonizing and coming to understand the biology of an alien world.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir — excellent narration and a very clever and entertaining hard science fiction novel about saving the world from a very unusual invasive species.

If you have any audiobook favorites, let me know!

Mostly as a way to help me plan, 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. Here goes…

1. FINISH & PUBLISH THE CURRENT NOVEL
This is the third book in the Inverted Frontier series. I’m maybe 70% done with a solid draft. There is hope.

2. START A NEW NOVEL
I’m sixty-one years old, and I don’t know how long I’m going to continue writing. Right now, my only real ambition is to finish the Inverted Frontier series. I’m anticipating five novels in total. In 2022, I hope to make a good start on book 4.

3. WRITE ONE SHORT STORY (OR NOVELLA)
I’m recycling this goal from 2021. I want to write one original story that I can include in my third short-fiction collection — maybe a Zeke Choy story, or even something from The Red story world?

4. PUBLISH A THIRD SHORT-FICTION COLLECTION
Another recycled goal! I’ve got eight stories and the cover art ready to go now, but I need another story or two to round off the collection.

That’s my plan. Wish me luck!

Don’t Look Up and The Matrix Resurrections

Is the Netflix film Don’t Look Up worth watching? Yes! As an extinction-level asteroid heads for Earth, humans deny the threat and essentially twiddle their thumbs. As you’ve probably heard, Don’t Look Up is really a story about our pathetic response to the existential threat of climate change. There is an excellent review of the movie at Forbes of all places:
“Why Sneering Critics Dislike Netflix’s ‘Don’t Look Up,’ But Climate Scientists Love It”

I also enjoyed The Matrix Resurrections. I don’t think I ever saw the third Matrix movie, but Resurrections was fun, clever, good, and relevant to our times. Also, I loved the meta. Here’s a smart review of the film, at The Washington Post: ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ captures the real crisis of our post-truth era

Wow. Writing blog posts is so much easier when I just link to stuff. 😉