This year, in the United States, it feels like New Year’s Day ought to fall on January 20th, when our newly elected president takes office. We have twenty fraught days to endure until then, but I hope in years to come our descendants will be able to look back on January 20, 2021, as the beginning of a new era in which the people of this country and of the world rejected autocrats and learned to work together for the good of one another, and of the planet and its irreplaceable ecosystems. Happy New Year everyone! We can do this.

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And now on to my annual New Year’s Day post in which I list my writing goals for the coming year. When I first started doing this, I was far more ambitious. But I’ve learned to keep the list short, and do-able. So here goes…

1. WRITE AND FINISH A NEW NOVEL
This one is started, though just barely. It’s the third in the Inverted Frontier series, and I’m going to try to come up with a finished draft by year’s end (hopefully sooner!).

2. PUBLISH THE WILD TRILOGY
I’ve talked about this one in an earlier post. This is an older epic-fantasy novel that I revised extensively in 2020, and then divided into three short novels. I’m awaiting cover art, and plan to publish in the spring.

3. WRITE ONE SHORT STORY (OR NOVELLA)
A couple of years ago I resolved to take a long break from writing short fiction. No regrets. I’m a slow writer, so this decision allowed me to focus on novel writing. Pacific Storm would not have been finished in 2020 if I’d spent time writing short fiction. The downside of that resolution is that I still don’t have quite enough stories to publish a third short-fiction collection.

4. PUBLISH A THIRD SHORT-FICTION COLLECTION
I’ve got eight stories and the cover art ready to go. But I need another story to round off the collection. Now you see the importance of my third writing goal? 😉

So that’s my plan. What do you hope to achieve?

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.

For 2020, I kept my goals to a minimum — but I still didn’t meet them all.

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

1. WRITE AND FINISH A NEW NOVEL
Done! This, of course, was Pacific Storm, published on October 8. Have you read it yet? If not, I hope you’ll check it out. Click here to read the opening chapters online.

2. WRITE, FINISH, AND PUBLISH A NOVELLA
Nope! I post this goal every year, and I never do it. Maybe next year…

3. START OUTLINING A NEW NOVEL
Done! I’ve put together a rough story-map for a third Inverted Frontier novel, and have even started writing the opening.

Two out of three — not bad. But I also accomplished two other long-time goals that did not appear on last year’s list.

• I commissioned a nice book cover for an omnibus edition of the Puzzle Land books. I really like those crazy grimdark fantasy stories! The omnibus is available from Amazon in both print and ebook editions. (paid links)

• I’ve also commissioned covers for my epic fantasy novel The Wild. I spent part of the summer and fall revising and expanding the original novel, and will be re-publishing it as a trilogy in spring 2021. Click here to read more about this project.

I’ll be posting my 2021 goals on January 1 — though I suspect you can already guess what my primary goal will be.
(Hint: see #1 above. 😉 )

This post was originally published in my November 19th newsletter. It’s re-posted here with minor changes. If you haven’t yet signed up for my newsletter, you really, really should. It’s fun, it’s once every four weeks (with an occasional special issue), and it’s the best way to stay in touch. Sign up here.

Several readers have asked if I intend to write a sequel to Pacific Storm. More have asked if I mean to write a third book in the Inverted Frontier series. So how does a writer decide what to work on next?

For myself, it’s a balance of obligation, interest, and income. I feel obliged to finish an unfinished story. Edges ended on a cliff hanger, so a sequel was required, and I’d planned to write one anyway. There was never any question about it. But should I write more? That’s where income comes in. There’s not much point in extending a series that isn’t selling. But Inverted Frontier is selling just well enough to justify another novel. (Thank you again to everyone who’s bought the books!)

I’ve actually started to sketch out three more novels to complete the series, though only time, chance, and the marketplace will determine if they’re ever written.

Pacific Storm is different. I meant it to be a stand-alone when I started. It certainly could become a series, though right now sales don’t justify it. I’ll keep the idea on a back burner.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for more near-future fiction beyond Pacific Storm, I’ve got three more novels you might want to try:

The Last Good Man — Robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence fuel the quest of an army veteran as she risks all to learn the truth behind her son’s last mission.

Limit of Vision — Ethics and evolution collide in this tale of runaway biotechnology set in the steamy Mekong Delta.

Tech-Heaven — A political thriller that imagines the rise of nanotechnology as seen through the eyes of a young woman whose life takes an extraordinary turn when she’s widowed and her husband’s body is cryonically frozen against a time when advancing technology will allow his resurrection.

I’m all about self-publishing. I started in traditional publishing and briefly returned to it with the Red trilogy. And it’s possible that with the right book I might roll the dice and try it again. But overall I’m happier to be self-publishing, handling my own books, and taking a much bigger cut of the list price.

But do I advise other traditionally published writers to take this route? Not necessarily. Everyone’s situation is different, and (assuming the choice exists) everyone needs to make up their own mind.

Not long ago, a friend asked for my thoughts on whether to self-publish a novella or accept a smallish advance. I sketched out what it would take to self-pub, and we both realized that self-publishing works best as a system. After discussing it, the odds of a one-shot venture being worth the necessary investment of time & money seemed pretty low.

To publish even a single work, you’d have to set up an account at Amazon, and at other vendors if you want to “go wide.” You’d need to hire a cover artist and maybe an editor and/or copyeditor. You would need to convert the manuscript into an ebook, and logically, into a print edition — both of which can be done with software if you’re not too fussy, though the software costs a couple hundred dollars (I think). And you’d still have to do all the promotion a traditional publisher would ask you to do. Beyond this minimal investment, you’d eventually need to set up a business and/or a business account, and acquire your own ISBNs.

That’s a lot to pull together for a one-off experiment — and maybe not worth it when measured against the offer of an okay advance?

On the other hand, if the experiment is a first run at a possible career path, then it would be worthwhile to consider upping the bet by writing two or three novels or novellas in a series, and then publishing them in quick succession with lots of publicity. At least I keep hearing that’s the way to make a splash!

Conclusion: There is no best path in the fiction business, but keep in mind that your best option today may not be the best option for your next project.

This post was originally published in my November 19th newsletter. It’s re-posted here with minor changes. If you haven’t yet signed up for my newsletter, you really, really should. It’s fun, it’s once every four weeks (with an occasional special issue), and it’s the best way to stay in touch. Sign up here.

Novelists sometimes talk about a “book of the heart,” by which they mean a novel they needed to write, one that’s especially close to their heart, one they keep returning to, even though the marketplace doesn’t care.

The Wild is my book of the heart. It’s a secondary-world, aka epic, fantasy that has nothing at all to do with my other work. It’s also “noble bright” (as opposed to my grimdark fantasy Stories of the Puzzle Lands).

I wrote the original version of The Wild in the early 2000s. It never sold to the traditional market, but I never forgot about it. Eventually I published it myself as an ebook available only from my website. But when I took down my website store, I also took The Wild off the market.

The book had issues. There were problems with the way it was written. Last summer, when I took a fresh look at the manuscript, those issues became clear to me–but I felt I now had the knowledge and experience that would let me address them. So while waiting for beta-reader and editorial comments on Pacific Storm, I commenced on what proved to be an extensive rewrite of The Wild.

After publishing Pacific Storm, I returned to The Wild, and in late November I finished what I hope will be my final pass through the manuscript. It’s in the hands of a proofreader now, and I think it’s a much better story.

Since it’s a long book, I’m going to divide it into a trilogy of short novels. You can see the original cover above. I love this illustration, but the feedback I’ve received indicates it doesn’t communicate that the book is epic fantasy. So I’ve commissioned a set of new book covers that will hopefully do a better job. Sign up for my newsletter, for a preview of the new artwork!

I included this news in my October 22nd newsletter, but forgot, until now, to post it here. If you haven’t yet signed up for my newsletter, you really, really should. It’s fun, it’s once every four weeks (with an occasional special issue), and it’s the best way to stay in touch.
Sign up here.

My 2013 indie novel, The Red: First Light, marked my return to novel-length science fiction after a hiatus of many years. To the surprise of just about everyone, including me, it became a Nebula-award nominee, and was later re-published by Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press, as the first of a trilogy.

Again to my surprise, it’s just been included on a list of “15 recent sci-fi books that forever shaped the genre.” (Recent as in the last 15 years.) The list appears at the gaming and entertainment website, Polygon.

This list is, of course, just one man’s opinion. (Thank you, Andrew!) I can’t help but observe that the Red trilogy is rather obscure compared to nearly every other included title.

Of those other titles, I’ve read ten and tried two more without finishing them. How about you? How many of the books on this list have you read?

I wish all of you who celebrate the holiday a happy Thanksgiving.

Years ago I would cook the full holiday spread on my own. The in-laws would fly over from Honolulu and spend a couple of weeks with us, giving them time with the grandchildren. But kids grow up and our elders become more frail. Eventually, the migration reversed, and Ron and I started to fly over to Honolulu for Thanksgiving, where we would celebrate with the extended family at a restaurant.

This year, for the first time in many years, we’re staying home and no one’s coming to visit. Still, I’m thankful for all our good fortune. Our family is small, but we keep in close touch, and we all continue to take precautions during the pandemic. I’m thankful for that, and for our good fortune to live in a community where a great majority of the people are willing to work together to stay safe.

Please take care. And let’s hope that by Thanksgiving 2021, we’ll be free to move around the country (and the world!) again.

All the indie-publishing gurus say not to “waste” money on print advertising — but I go my own way and waste money as I please, LOL. This is an ad I have in the current issue of Locus, a trade magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field.

(click to see it big)

This post was originally published in my September 24th newsletter. It’s re-posted here with minor changes. If you haven’t yet signed up for my newsletter, you really, really should. It’s fun, it’s once every four weeks (with an occasional special issue), and it’s the best way to stay in touch. Sign up here.

Most readers, and writers too, have quirks when it comes to what they like, and I’m no exception. There are certain popular space opera tropes I tend not to favor:

1. Instantaneous (or at least very fast) travel between stellar systems via gates, or portals, or wormholes, or whatever. The distance between stars is vast. It’s really, really vast. It’s my personal quirk that I like to celebrate that fact, as anyone who’s read my far-future fiction will know.

2. Far-future monarchies/galactic empires. A great thing about the original Star Trek was that the writers thought we humans could do better, that we could “grow up” and not need to be ruled by queens and kings. I like to think so too, though I grant you, looking around at the world these days, it’s getting ever harder to hold on to that point of view.

3. Interstellar war between human cultures: because seriously, what are you fighting for? How many planets does anyone really need? Given that you command the energy-intensive ability to travel between the stars, surely you could employ some of that energy and ability to improving your home system instead of destroying other peoples’ lives? (I know. I’m an idealist at heart.)

All of this is background that’s necessary for you to know when I tell you that I recently finished the audiobook edition of a space opera with instantaneous travel between stellar systems, far-future monarchies, and interstellar war. Three strikes against it. Even so, I’m going to tell you, with enthusiasm, that it was BRILLIANT!

I’m talking about Kate Elliott’s newest novel, Unconquerable Sun — a gender-swapped far-future take on Alexander the Great. This novel is really well done on so many levels. Fantastic engaging characters, stellar writing, a riveting story — and the audiobook has excellent narration. I’m not going to review it for you, because this newsletter is already too long (and I’m lazy), but you’ll find an excellent write up at a blog called The Quill To Live.

Okay, the bad news: Unconquerable Sun came out this past July from Tor Books, and they’re asking $15 for the ebook and more for print. If you can bear that price, I hope you’ll give it a try. If you do, let me know what you think about it!

Hi there! Today I’m sixty years old. That feels like a significant number. Big and round, LOL. The important thing though is that I got what I wanted for my birthday: the election of Joe Biden to the presidency of the United States of America, and the election of Kamala Harris as vice-president.🇺🇸 Rational, thoughtful, caring people in government. What a fine change for the country that will be!

I’m concerned for the next two months, but hoping for the best.

I offer my sympathies to the people of Georgia who are going to be ceaselessly inundated with political messaging until the January run-off elections for that state’s US senate seats. If you’re a Georgia resident, please, please, please give us a Democratic senate. Vote for the two Democratic candidates. That’s our most direct path to a better future for our country.

As for being sixty — I’m really fortunate, and it’s quite nice. I’m definitely getting up there, but I’m not done yet. There are still a few more novels I’d like to write. 😊🇺🇸🎉🎂