Hello, dreamers. It’s been a while since I’ve made one of these posts, but when one feels nothing has been accomplished, it’s hard to justify making an entire post just to say so. Now, however, I’ve finally gotten back into the swing of things. So, here we are again.

It’s not easy for me to feel a sense of accomplishment in a week where I didn’t technically write anything new, but nonetheless I feel it’s been a productive week, spent doing things that desperately needed to be done. Without further ado, here’s what I was up to this week:

Wide Horizon

It felt good returning to Wide Horizon. Better than I thought it would.

I’d been putting off doing anything with my debut novel for some time now. Though I’d said it was because I was loath to make any notable changes while querying, in reality part of it was fear of changing too much. I worried about what impact revising Wide Horizon while working on The Pioneer might have on the two very different stories.

Spending time away from writing helped a lot. In going back to Wide Horizon, I was able to clean a lot of things up, improving the story without significantly changing either the language or the plot. The result was what I believe to be a much better, more readable story. My only regret is that I didn’t do this sooner.

With revisions complete, my next step will be to rewrite both my query and synopsis, but with revisions on Wide Horizon complete, I’ve been able to move on to better things…

The Pioneer

At last, I have returned to my most recent novel, and the real work can begin.

As I’ve said, I’ve been putting off major revisions on The Pioneer for some time now, but I think I’m ready for this. My first step will be a general read-through; while I will make minor revisions, mostly I’ll be noting areas that need to be cleaned up or re-worked. This is intended partly to help me reacquaint myself with the story after so long, but also partly to avoid making any serious changes just yet. One of my Twitter CPs, Jania Johnson, is currently reading the story. In addition to being a talented writer, Jania is a beta reader extraordinaire, and I am loath to start heavily re-working the novel while she’s still reading it. I wouldn’t want her to reach the end of the novel only to discover the story has changed dramatically while she read.

Jania’s feedback will be the last piece of the puzzle. Based on what I’ve already noted, what I head from beta readers and of course her insights, I plan to begin major revisions within the coming week or so, all likely leading up to entering The Pioneer in Pitch Wars in September.

The Pioneers

I continue creeping toward writing the eventual sequel to The Pioneer. This week I’ve done little with this new story, but I find myself more and more convinced that it will, in time, become my next work-in-progress.

Most of what I’ve done thus far has been all-important note-taking, which has involved even more math than the previous novel. Because this story takes place thirty years after the events of The Pioneer, in this novel I’ll need to deal with not one but several colonized planets. All of these planets lie within the Ursa Major moving group, which makes things easier. However, as the novel will involve characters traveling between these planets (and their star systems), I need to know how long, with their technology, such trips would take.

Luckily, as was the case with The Pioneer and Wide Horizon, one of the first things I did with this story was narrow its scope, thus limiting the number of different planets the characters must visit. Of course, this still means I need the rough distances between various star systems. For The Pioneer, I actually went to the trouble of calculating the distance between Phecda and Merak. This yielded a travel time of roughly ten months with the propulsion systems they used. Of course, I couldn’t recall the actual distance, much less the equation I used, as I lacked the foresight to record either in my notes. As luck would have it, though, I found a website that actually does the math for you, and after checking the math by using my known distance (Phecda to Merak), I believe I’ve found something that will make my life a lot easier.

It’s been quite a week, dreamers. But I’m not done, not by a long shot. In the week ahead, I plan to resume querying for Wide Horizon, commence major revisions on The Pioneer, and start writing The Pioneers. Exciting times lay ahead, so keep reading. And as always, dare to dream. – MK