Hello, dreamers. What a month it has been.

April 2023 was a special month for my writing. I’ve written more over the past few weeks than I had in the previous two years. And that work has yielded results: over the past two weeks I’ve completed three short stories, and I’m well on my way to finishing a fourth. I haven’t felt this good about my writing since I finished Pioneers. It’s good to be back.

But I’m not done. Over the coming week, I’ll be hard at work on short fiction, hoping to complete a series of stories that have languished for years. Three down, three to go. All the while, I will be preparing to query Pioneers, while also fleshing out my notes on the Dotiverse and searching for my next novel project. That novel project will become the focus of my writing for the rest of the year, hopefully leading to a completed first draft by December.

I have a lot to do between now and then. So, without further ado, here’s what’s coming this week:

Upcoming Short Fiction: Poseidon

Today, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve resumed one of my longest-running regular posts: monthly short fiction is back. From this point on, I will be posting a new short fiction piece on the first Saturday of every month.

This month’s story, Poseidon, is the first of a planned series that takes place within the Dotiverse. Within that continuity, the events of Poseidon take place between late 2094 and early 2097. Poseidon centers on Todd Helfrich, the commander of a solar sail spacecraft on a two-year journey to Callisto in orbit of Jupiter. The story follows Helfrich’s daily life as he finds love and loss aboard a spacecraft, while working with his crew to avoid an errant asteroid in the Asteroid Belt.

As stated, this story will be the first in a series of short stories set in the Dotiverse. I plan to write a total of six stories in the series, of which three are complete and a fourth is in progress. Next month’s story, Merit 19, will follow the exploits of Trey Doyle: the lone pilot of a short-range supply vehicle, who is diverted from his supply run when ESA loses contact with a logistics ship inbound from Mars.

Please note that not all of these stories may eventually make their way to this site. As of this writing, I have submitted two of them for potential publication, and both are currently awaiting review. If I cannot find someone willing to publish them, they will ultimately find their way here. Should none of them be accepted for publication, I will continue to publish one a month, covering my monthly short fiction posts through October.

What’s Next

It feels good, for the first time in years, to be actively working on various projects while also looking ahead to the next. Even as work continues on the Beyond Pathfinder series of stories, given the pace at which I’ve been cranking these out, I’m pretty sure that I will be finished with all six by the end of this month. Thus, I’m already thinking about where to go next.

This series of stories has not only been enjoyable, but also invaluable in fleshing out my broader Dotiverse concept. I’ve struggled for years to keep expanding my voluminous notes on the concept, which I’ve collectively dubbed the “Dotopedia”. Ironically, while I’d long feared it would be too difficult to write new material in the Dotiverse without first expanding the Dotopedia, in fact I’ve found actually writing within the universe has helped to fill out a lot of it. While this has been gratifying, it also has me thinking.

Throughout my planning, notetaking, and ultimate writing of Pioneers, I purposefully kept myself from wondering what was happening on Earth, or anywhere else, during that time period. I wanted to focus entirely on the colony, and also felt that largely ignoring the rest of humanity would help me better capture the sense of isolation and independence the colonists themselves felt. Looking back, I believe this was, in fact, the best approach…at the time. But when I set out to write The Pioneer Era, it created some serious problems.

By the time The Pioneer Era takes place, more than thirty years have passed since the Megrez colony was founded; but at the same time, nearly half a century has passed since the colonists left Earth. In that time, Earth, and humanity on the whole, have changed dramatically, not only in terms of technology but culture as well. And while I have detailed notes on the broader state of mankind in the Pathfinder era (roughly 2094-2108), beyond that I have only vague notions about the world beyond Megrez. That, ultimately, became the fatal flaw in The Pioneer Era. Unlike the previous story, it deals extensively with the affairs of Earth and its inner colonies. When writing Pioneers, I had a stable framework upon which to build the story, allowing me to focus more on the characters themselves and the interpersonal drama surrounding them. In The Pioneer Era I was effectively starting from scratch. I was trying to build a world while simultaneously building a story. And in the end, I failed to do either.

So, lately I’ve been thinking of giving Pioneers what I might now call the “Pathfinder treatment”. As I’ve said previously, when I first began work on Pathfinder, I’d had the idea for a series of tie-in short stories, unrelated to the main story save being set in the same universe. What I haven’t mentioned is that I’d originally had a plan for another series, called Beyond Samarkand. Unlike Beyond Pathfinder, I hadn’t begun any of the stories; indeed, I hadn’t even gotten past the planning phase, and had only two story concepts. But given the success I’ve had with Beyond Pathfinder, I’m not sure how much that will matter. And by writing further within the Dotiverse during the Pioneers era, I might gain a better understanding of how things on Earth, and elsewhere, will develop during that period.

On top of everything, I still want to zero in on a new novel project before the end of the month. While I’ve enjoyed my time spent on short fiction, I feel it coming. My short stories have gotten longer, more concise. I’ve begun developing truly intriguing characters. I feel like, after so long, I’m finally ready to dive back into a long-format project. At the moment, given how well things have gone with Beyond Pathfinder, obviously I’ve given serious thought to resuming (or likely restarting) Pathfinder itself. I’ve already reopened my concept notes and begun looking them over. I haven’t made any changes just yet, but I’m starting to see how the story might unfold. And it’s exciting.

That said, if possible I’d honestly prefer to resume work on The Pioneer Era. I am hoping, if I start working on stories based in the Pioneers period, it will help me to fill in a lot of the uncomfortable blanks that doomed the story on my first attempt. But we shall see. There are a lot of moving parts right now. And given how well things are going with Beyond Pathfinder, I’m trying to just follow the writing where it takes me. I’m having fun, and I’m not in a hurry to stop.

Ongoing Site Update

That brings me to the last item on this week’s agenda: the ongoing updates to this site.

When I rebranded this site a few years ago, turning it into Writing Tomorrow, the rebrand was based on a single idea: that this site is not a blog. First and foremost, it is a platform for original sci-fi short fiction, and a way to showcase my published and soon-to-be-published works. While the site includes a blog, as most authors’ websites do, the blog is not intended to be the focus. Rather, its purpose is simply to keep readers apprised of my efforts, announce new content, and advertise published content currently on sale.

To that end, I’ve begun the process of streamlining this site. I’ve removed a number of older short fiction posts that no longer represent the quality or overarching feel of my work. I have also streamlined post categories, in part to keep non-fiction posts from appearing on the page dedicated to fiction. And I have further minimized the prominence of my blog on this site. Thus, I have removed the homepage widget displaying my most recent blog posts. If it does return, it will be placed somewhere less prominent.

Amid these changes, I have also made a few important decisions. In order to focus more on my ongoing writing of Beyond Pathfinder, I have decided to suspend my weekly Science in Fiction posts until further notice. I made this decision primarily because I’d been receiving little notice or engagement on the posts since resuming them last month. If you are reading this and enjoyed those posts, please reach out to me and let me know. Also, as I do not currently have an active novel project, as of this week I am suspending my weekly WIP Wednesday posts for the time being. When I find a new project, the posts will resume. Bear with me.

There are a lot of changes coming, but I believe those changes will be for the best. They will help me to better communicate with my readers, and connect with new readers who may enjoy my work. For now, work continues apace. So keep reading, and as always, dare to dream. – MK