Hello, dreamers. It’s November 1, which means today marks the start of National Novel Writing Month.

For those unfamiliar with this event, each year writers across the world gather to pursue a lofty goal: to write a novel in a month. Over the past year, the group that runs NaNoWriMo has been marred with controversy. However, I and many other writers remain committed to its ideals, even if we’re eschewing the official website this year.

For me, NaNoWriMo has always been a wonderful experience. I don’t always reach the state goal, and frankly as a sci-fi writer my novels will always be longer than that. But it’s a great way to hold myself accountable, and dive into a new project.

So, I’d like to take this opportunity to officially announce my 2024 NaNoWriMo project:

Aquarius 1

At long last, I’m ready to begin my next big novel project: Aquarius 1. Set in 2114, the story follows the crew of the DSRV-1 Challenger, on one of humanity’s first missions of extrasolar exploration. The crew of the eponymous mission are sent to the Rigel Kentaurus system, one of the closest planetary systems to Earth, after a robotic probe detects liquid water on a moon of the system’s lone planet.

This will be a multi-POV story, told primarily from the perspective of Karen Hernandez: the first marine biologist in space. The story will also be told from the perspective of Anita Powell, an African American physicist and head of scientific operations on the ship, and Eldrich Fagen, a Canadian comparative biologist living in Vancouver.

Their objective is Jann: a moon of Rigel Kentaurus b (Zahl), a Neptune-sized gas giant orbiting Rigel Kentaurus. In terms of its size and composition, Jann is similar to some of the frozen ocean moons in our solar system (Europa and Triton, for instance). However, Zahl orbits its star within the habitable zone. As a result, Zahl itself is composed largely of water vapor, and its moon is covered entirely in ocean.

I’ve spent much of the past year immersed (so to speak) in research on this novel, and it may be the most original idea story concept I’ve had in a long time. My current plan is to have this story serve as the first installment in a new series, set within the same fictional universe as Pioneers and running parallel to it. I’ve been looking forward to this story for a long time: it’s exactly the kind of thing I’ve wanted to write since I first got the idea for Pioneers years ago. From the outset, I thought of my Pioneers universe, which I’ve called the Dotiverse, as “Star Trek updated for the modern world”. And that’s exactly what I hope Aquarius 1 will be.

I’ll be talking more about this novel in the coming weeks, along with weekly updates every Friday on my NaNoWriMo progress. So keep checking back, and as always, dare to dream. – MK