Hello, dreamers. The holidays are nearly upon us, and as my year winds down, I’ve been making some serious decisions with regards to the remaining weeks of 2024. At the moment, my 2025 is shaping up to be extremely busy as far as writing goes: a series of novellas being released, querying Pioneers, and writing a novel, along with a host of other potential projects I’ve been toying around with. That said, here’s what I’ll be up to this week:

Querying Pioneers

So last week, I kept going with my final pass on Pioneers, and the results were surprising.

I’ve spent years with this story, and honestly it was hard to imagine making any serious changes at this point. But between my work on short fiction and Aquarius 1, and a flurry of long-overdue background notes and research, I’ve been able to dive deeper into this story. And in the end, I found myself putting something back into this story that, amid lots of bad writing advice and years of edits, I’d removed:

Its heart.

Pioneers isn’t a dull story. These people have traveled eighty light years from Earth, far beyond the range of the fastest spacecraft or even communication. They are completely on their own. And though they are eminently qualified, with scientists and engineers galore, they are at the mercy of an alien biosphere. They suffer and fear, form bonds through trauma. And much to my discredit, for a while there I stopped them from expressing that.

Taking what I’ve learned over the past year, I let myself step behind the characters’ eyes, and tell the story through them. And ultimately, I found myself tackling some deeply-personal themes that have defined parts of my adult life. Failed relationships, social isolation, leaving everything one has known behind for a completely alien place. Forming new relationships, trauma bonding, spontaneous romances and the fear of growing close to someone, letting them in. Internalizing failure, the sense of being a small part of something big. Found families. Finding hidden strengths within oneself.

As I always say, when you’re a writer, sooner or later you end up on the page. Your experiences and personality will weave their way into the story, whether you intend it or not. And for this first time in far too long, I can really feel these people I’ve created. And I really feel like I’ve made something special. Something new and valuable.

So far, I’ve made it through two phases. Phase 2 was the biggest surprise: I veered away from Randall Holmes more, shifting POVs in several passages to Nina and Ford. And I believe I’ve now put the story in a position where the reader will move on to the actual colonization with a connection to these characters.

This week will be tough: I’ll be tackling Phase 3. Since I first wrote this story, that’s the part of the book I’ve had the hardest time with. In the past, I’ve had the general sense that it’s not where I want it to be, but while reading through it and editing, I’ve often found myself unable to make any serious changes. Until this past week, I hadn’t made any significant changes to Phase 2 since before the Pandemic. So I’ve got a good feeling about this one. One change I’ve made since prior passes is focusing on editing only one chapter at a time. I think by not allowing myself to just get sucked into the story, I’ve been able to view things more objectively, and that’s made all the difference.

Aquarius 1

For a variety of reasons, I have, in fact, decided to pause work on Aquarius 1 until after the new year. I’ll likely pick it back up no earlier than February, and may in fact wait until spring or summer, if not waiting until novel writing season next year.

The fact is, I’ve got way too much on my plate. I still feel my recent work on Aquarius 1 isn’t where it needs to be. I still think I can do better, and need to. My biggest concern is the first chapter. It still feels too much like I’m just going through the motions. I need to shake things up. I have some ideas on that, but it’ll have to wait. In the meantime, I have potentially months to do some much-needed research and notetaking.

For the time being, I plan to focus my efforts on querying Pioneers, which I’m not regarding as my main project. Beyond that, I’ll be splitting my time between When We Left Earth and other outstanding short fiction projects.

Short Fiction

Last week I got back to my daily sketches with a vengeance. Over the past few months, as I’d been hitting on story after story, I began to realize I was getting carried away. I’d started having trouble with my daily sketches, because I wanted every one to develop into a complete story. I’d sit at my desk in the morning before logging in to work, trying to flesh out a simple idea I had into a complete work. The big story idea I got two weeks ago was really the wake-up call: what should’ve been a simple short fiction piece ballooned into an expansive novel that would likely take years of research. I began to feel parylized.

So last week, I got back to the basics. I just sat and wrote whatever came to mind. I was actually inspired by my recent research into classical music. Edward MacDowell, one of the first internationally-recognized American composers, would begin each day by composing a brief piece: a simple melody. He used it as a mental exercise, to prepare himself for a day of writing music. And that’s what my sketches are supposed to be: a short piece, totally off-the-cuff. No research, no plotting. I just sit and start writing.

So I did that. I told myself each sketch should be just a few paragraphs. Start with a scene, then a single character, then go from there. And it helped a lot. I’m now back on track, and once again feeling forward progress.

All of this is not to say I’m not still planning to write more short fiction over the coming month. I’m also considering, as I often do around this time of year, releasing another short story collection next year. Much of my short fiction over the past year has dealt with alien life: a subject I’ve long avoided in my writing. If I can’t find a place to publish these stories (which is likely; many of them are unmarketably long), I may end up releasing them either individually as novellas and/or as a collection, tentatively titled Nothing Human.

If I were to produce a new collection, there would be a lot of work left to do. Generally, I feel any short story collection must include at least six pieces of short story length. At present, I have two. Including The Envoy and potentially rewriting one of my other existing but unpublished pieces might get me up to four, but that still leaves me two short. Luckily, I plan to do a lot of short fiction writing over the coming month or two. Stay tuned.

When We Left Earth

Deciding to put Aquarius 1 aside for now was tough, but it left me feeling like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt like I had room to breathe, which has freed me to work on a long-standing project. So this week I’ll finally be formally introducing readers to When We Left Earth. I plan to publish a post on Tuesday morning announcing this, followed sometime this week with a new page here on the website to serve as a catch-all for the series.

The page will provide much-needed background and context for the series, and may potentially come to include short fiction or flash fiction involving some of the characters from the novellas. Of course, it will also include advance notifications of upcoming releases, as well as sneak peeks of the next installment in the series.

Speaking of the next installment, keep an eye out this weekend for information on the next book in the series, Facula, which will be released next month. At the moment, I’m planning to work on Facula over the next two weeks, mostly on formatting in preparation for the release.

New Content

This week, in addition to the introduction post for When We Left Earth, I’ll be resuming my popular “Science in Fiction” series, starting a new line of posts that will deal specifically with the realities of space travel. So keep reading, and as always, dare to dream. – MK