Hello, dreamers. Christmas has come and gone. For those who observe, I hope you had a pleasant holiday. But for me, the work resumes. I have a lot to do as this year enters its final days. And I intend to send 2024 off with a bang. That said, here’s what I’ll be up to this week:

Querying Pioneers

Amid holiday preparations and festivities, I still managed to get a lot of work done on Pioneers. Obviously I didn’t have time for much else, but I’m happy with what I’ve done. Much of what I’ve done over the past week and a half has been what I’ve called “POV cleanup”: making sure I know precisely who’s supposed to be telling the story at any given moment.

As I’ve said a lot over the past year, in modern literature interiority is everything. It’s what separates a novel from a film or TV series, and the core of written fictions enduring relevance. Only a book can truly allow an audience to understand exactly what a character is thinking or feeling. When I first wrote Pioneers years ago, the result was what modern literary experts term “cinematic”. I was trying to describe the scene as though offering a detailed synopsis of a movie. Among other things, this resulted in a number of scenes told from the POV of a dispassionate narrator. That wouldn’t be so bad in and of itself if the entire book was told that way. But because it happened only occasionally, it constituted a potentially fatal flaw.

So, I’ve been combing through passages making sure it’s clear exactly who is telling the story at any given moment. It’s helped to clear the story up a lot, and provided depth I hadn’t realized was missing. As of this writing, I’m preparing to begin the final phase of the novel. Generally, I prefer to keep the final part of a novel brief: I break the characters up, thrust them into action. The story moves quickly between various scenes, following the characters, before drawing everything swiftly to a conclusion.

I do this in part because of the way I tend to approach novels. After the climax, I like to see everything move along quickly. If the concluding chapters get drawn out, bogged down with internal monologue or prolonged plot satisfaction, I tend to start skimming, eager to see how it all plays out. So I try to keep the reader engaged and on the edge of their seat through the final chapters.

What that means is I only have a handful of chapters remaining. The bad news is that, because these are the chapters that tie everything together and draw the story to a close, they’re fast-paced but also dense and impactful. The good news is these are some of the most heavily-edited and recently-rewritten chapters of the novel, which means I don’t anticipate making any significant changes.

Then again, I didn’t anticipate making any significant changes to Phase 2, and look what happened there. So we shall see. But either way, I have high hopes that I can get through Phase 4 by the end of the week, even though I only have a few days to go. That will leave me a few weeks to go over my talking points, and write a query letter and synopsis prior to query season.

Short Fiction

Amid work on Pioneers, I’ve managed to keep up with my daily sketches, which I’m proud of. I’ve found starting the day with a sketch really helps to get my mind working, and improves my writing over the course of the day, even if I don’t get to sit down and actually write until the evening when everyone else is asleep.

And the results have been gratifying. I now have another two or three short stories to work on and expand, a few of which I’ll likely shop around. So far, one of them has actually evolved into a complete work, and that one was a surprise: a piece about Sasha Ford, daughter of William Ford (one of the major characters in Pioneers). The story takes place roughly 15 years after the events of the novel, and follows Ford’s young daughter, born on Denali.

While I currently have no plans to publish it, it was constructive in a number of ways. Besides helping me flesh out the “after” of Pioneers (which I’ll need before writing the next book in the series), it was my first attempt at writing from the POV of a child. My own experience as a parent helped to inform the story, and I dare say it turned out well, if only for a first attempt.

Over the coming weeks, I plan to continue allowing myself to explore short fiction. With any luck, the final week of the year will produce at least a couple more stories I can throw out there following the first of the year.

When We Left Earth (and Other Self-Pub)

I’m also going to devote some time over the coming week to Facula, the next installment of When We Left Earth. The book is slated for release on January 25, and though I feel pretty good about it as it currently stands, I’d like to expand it a little further.

In addition, I’m still exploring the possibility of a new short fiction collection. Nothing Human (working title) would be a collection of some of my best short stories regarding human contact with intelligent alien life. For most of my albeit short writing career, I’ve largely avoided aliens when writing, preferring to focus on exploring the humanity of the future. But for whatever reason, much of my short fiction over the past year has ended up featuring aliens. It’s become such a recurring theme that I feel it’s worth collecting these stories and putting them out in the world.

New Content

Since it’s already Thursday, there won’t be much new content this week. Keep an eye out on Sunday, however, for my latest “Self-Pub Sunday”. I’ll be announcing an end-of-the-year sale on my current self-pub titles, and providing more information on the Nothing Human project. So keep reading, happy holidays, and dare to dream. – MK