Hello, dreamers. Last week was a productive week, and it’s safe to say I’ve fully transitioned to my new project.

I spent much of the past week immersed in research, particularly with regards to mass extinctions. It’s…not a very uplifting topic, but it’s been insightful nonetheless. I also managed to complete two short fiction pieces. I always say there’s no better feeling for a writer than typing “THE END”. But I also say the work of an aspiring author is never done. So with that in mind, here’s what I’ll be up to this week:

Aquarius 1

Research work continues apace on Aquarius 1. After many hours reading about mass extinctions and various extinct (and extant) marine taxa, features of Fatima’s biosphere are starting to pull into focus. I’ve determined that the moon suffered a cataclysmic impact event at some point in its distant past. I’ve come up with some unique organisms to enrich the story. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve been learning some valuable terminology.

Obviously I’m no marine biologist. But Karen Hernandez is, and because she obviously knows her stuff, I need to know some stuff too. Much as I learned years ago about ecosystems and trophic cascades for The Ursa Frontier, I’m now learning terms like carbonate shelf (the portions of ocean floor covered primarily by carbonaceous skeletons, mostly coral). It’s been fascinating so far, and I’m eager to continue on.

At present, I’m reading about the marine environments of Earth’s Triassic period. It occurred to me recently that, while working on The Ursa Frontier, I’d largely ignored marine ecosystems. So really, I know little about the marine environments of Earth’s Mesozoic Era. Now, more than likely Fatima is not passing through something analogous to the Mesozoic. However, it’s still important that I learn about this.

Evolution, as I said in The Ursa Frontier, is life responding to its environment. Animals don’t just go extinct for no reason. So in order to know what sort of life astronauts might find on Fatima, I need to know why marine life on Earth looks the way it does. I know the moon has never had dry land, which provided a foundation. But now I need to go deeper, and decide why marine taxa like placoderms, eurypterids, and rudists went extinct. What specific environmental factors led to their disappearance? And how likely is it that such events would have occurred on an ocean moon?

Through it all, I’m starting to work my way into the actual writing. Of course I’m unlikely to do any actual writing until mid-August at the earliest; I need to finish my research first. But once I get a project into my head, it’s hard to resist. At present I’m simply reviewing what I’ve already written. The only real work I’m doing is a character swap, which thankfully doesn’t involve a gender change but does require a complete shift in voice. That should keep me busy for a while. Should.

Short Fiction

Until this week, I hadn’t actually finished a short story since February (when I began work on the final draft of The Ursa Frontier). But after months away, this week I completed not one, but two short fiction pieces. To be fair, I didn’t start either of them last week; both were existing projects, one of which was about four months lapsed. But it still felt really good. The second one felt particularly good; I’m always proud of myself when I revisit a lapsed project and finish it.

After completing Distant Music midweek, I began “writing around” as I call it: I open various unfinished projects, review what I’ve written, and see if I can make any progress. Now and then, a story will just grab me in a way it hadn’t when I started it. That’s what happened this week with Sand on the Brain: a short story about an astronaut alone on a resupply freighter who begins losing her mind after being infected with a silicon-based virus.

The story ended up being delightfully madcap, which also made it exactly what I needed: a complete departure from what I’d been writing over the past several months. I find after working for a while on a project, it can be beneficial for me to write something as totally different as possible. It sort of becomes a “palate cleanser”, and helps shift my mindset from focusing on a long-running, involved project to working on shorter, concise pieces.

It also helps that, while Distant Music clocked in at my customary 13k, Sand on the Brain ended up being a much more marketable 6,400 words, and it hasn’t been edited yet. As editing will almost certainly bump that down a bit, this story will allow me access to a much wider and more receptive market. Several of the other stories I did a little work on this week also look like they’ll wrap up under 7k. Between the shorter lengths and the credits I have from Writers of the Future, I might actually be able to see my work in print. And get paid for it, too. Imagine.

For now, I’m continuing to focus my writing efforts on short fiction. This not only helps to refresh my now-depleted stable of active manuscripts, but also serves to distract me from wanting to just dive right into Aquarius 1. So this week, I plan to resume my daily sketches while continuing to write around and see what I can knock off. As I did earlier in the year, I’m not stopping to edit each story as it’s completed; both Distant Music and Sand on the Brain remain unedited. I don’t want to break my stride. More than likely, I’ll leave them alone for at least a few weeks, in hope of piling up a pleasant backlog before I devote the next several weeks to editing.

If all goes well, however, I could begin shopping Sand on the Brain and a few others around by the middle of the month.

Mailing List

Let’s…try this again.

So as my longtime reader will know, some time ago I tried to set up a mailing list, and it never really went anywhere. Ultimately, the big problem was my host; I really, really didn’t like MailChimp. Even before they went paid-only. I found the interface cumbersome, and had a hard time getting anything to work the way it should. But now I have a new platform, and a new reason to establish a mailing list:

I really, really want to share my writing with you, my readers.

With more and more pirates roaming platforms like WordPress looking for writing to steal for AI purposes, I’m increasingly reticent to share my work here. If nothing else, I hate the idea of someone taking something I offered for free to the world and using it to make money. That’s not what the short fiction I’ve published here over the years is for. I didn’t do it to make money; if I did, I’d ask for paid subscriptions. Rather, I did it because I really just want people to read my work, and enjoy it.

So, I’ve come up with a clever workaround: create a mailing list, where readers can provide their email address and receive content directly in their inboxes. My new platform is far from perfect, but I’ve been plugging away at this out of a burning desire to finally get back to sharing fiction with my readers.

At the moment, I’m likely still a week or two away from launching. But once the new mailing list launches, you’ll be able to sign up right here on this site. From there, you’ll receive monthly newsletters providing a more intimate glimpse into my writing efforts, and my life, as well as periodic exclusive short fiction. I’ll never charge you a single cent for signing up, and you’ll get a free never-before-released novelette in .epub format just for opting in!

As we speak, I’m converting one of my favorite, previously-unreleased stories to serve as your very own Michael T. Kuester freebie. I’m also working on my first newsletter, which I plan to send out on August 1, so long as the mailing list takes off by then. If you enjoy my work, keep checking back for updates. New short fiction is less than a month away.

New Content

This week in my “WIP Wednesday” post, I’ll be discussing why animals go extinct, and how that information will influence the biosphere I’m devising for Aquarius 1. On Friday I’ll be releasing my next Sci-Fi Reviewed post, in which I’ll be reviewing All Systems Red by Martha Wells. And I’ll be closing out the week with a new “Dear Sir or Madam” post on Sunday. That post will cover how I decided on my next project, taking my querying efforts into account. There’s plenty more to come, so keep reading, and dare to dream. – MK