Wait. 2013 is already driving in the HOV lane. Slow the hell down.
Stuff happening in January, all right. February marks the start of a new novel project which will occupy the bulk of my writing time for the next few months, but I’m hoping to put some attention to a couple of other things, as well. Farther into the future, things are looking pretty gosh-danged interesting, sports fans. I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up, least of all mine, but I’m pretty jazzed about stuff which may come to pass if the Writing Gods are kind.
There. I probably just jinxed the whole damned thing.
Anyway, January. Here’s what happened:
From History’s Shadow – My forthcoming Star Trek original series novel. I delivered the manuscript on January 7th, and after receiving some notes from my editor I turned in a revised version on January 16th. Now I await copyedits, which are due to arrive here at the Manor on February 6th. You can read more about the book here and here. The book’s “official” publication date is set for July 30th, 2013.
Peaceable Kingdoms – The fifth of five books comprising a series of linked novels with the umbrella title Star Trek: The Fall. The other writers are David R. George, Una McCormack, David Mack, and James Swallow, with me bringing up the rear to finish off the whole thing. Like the other books in the series, it’s set in the 24th century era, and mine “stars” Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-E. Expect guest turns from a few other characters, as well. I delivered my outline on January 18th, and after making some revisions a modified version was accepted by my editor on January 28th. As things currently, stand, my manuscript for this novel is due on June 4th.
“And On the Day After, the Writer Rested…for A Bit” – My most recent monthly column for the Novel Spaces blog, which was posted on January 17th. This time around, I wax lazy about the need to recharge after finishing a lengthy writing project…but not to take too long.
The Adventures of Space Marshal Dylan McCade: “The Terror of Entropia’s Ice Cannon!” – Toward the end of November, David Taylor asked me about my interest in perhaps contributing to an audio play they were wanting to do, or even if I had something which might work as material for adaptation. As it happens, I had just such a story sitting in my files, written oh so long ago. Folks who remember my old AOL days might recall a Captain Proton riff I did way back when. Well, I dusted that off, reworked everything to freshen up some jokes as well as to remove any Proton/other-Trek related references, changed up a few other things here and there, and WHAM! One pulpy SF serial, ready to rock. David completed adapting the story into audio script form on January 23rd, and after we exchanged notes on it, the thing is set to be recorded with a full cast of voice actors on February 24th. All the dialogue will be recorded during that session, with post-production to proceed afterward. This has been an assload of fun so far, and I can’t wait to see how things develop. More info on this as things bone up, including full info on the cast and crew, where you’ll be able to get your ears on it, and so on. Stay tuned!
Other stuff in the pipeline:
“Three Decades Ago, In A Movie Theater Down the Street: Ten Favorite Science Fiction Films of the 1980s” – Guest blog for Forgotten Flix. I was approached by my friends there to provide this piece for a series of guest blogs they were putting together. I sent my article to them back on November 4th, but it seems that the site, podcast(s), and so on are undergoing some renovations, so I’m not sure when it might run.
Tie-in novel – For mid-late 2014. I’ve talked with my editor about this, but only in the most broad, high-level terms, mostly just to figure out possible scheduling and manuscript due dates. As things stand now, we could be talking about something due out in late summer/early all 2014. We’re still a long ways off from being able to say anything meaningful about it, but there was movement on it today, as a matter of fact. Yay!
Short story for charity anthology – When fellow writer and blogger H.E. Ellis put out an all-call for short story submissions to support a worthwhile charity endeavor, I decided that the anthology’s theme was delightfully twisted enough that I wanted to play. The basic idea is to re-imagine a classic fairy tale, which, as H.E. puts it, “can be as funny, sick, twisted, erotic or vanilla as you wish.” I opted to take a crack at “updating” Peter Pan (a riff on A Clockwork Orange came to mind). Or, I may have a go at re-inventing Pinocchio as a cyborg assassin. Haven’t decided yet. intent is to have all of the stories in by spring 2013 so that they can be compiled into anthology format. A few folks already have turned in their stories, and H.E. is posting a couple of them (or excerpts) to her blog.
“The Enterprise Job” – Back-burnered, again. My grand plan to work with a small-press publisher for this seems to have fallen through, so I’m likely going to have to do this on my own. That means figuring out how best to get it set up for one of the e-Book venues like Smashwords or whatever, as well as making it available for print-on-demand. I’d really like to have this ready to go in time for this year’s Starfest convention in late April, but at this point I don’t know if that’s in the cards. We’ll see.
Also, I’ve continued to answer the call of friends Nick Minecci and Terry Lynn Shull, they of the weekly Sunday G and T Show, responding to queries submitted to them via their show’s “Ask Dayton” feature. What can I say? I’m an idiot.
Possible future projects:
ReDeus short story – A followup to last year’s tale for ReDeus: Divine Tales. I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to fit this in with everything else I’ll have going on around the same time, but I really do want to return to the character and other things I set up in “Conscript.”
Steampunk short story – I plan to get back to this one and finish a draft, but I don’t expect it will be happening until after the first of the year. It’s a new genre for me, so it’s proving a bit of a challenge, but I really like the idea I’ve come up with. I’m even thinking I can expand the general premise–if not this particular tale–to novel length, and really go crazy. I guess we’ll see.
Kid’s story book – The idea behind this is to create one of those illustrated books for very young kids (like, say…my 6 and 4-year old). I have an artist in mind, particularly since it was work he did for similar books which inspired me to do this in the first place. I have a completed manuscript, and at the moment we’re waiting on him to get some time in his schedule so we can talk about it. There also are a few other obstacles to navigate before I can approach the appropriate parties about possible publication. For now, this remains a “passion project.”
So, my 2013′s off to a fine start. How’s yours?
“re-inventing Pinocchio as a cyborg assassin” Sounds pretty epic.
I thought it was a cool idea at the time. Once I finish the Peter Pan one, I may have to see if the notion holds up
about the enterprise job; maybe you could do something like keith r.a. decandido did with the kickstarter thing he did for a story.
It’s not a question of funding, but of time. The bulk of the time I have for writing has to go toward the stuff for which people are already paying me, so fun side projects like this get set aside while I “take care of business.”