It’s true that you’ve not yet seen a post announcing the completion of Impressions, a reflection piece on the writing of the third part, or a reflection on the writing of the novel as a whole; however, it is also true that those posts should be coming soon.  As I worked through the final third of the novel, I started thinking more seriously about what I will write next.  Sure, I could take a break, focus on some short stories for a time, but I’d rather keep up some momentum and move onto another major project while I receive feedback on Impressions.  The question, of course, was what that project ought to be.

A few possibilities have been mooted for you before this post.  I mentioned Origins, a science fiction series of short stories, a concept a little like Blood Magic in execution, although I would not try to release in real time again the way I did for Blood Magic.  I’ve also mentioned a novelization of sorts for Epic of Gilgamesh, which I envision as a series of novellas.  Any number of other ideas could also serve for my next project: I could finally return to the world of Hiarathala (setting of the “frankenstory”), I could return to Fo’Fonas, although I have some significant restructuring and rethinking to do on that series, or I could pursue any number of the less developed major story ideas floating around in my head.

All of these are stories that I want to tell, so I have to remind myself when it comes to making these decisions that I’m not saying I will never write the stories I don’t select.  If I write about a hundred and twenty thousand words on my main project each year (which is about the rate at which I wrote Impressions, and not terribly far off from the rate at which I wrote the first draft of Fo’Fonas), then a typical first draft will take me about a year and a half to finish.  So, for rough numbers, let’s say that most of these projects will take me two years, including some time for revisions (these two years will not necessarily be contiguous).  That might feel like a long time while I’m in the midst of the project, but it’s not so long in the grand scheme of life, and it suggests that I have time to write plenty of stories.

There is also the consideration of which stories I feel prepared to write.  My writing continues to improve, which is a good thing, but it also means that I look at the stories I’ve written and the stories I’ve yet to write, and I know that I could do them better justice, do more with the stories themselves, if I write them after I’ve practiced.  The only way to practice is to keep writing, which means that I wanted to select something for my next project that would further improve my writing, but that wouldn’t stretch it beyond my current abilities.  Certain stories, like Fo’Fonas and Hiarathala, are going to be massive, complex, multi-volume epics, and I think they will be much, much better if I have a few smaller-scale novels written before I do them.

I knew, then, that I wanted another stand-alone novel project.  That helped narrow my options significantly, and I had one other element which I considered, which was genre.  From various other authors, I’ve read that it can be difficult to switch between genres once you’ve published successfully in one genre, even genres as closely aligned (historically) as science fiction and fantasy.  With that in mind, I decided that my next project should be a science fiction novel.  While I sometimes think that science fiction is particularly suited for short stories, I do have a few ideas for longer form pieces.

Rogue Planet is one of them.  As with most of my story ideas, this is the fusion of multiple ideas over time.  I read a theory (not considered likely at this point) that Uranus once belonged to another solar system, was orphaned when its original star died, and was captured by the Sun, and that this is why it rotates so oddly compared to the rest of the solar system.  The discovery of actual “rogue planets,” planets drifting through interstellar space without host stars, further crystalized my desire to write a science fiction story about such a planet.  Another inspiration was the detection of an interstellar asteroid moving on a strange orbit.  When it was first discovered, there was some speculation that it might be an alien probe, because it moved so differently from any other object we’d detected theretofore, though we have since found that there are numerous such objects, now that we know to look for them.

Beyond those interlinked ideas, I also wanted to write a long duration space voyage with reasonably realistic technology that doesn’t turn gritty the way a lot of such science fiction does.  No killer aliens, no plagues, no horror plots, no lonely cryostasis, no craziness, but also no quantum teleportation, routine antimatter use, routine energy-matter conversion, or sapient artificial intelligences.  Not that there’s anything wrong with those – I especially enjoy the idea of symbiont ships, whether they’re biological or advanced artificial intelligences (true artificial intelligence, not what we use the buzzword to describe today) – I just wanted this particular story not to use them.

Thus, I am pleased to announce that my next project will be a science fiction novel tentatively entitled Rogue Planet.  Written with a third person omniscient viewpoint, it will focus on a crew of twenty-four people as they journey to, and interact with, a rogue planet.  I guess that’s a minor spoiler, but it’s in the working title, so it seems pretty obvious.  Even if it’s not obvious to the crew for some time.  I’m aiming for about 140,000 words for this piece.  It will be a long time until you see it, but I’ll keep you updated along the way, and I think you’ll enjoy Rogue Planet when it finally comes around.