The Shape of Things to Come

Monday, June 14, 2021 at 6:00am

As I sit down to write this on the morning of Saturday, June 13, I can proudly announce that Intersection Thirteen is now completely and finally done. The final print and ebook files have been uploaded to Amazon, and all that remains is for me to push the buttons on the June 18 release date.

It feels so good to put this book behind me. It was one of the roughest so far in terms of editing and preparation, but I learned a ton from the experience and came out the other side stronger for it.

With that complete, I can turn my attention toward the future. My plans have changed somewhat since I last shared an outline of my potential future publications.

The first big change is that I had, quite suddenly about a week ago, a new idea for a novel. Usually titles for my works come to me right away, but that was not the case with this one. I finished a full outline of it and still had no idea what to call the thing. So far, the title I dislike least is When the Gods Wish to Punish, so that’s what I’m going with for now. The main characters’ consciousnesses inhabit a virtual reality space that they can reshape at will (much like a lucid dream), but recently entities called withers have appeared, which are capable of consuming people. The main character learns of a way out of the virtual space toward the beginning of the story and the bulk of the novel he will spend trying to coax his friends and colleagues out into reality. Yes, inspiration here came from Plato’s cave allegory.

I have about 10,000 words of The Ghost King written, but I think When the Gods may just be my 2022 novel, if writing it goes as smoothly and as quickly as the outlining did. I still want to finish The Ghost King, but that’s now looking like it will be in 2023. And I want to move The Five Kingdoms of Daniel Worthy into 2022.

Put that all together, and the rough schedule now looks like this:

• 2021
  • Intersection Thirteen (novel; June 18)
  • Chronicles of Ytria (collection; September 3)
  • The Shipwright and Other Stories (map update; ~October)
  • The Other (map update; ~October)
• 2022
  • When the Gods Wish to Punish (tentative title; novel)
  • The Five Kingdoms of Daniel Worthy (novella series)
• 2023
  • The Ghost King (novel)
  • Voyage Redux (novella series)

I’ve asked Zhivko Zhelev to work on Five Kingdoms next, since the draft is done. That may in fact appear first next year. I am excited to see how that project turns out, because it’s becoming typographically ambitious. More on that as I get further along with it.

And finally, I had a very exciting piece of news this past Friday. I am not quite ready to share it yet, but I am looking forward to doing so.

Look for Intersection Thirteen to be available on Amazon this coming Friday!