Stolen Property is still being edited. It’ll probably take until the end of the week and maybe next weekend to finish the read-out-loud editing of this book. With any luck, it’ll be published right after that. If there’s anything that doesn’t quite work, then I’ll have to spend more time reworking a scene or two. I anticipate having enough time between this week and next weekend to perform any minor changes.

I wrote 714 words of Supercomputer. It’s not much, but I’ll take it. I’m just testing out that story to see how it will flow. The outline is not really complete, but I’m going to write up to the scenes that are missing. By then, I should be able to see what I need to add to make the story complete. Technically, I’m not starting this book yet. I’ll be spending my weekdays writing Daphne. Once I get the rough draft for that book written, then I’ll dig into Supercomputer and put my full energy into that book.

Then what?

It all depends on how the Blazefire series sells. So far, it’s not doing too well. I still think the low sales are due to the fact that there are two missing books from the 5-book series. If the sales are still bad after Supercomputer is published… well. I guess it was fun while it lasted. I’ll still keep the set on Amazon, even if they never really sell.

One way or the other, I’ll probably switch to another series for a while. If the Daphne series suddenly goes crazy, I’ll switch back and continue with books 6 through 10. I have 15 story ideas that expand on some of the more colorful characters that I used in the first five books.

(Warning Spoiler Alert, Not safe to read if you haven’t read the first 3 books)

Doctor Hayden is one of the characters I want to base a story on. If you finished The Nav Computer, you can tell I kept him around for a reason. I’ll also use General Gura and the rogue colonists that escaped. General Gura has an extensive background, something tragic that will explain how he ended up being the person that he is.

RUSTY has memories that he can’t access. It’s due to his storage being corrupt. There’s a story involving his memories being restored and where he belonged to someone that is evil. That person finds out that RUSTY is still around and must destroy the robot (and, of course, Daphne) to keep from being exposed for the bad deeds that he’s done in the past.

Don’t forget that Lowell is digging around to find out what happened to Daphne’s family. There is a whole book based on what he finds, or should I say “who” he finds. I’ll just leave that right there…

Jin and Yoshii are still a viable plot. I haven’t decided how I would use them in a future book. Any time I have Daphne say goodbye to someone, you should suspect that the character will show up in a future story. Oh, and they’ll be in bigger trouble than before. Because that’s the way I roll…

Let’s not forget about Roberta, from Dangerous Cargo. She was originally going to be a throw-away character. She ended up having an interesting personality. I have ideas for her back story. I visualize a critical scene where she and Daphne are trapped and they need to shoot their way out. Ah, good times!

I dropped a hint in one story where there’s a war going on. I have a book plot involving Daphne getting caught up with people fleeing one of the planets in the battlezone.

Daphne’s back story has potential for some “Early Years” books. I could pull in some stories of what she went through when she lived on the streets.

(Spoiler Alerts = off, It’s safe to read from here)

The Escape from the Abyss series is still on my mind. I’ve already written 34,674 words of the rough draft for book 1. At that point, the story is just getting to the point of no return. Also known as the break into act 2. So it’s 25% there. The outline has been fleshed out, so it’s just a matter of getting the words down, then going over it and making sure it’s amped up enough. That book will take a long time to write. I’d like to write it in December, but I suspect I won’t get the rough draft complete until Springtime. We’ll see how that goes. It’s so far on my horizon right now, that I can’t even predict when I’ll continue writing the rough draft. I keep holding myself back because I have too many irons in the fire.

One of the things that worries me about Escape from the Abyss is the size of the books. As I’ve mentioned before, I anticipate them being between 120k to 140k each. I also have about 20 books mapped out to complete the story. I’m not worried about filling the books with enough stories. Oh, I have lots of stories fleshed out that will fit in those books. My worry is that it’ll take me months to write each one. Primarily, because I have a full-time job that pays the bills. I keep going over in my mind what I should do next in my writing career. If I start a new series with 50-60k books that have no specific end, I could build up an income that would allow me to write larger books, full-time.

Another strategy is to write the first one and see how it does. If it doesn’t do well, then either pull it down or write a second book to cap off the story. Gotta play that one by ear.

I’m still waist-deep in the Daphne series. I’ve committed to writing two more books: Daphne and Supercomputer. That’ll take me into December as it is. Maybe even until the beginning of next year. Though I’d like to start the year fresh. By then, I’ll make up my mind about the next series that I plan to write.

I have about 60 other story ideas. Some that I’ve written partial books for. I have a book for The Chronicles of the Clavius Moon Colony written called AI Patch. I wanted to expand it into a full-size novel, but I could finish editing and publish it as a novelette. It’s currently 18k in length. If I add a sub-plot, I could expand it to 30k words.

I have a story called The Blueprints that is outlined with a ton of notes. I’ve fleshed that story out quite well. Unfortunately, it’s a one-off story. I can’t see where it would translate into a series. I’ll probably write that in the future as a stand-alone book that’ll go into my back catalog.

Then, of course, there’s the MacKenzie Steele series. I purposely left that open-ended. I have some really good characters that I built up, including Swift and his men. Mac has a lot of years left in him. I still need to flesh out the new evil aliens that will have to be worse than the Arcnals. If I start a new series using Mac’s character, I want to make it grittier. The opening book will have to be spectacular to bring in sales. Otherwise, there’s no purpose in writing a series, even if it does convert well. I’ll have to spend some serious quality time thinking about such a story. Knowing what I know about book writing, I’ll have to think up at least 5 books and make them into one arc. To really give it a bang, I’ll also need an arc that is endless. Then do 5-book arcs at a time. That way I can plan out 5 outlines and make the books fit together like a puzzle.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens there. If anyone reading this has thoughts… hey, I’m all ears. Suggestions are always welcome.

P.S.

After I wrote this post, I realized that I had another series that I was planning to write that didn’t get off to a good start. I wrote a free short story called The Traveler. You can still sign up for my mailing list and read it for free. Anyway, I left the ending of that book with a “Holy Smokes!” ending. Yeah, it’s pretty grim. Anyway, I wanted to start a series based on the ending of that story. I had three books somewhat fleshed out and started writing the rough draft of the first book. I didn’t like the way the story was going and stopped. I could always drag that beast back out and rework the story. Now that I have a lot more story-writing experience under my belt, I think I could come up with a better plot and some better characters. I could even pump out a bunch of short stories starting off where that one ends. Not sure I could do it justice with short stories though. Feel free to read The Traveler and give me some feedback.