Slogging along

So I’m working part time now, making ends meet as I get ready to finish up the year and go abroad for a while.  This time, I’m only doing about 20-30 hours per week, so it’s much easier to balance writing with everything.  Minecraft is still a distraction, but I think I’m finding a good balance.

Star Wanderers is coming along, but I made the mistake last week of reading some of the critical feedback on the first part while working on the second.  Not that the feedback is bad–it’s quite good, actually, and very helpful–but taking criticism on a work in progress put me into a temporary slump.  I think I’m most of the way out of it now, but progress is more sporadic than I’d want it to be.

However, I just started revising Into the Nebulous Deep today, and I’m very excited about that.  Into the Nebulous Deep is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, featuring James, Lars, and the Colony five years after the events of the first novel.  I haven’t looked at it since May, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about it, so I think it’s time to dust it off and work on it again.

It definitely needs a new title, though; “Into the Nebulous Deep” is much too convoluted.  Anyone have any ideas?  I’m thinking something like “Heart of the Nebula” or “Into the Deep,” but neither of those have quite the right zing.

Even though I finished the first draft almost six months ago, no one has read this one yet.  It had some pretty big issues that I felt I needed to fix before sending it out to first readers, but I wanted to give it some time to settle before reworking it.

As if that’s not enough, I’m also working on getting Journey to Jordan up and published.  This book is more of a travel journal, so I’m self-editing it, but it’ll probably take a couple weeks before it’s up and ready.  I was going to publish it under a pseudonym, but now I think I’ll just keep it under my own name.  I’m not sure whether I should change the names of people mentioned in the book; I never say anything libelous about anyone, but if that’s the standard MO for works of non-fiction, then maybe I ought to do it.  In any case, my goal is to have it out over Thanksgiving break.

Other than that, not too much to report on.  I’m bringing back my travel blog in anticipation of going abroad, but I haven’t said anything particularly interesting other than “I’m back!”

Oh, and I’m reading Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet and thoroughly enjoying it.  I don’t generally like poetry, but Poe and Gibran–I could read them all day.