This is it for reals now. I am in my slow season at work. I am reveling in it.
Some of you may wonder what I do for a living, and if the particular genres I write in (fantasy/sci-fi) are affected by that. As many of you know already, I’m a full-time military officer, so yes some of what I went through is reflected in certain characters, but for the most part, there’s a fantastical element at play that complicates things. In the Bobiverse(the book that inspired the Chronicles of the Badger company), the main character is decidedly not military, so he doesn’t have the mindset of someone whose entire life was living and breathing that.
Not that my crews/teams are particularly good at what they do, or that the bobs could do, but they have the time and they have a disinclination to fight. Part of the idea behind the Badger company was this idea that there are combat arms and yeah you can quickly write a fight or espionage thriller, but what if we wanted to write something entertaining about the guy who designed the ships that got us to Mars and beyond? That’s Malcolm.
In other news, Embedded agents is plodding along. I have two other projects that I want to pick up and get into but I keep telling myself to focus on the one. If you know me, that is the hard part. Putting 500-1000 words a day into my upcoming Xianxia+Litrpg+Therapist Isekai-ed novel. I spent some time editing it and it’s over half finished. Maybe I need to finish this project to get the other one jogged.
I had a great field exercise last month where everything that was supposed to go smoothly went smoothly, and everything else? Well, there was a lot of white space for everyone to do the little things they need to do. It’ll be reflected in my writing for sure.
I don’t have a release date for anything so let me get back to my status.
Red mist Volume one-100% done first pass
Volume two- Paused at 10%
Embedded agents-75% done, needs some more meat in the third act.
Nascent Soul Child-50% done, somehow.
And I switched the theme to twenty twenty because my blog wasn’t working so, yeah. (This should work now, feel free to drop a comment or a recommendation for me.)
What am I reading? I am going through the Kingkiller chronicles by Rothfuss and I can see why people love it. I’m on book two and it’s long, but very pleasant to listen to.
I just caught up on, Deadworld Isekai https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/71319/deadworld-isekai which is great (and in the top ten of rising stars now so give them a read).
and
An infinite Recursion of time.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/43761/an-infinite-recursion-of-time
Both are great from a ‘here is a great normal fiction that uses the rules of a system’. They are both LITRPG soooo. The latter is done though, so yeah take it slow.
If you’re looking for a bit more of what I do with the little otters here is a great one:
https://www.vox.com/even-better/23818627/how-to-talk-to-kids-adult-conversation
Also if you want to read about publishing contracts my buddy has posted this on his substack.
https://medium.com/@aaronsofaer/five-publishing-contract-clauses-i-hate-and-how-to-fix-them-7c971ee4680f
I’m going to leave you there because I want to finish a damn project at some damn point in time. Just know that as your father, I love you all equally.
English