As some of you may have noticed, the quarterly updates following the first and second yearly writing schedules were not followed by a third, but you may consider this a fourth. I’ve been sadly distracted from writing much in the last five months. Between August and December I both finished a job and moved, set up at a new place and have been working frantically with a new and much longer commute. Alongside other ongoing work, this drastically cut into the time I could properly devote to writing.
That being said, there was some progress made!
Firstly, the works to comprise the first anthology in the 69erverse are complete in their first drafts, save one. That means that should January be a little calmer I will have all the first drafts complete. Edits and revisions for the stories 2069 and Islands in Space are already underway. Suit, Claim Jumpers and Upward Bound are being prepared for second round edits. The two remaining stories which need to be completed and padded out are Deluge and My Valentine. The first is a miniature doomsday scenario inspired by a semi-joking post on a message board I frequent about the potential melting of the Thwaites Glacier, a story of unintended consequences. The second is set during the 2199 Terran New Year celebrations on Eros, the most densely settled and infamous space for human habitation as mentioned in Islands in Space and Claim Jumpers. Here an unfortunate woman makes a bad deal which may end up with her coming to grief as she tries to get out from under an onerous debt. My expectation is that these second round edits can be completed by the time I go to do the first quarter updates for 2022.
Secondly, The Virtue of Battle has hit 31,551 words so far. The first draft is coming to a close, and I am working at some of the larger action scenes which will end the story.
Thirdly, Wrapped in Flames is at the 91,000 word mark, so just under 50% complete. The story has advanced to May of 1862 and I will be feverishly writing out the events of May-August which comprise Part II and Part III of the story. Part IV is intended to bookend the first book and the year 1862 in the Wrapped in Flames world. From there we move on to the year 1863 and the events of the sequel, which in 2022 I will begin to sketch out more of.
Fourthly, my novella, Integration, has been professionally edited by the wonderful Lyta Gold. She did some marvelous work fixing my mistakes and making suggestions on how to improve upon the existing story going forward. It will be another of my projects for 2022 to fix up and shop around. There are a few other short stories I intend to send out to publishers and magazines in 2022, but I will be firmly fixed on my goals for these three projects.
More updates to follow in 2022!
Matthew Stienberg 