It’s winter, at least in the southern hemisphere, which means it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything. I’ll try and get something a little more interesting posted before the end of the month, but for now a quick rundown of what’s going on with my current projects.
The Sandformer is coming along at a slow but steady pace, currently sitting at twenty-four chapters (twenty-five if you count the Prologue). I recently figured out a way to make it slightly shorter, cutting out an entire location, and moving the key events from there to somewhere else, which should also keep the momentum of the story flowing more steadily. Thinking of posting some stuff from it up here too, maybe some of my world building, or a short story set in it.
I also updated the Sandformer page with a better tease of what the story is about, so check that out if you want.
Heat Stroke, on the other hand, is looking miraculously on schedule, so hopefully I’ll be able to finish it soon and then get started on editing other stuff. I’ve also finished an outline for the novella length Stroker, which, in the wider chronology of the Strokerverse, will pick up a few months after the end of Heat Stroke.
And, finally, The Last Echo. I finished the initial edit, only to then realise that it still needs some structural changes, most notably around the end. It has some good lead up, but then slowly comes to a close, lacking that satisfactory climax. There are a couple of smaller issues as well, but the ending is what has halted progress at the moment. Problem is I’ve sort of unwittingly backed myself into a corner where I can’t raise the stakes any further without changing whole sections of the story, or at least so it seems at the moment. But I’m sure I’ll figure out a fix that will work, sooner or later.
But for now that means it’s not finished yet, as I’ve updated my progress bar to reflect.
In other news, I’ve been working a little bit on three different isolated stories that I’ll probably never finish, two of which have gone through three different existences each, over the course of the past year or so. One of them even changed genre at one point. I’ve already abandoned one of them to the dark recesses of my writing folder, probably never to be revived. But who knows, maybe something can be salvaged from the other two and a short story will emerge.
We’ll see.