What I’m Working On
I’ve talked about a lot of things at this point and shared a lot of my perspective on writing, but up until this point I haven’t really talked about what I am currently and actively working on, nor what I hope to do in the future.
I feel like it’s a bit of a waste not to do that. I want you guys to know what you can expect to see from me in the future, and I want to be held accountable for what I say I’m doing. So, I’m going to talk a little bit about current projects and I’ll make a point of doing more of these updates going forward. They won’t be a regular thing. The things I do aren’t really the sort of work that I can give a new update on every week - or even every month necessarily. But I’ll do my best to keep you up to date with what I’m doing.
Stories Across Borders Season Two
If my analytics have told me anything, it’s that a lot of the people who come here do so because they want to listen to SAB. So it seems fitting to lead with this one.
We do not release Stories Across Borders as we record it currently. I like to have a buffer to fall back on if my health issues become a hindrance or if other commitments get in the way of recording for myself, Jon or any other guest I might have on. That’s a big part of why I decided to release the podcast in seasons and not as a continuous thing throughout the year. There’s other reasons too, but that’s the big one.
That being said, new episodes are actively being recorded! There is editing to be done, but two cycles are pretty much ready to go and you can expect to see the first episode of Season Two go up in December. January at the latest if we run into any issues.
As a bit of a sneak peak, the first cycle is going to be focused on time travel stories.
Marble
I’ve mentioned a few times now in various places that I have been working on a spin-off story for Domino. Nothing is completely set in stone, but I’m currently calling this story Marble and it will follow a different group of characters during the Kudin bombing.
I never intended for Domino to become a series, but I think that there’s more stories to tell about the people struggling to survive during the events of the original book and how such a significant and harrowing experience affects them as people.
I’m most of the way through the drafting process now. I originally hoped to have that done - or at least mostly done - in June or July, but life happened and I’ve hit some parts of Marble that have been harder to write than Domino was for the most part. So I’ll hopefully be able to move fully into editing in the earlier months of 2024.
I actually have a third book in mind to wrap up my Kudin stories - at least for a while - too. Obviously, this is very far off. I’m not making any guarantees. But I’d like to explore the life of Altin Cavar (the man who orchestrated and ordered the Kudin attack) and why he ended up where he did as well as the life of he and his family in the immediate aftermath. This is still very hypothetical, and this would look very different to Domino and Marble, but I think it might be good to explore the why more once we’ve seen a lot of the results.
Of course, I have to finish Marble first and I’d like to take a bit of a break to work on some other ideas I want to make stories of first.
Short Stories and Poetry
Naturally, with Stories Across Borders about to make its return, you can expect to see the stories I write for the fourth episode of each cycle in written form as well. That means you should be getting at least one short story posted each month. Well, unless we end up with another Smiling Into the Dark situation where I’m not happy with the final product at all.
That being said, I’m going to make a point of trying to get more stories and poetry out in general in 2024. I obviously need to prioritize Marble and stuff for Stories Across Borders, but I have a lot of other ideas I’d love to share with you. I also have a bunch of old poems and drafts that I’d like to clean up too.
In the future, I’d love to put together a physical anthology of the stories and/or poetry I’ve shared on this site. But, evidently, there’s not quite enough content here yet so I should try to get more out.
Reviews
I recently did a short post about sci-fi stories from a bunch of different mediums that I really like and would recommend to people. After doing that, it occurred to me that it would have been nice to explore my thoughts and feelings on those stories a bit more thoroughly. Although some of them have been (or will be) featured in SAB, which does that job plenty well, the restrictive nature of the themed cycles does prevent me from talking about any cool new book, comic or movie I happen to enjoy.
So, I think I’ll do a few more of those recommendation posts. More importantly though, I’m going to start posting the odd short review for specific stories I want to talk about. Some of these will be new. Some will be old. I hope all will be interesting.
Much like I said with these update posts, I don’t know how regular these will be. It will depend, in part, on how much you guys seem to like them. It will also depend on how much critical reading/viewing I want to commit to. Sometimes, it’s just nice to read a book or watch a show and not have to take down notes or anything. Regardless, expect to see content like this at some point going forwards.
Less Tangible Things
Now we are going to take a step away from the world of projects that are currently ongoing - or related to things I’m already actively working on. I talk a lot about having a lot of ideas, so I thought maybe I’d give you just a tiny hint of some of that. Or, more accurately, talk just a little about the sort of things I’d really like to do in the future.
While I am certainly very invested in Domino, Marble and anything else I might yet do with Kudin/Ionia (or anywhere else in that alternate reality), I did mention that I wanted to take a break from those stories. I’ve been missing writing more fantastical stories of magic, monsters or science gone mad and I’d really like to make the next big thing I write something heavier on the action with a more fantasy or sci-fi setting. I love worldbuilding and crafting magic systems and I haven’t had much of an excuse to really flex those muscles in a while. Although, my signature character drama and horror elements probably won’t go anywhere in those stories either. I actually have a lot of concepts - and even full outlines - sitting around I’d very much like to do something with.
What format those concepts take is another matter entirely. I’m not about to stop writing books, but I’d love to explore other mediums more too. In particular, I’m very interested in webcomics and webserials as mediums. I like the idea of being able to give you guys a consistent stream of story over time rather than forcing you to wait months or years between books when it comes to my longform storytelling. Of course, there’d still have to be a buffer (like with SAB), I’m cautious about that kind of thing.
I’ve dabbled a little with visual storytelling already at this point. I used to release a regular four panel comic called Creative Pursuits over on my Twitter. I’d love to try more complex things with comics. It might be nice to try getting a few more Creative Pursuits out there too now my following is a bit larger. We’ll see about all that though. I know a lot of artists and I’m an artist myself, so it’s not completely beyond the realms of possibility depending on costs, availability and my own progression (I’m not nearly confident enough in my own art to illustrate my own comics right now). Similarly, I originally intended to do a lot more in the world of animation, but animation is expensive and - for the sake of honesty with you - my Youtube stuff has pretty much no views while the things I’ve been doing here have done a lot better. So while I’d like to do some stuff in that field again as well, that’s not very likely anytime soon.
Ultimately, I just want to keep telling stories. As many as I can and as many different kinds as I can. Most likely, that will still primarily be prose. My focus will likely continue to be on my books and the short stories I post here in conjunction with SAB. But I’m going to try to experiment with a lot of other things in the future too. Honestly, this is scarcely the tip of the iceberg for things I’d like to do, but I could write practically an entire extra book about things I want to work on. So I’m going to leave this one here.
