As I mentioned previously in my post Looking Backwards, 2015 was a mind-boggling year for me. I released four novels (City in the Sky, Space Carrier Avalon, Hand of Mars and Stellar Fox), made a deal with Tantor Media to release audiobooks of my main-line books (Space Carrier Avalon, Starship’s Mage, and Hand of Mars have all been released as of this blog post), and in general have watched my mostly forsaken dream of being an author explode into reality.
So what’s coming in 2016?
My target is 50,000 words a month, totaling 600,000 words for 2016. Those words include outlines and worldbuilding documents, so you won’t see all of those words. We have some plans that may see some world-building content cleaned up and released as bonus content to the mailing list, but that will be late 2016 if it manifests.
In terms of release schedule, the following are all-but set in stone (though titles are subject to change)
| March 2016: | Voice of Mars (Starship’s Mage 3) |
| June 2016: | Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation 3) |
| September 2016: | Alien Arcana (SM4) |
| December 2016: | Still untitled CF Novel 4 |
Current working title of CF4 is To the Touch, but I don’t like that a lot more than I liked Deep Strike or Shadow Raid (both earlier working titles)
Those four books in my two main series will be written, though names and plots may change as time progresses. Including attached outlines and world-building, though, those books will probably total 400,000 words.
The other 200,000 words I intend to ‘play’ with – and by ‘play’ I mean ‘throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.’ While my two series are both Space Opera, they’re different enough to require different ideas and mind-sets to write, which helps keep my brain fresh. Nonetheless, I’d like to branch out into other genres.
I haven’t completely made up my mind on just what I’m doing yet. I have two Urban Fantasy settings I’d worked on when I was trying to get traditionally published. Either of those could be polished up, have a sequel added, and get me two novels for the price of one… but UF is a hard genre to work in. While the type of UF I like and write is hard to find, the genre itself is over-saturated (mostly with books I can’t tell apart from paranormal romance), so breaking out is hard.
I also have ideas wandering around the back of my mind, with outlines already written, for a western gunslinger style fantasy and a steampunk-esque dark fantasy (the final days of an empire built on golems and magical armor). My brain is also known to regularly ambush me with ideas for urban fantasy stories… and also for further Space Opera stories.
The most I can say at this exact moment is that I will release at least one non-mainline-series book in 2016. Right now, it’s planned to be the The Last Iron Legion (that steampunk dark fantasy) but may end up being urban fantasy or even a stand-alone Space Opera novel. Given that it will probably be June or so before I’ll touch anything that isn’t Starship’s Mage or Castle Federation, I could easily change my mind XD
But there will be two Starship’s Mage and two Castle Federation books in 2016, and I will be releasing a novel in one of those series every three months.
Speaking of which, Stellar Fox came out ten days ago and the Hand of Mars audiobook came out Tuesday. Do you have your copies yet?
Happy reading!
Have enjoyed the two starship Mage books on audio able , great to hear more are in the works, In 2016.
Almost no flaws in the detail world between the book nice job by the reader.
Not to nit pick…I just want to make sure I understand. Book 3 in the mage series is being released March 2016? The list in this og says 2015, which I believe is because we are all used to typing 2015.
*jedi hand wave*
You saw nothing 😉
Really enjoying the Starship’s Mage series. Interesting take on Sci-Wi.