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| Photo by A. F. Litt |
For the last few years, I've been so buried in other projects that I really haven't had the time to keep up on this blog much.
As some of these projects start coming to fruition, though, it's time to re-up my blogging game. Jason Roberts and I, a collaborator on several books recently released, with more coming in the fall, recently declared the rest of the summer to be "Heavy Content Summer" for both of us, so here I go!
hot girl summer is over it's time for the fall of society
— maura quint (@behindyourback) August 7, 2021
For this first update in far too long, I'd like to share my new project on Kindle Vella. This is a new service by Amazon that works around the episodic posting of chapters of longer works.
For me, this project is mostly about playing around with the new service and getting to know it. Also, it is kind of fun! I'll be writing it in "real time," one or two chapters at a time before it goes live, a way to get a book out in bite-sized chunks for me, with at least one new episode a week coming out from now until it is done. While I am not currently lacking for writing or editing work, this side-project does accomplish something very important for me, it's getting a story set in the world that I've been building for years and decades out into the public.
It is a prequel to both The Properties of Dust novel from NaNoWriMo 2019 and to Against the Dying of the Light from NaNoWriMo 2012! Now, this probably begs an important question, why start a completely new novel when you have a rough draft of Dust and 3/4 of a draft of Against already in the can!?! 2012, dude! That one's been sitting around for almost a full decade?
There are many complex answers to those questions, one of them being, in fact, dude, that one has been sitting around for almost a full decade! And I haven't read it front to back, well, ever! While Properties is newer, in a sense, and already more of a third or fourth draft as opposed to Against, being the third incarnation of a novel that I've been working on in one form or another since the 1990s, it also suffers from having just a bit too much time collecting on it's dusty pages.
The lead time on getting either of those projects back up and running was too much for the nature of the project I was looking to start with Vella. Those are both very complex novels that will take a lot of work to start up and to complete. For this first story on Vella, I was looking for something I could crank into quickly that was a bit less complex, though still fun to read.
Also, this is a completely new service from Amazon that I am completely unfamiliar with, as it is for everyone else reading and writing there right now. I wanted to hedge my bet with a more, um, disposable novel before getting locked in there with other manuscripts that I've been working on for years and years.
If this experiment goes well, perhaps the first drafts of those next books in this series will debut on Vella. Or not. We'll see how things go.
Finally, and this was the biggest motivation for me on starting a new story instead of picking up one of the old ones... I am not sure if you noticed, but the over the years since 2019 and, wow, since 2012, a lot has happened in the world.
Against the Dying of the Light was set about 50 to 75 years out from 2012's future, as best as I could predict for my fictional purposes then. It was set after a soft-apocalypse in a community making some decisions that would decide whether it survived and rebuild or collapse further into darkness.
The Properties of Dust was set about 30 years from 2019's future in an increasingly dystopian America, just before the events that eventually kicked the U.S., at least, over the brink into the world we see in Against.
Also, this is a completely new service from Amazon that I am completely unfamiliar with, as it is for everyone else reading and writing there right now. I wanted to hedge my bet with a more, um, disposable novel before getting locked in there with other manuscripts that I've been working on for years and years.
If this experiment goes well, perhaps the first drafts of those next books in this series will debut on Vella. Or not. We'll see how things go.
Finally, and this was the biggest motivation for me on starting a new story instead of picking up one of the old ones... I am not sure if you noticed, but the over the years since 2019 and, wow, since 2012, a lot has happened in the world.
Against the Dying of the Light was set about 50 to 75 years out from 2012's future, as best as I could predict for my fictional purposes then. It was set after a soft-apocalypse in a community making some decisions that would decide whether it survived and rebuild or collapse further into darkness.
The Properties of Dust was set about 30 years from 2019's future in an increasingly dystopian America, just before the events that eventually kicked the U.S., at least, over the brink into the world we see in Against.
While it's only been a little less than two years since my last go at the Dust manuscript, what a two years it has been!
More than anything, for me, A Low Fire in the Night is a chance for me to reset this series in a world based on where we are now in 2021 without having to rework a lot of elements in those other manuscripts, then having to deal with all the continuity issues that would be brought up by those revisions. To put it bluntly, those houses were pretty solid, but their foundations were destroyed by the events of the last few years. Sometimes it is better just to start with a completely new house.
Those books are still on my "production calendar" for a little further down the line. Before then, I also have another novel I've been working on, my main project right now, in fact, that should be meeting the world this autumn, set in Jason Robert's Dead Wind universe, then there are two projects I'm editing for Jason that are his "break" projects before his third book in the main Dead Wind trilogy, and after all that, of course, there will be third Dead Wind trilogy novel, which will be as massive of a project as The Yellow Painted Man and Tres Castillos, starting up for both of us, for me as story editor, this winter after our "break" projects are finished up.
More than anything, for me, A Low Fire in the Night is a chance for me to reset this series in a world based on where we are now in 2021 without having to rework a lot of elements in those other manuscripts, then having to deal with all the continuity issues that would be brought up by those revisions. To put it bluntly, those houses were pretty solid, but their foundations were destroyed by the events of the last few years. Sometimes it is better just to start with a completely new house.
Those books are still on my "production calendar" for a little further down the line. Before then, I also have another novel I've been working on, my main project right now, in fact, that should be meeting the world this autumn, set in Jason Robert's Dead Wind universe, then there are two projects I'm editing for Jason that are his "break" projects before his third book in the main Dead Wind trilogy, and after all that, of course, there will be third Dead Wind trilogy novel, which will be as massive of a project as The Yellow Painted Man and Tres Castillos, starting up for both of us, for me as story editor, this winter after our "break" projects are finished up.
Aside from all of that, there's over a year's worth of updates due on the Recreating the Columbia River Highway website that need to be done. A lot of folks have been doing some amazing research on that subject while I've been off editing and writing fiction, and I very likely will be sneaking out a book relating to that content sometime next spring (big knock on wood, there, and not the big book that those folks have been waiting for, not quite just yet). Early drafts of that may be another Vella project or something I manage through Patreon.
So there is a lot of very exciting stuff in the works, and a lot of exciting stuff has happened since the last real post on this blog.
Stay tuned!
A big part of Jason and I's agenda for the next couple months is closing out the season with that "Heavy Content Summer" theme, and I've got a couple new posts in mind for here that will be much more interesting than this sort of self-indulgent naval gazing, but actually exploring some interesting stories and what not from history and this strange world we live in!
Finishing up for today, if this is your first time visiting Rubble, while I do stick this sort of project update post in here from time to time, this blog is really devoted to actual content, a smorgasbord, really, from weird dives into old sci-fi and some creative writing, to my 2016-2017 National Parks Project (also coming back soon in a revamped form, focusing more generally on public lands) and just all sorts of history and exploration of interesting stuff locally in the Northwest and around the country. It's called Rubble for a reason!
Click on some of those links or tags over on the right (if you're on a computer, at least) and dive in!
So there is a lot of very exciting stuff in the works, and a lot of exciting stuff has happened since the last real post on this blog.
Stay tuned!
A big part of Jason and I's agenda for the next couple months is closing out the season with that "Heavy Content Summer" theme, and I've got a couple new posts in mind for here that will be much more interesting than this sort of self-indulgent naval gazing, but actually exploring some interesting stories and what not from history and this strange world we live in!
Finishing up for today, if this is your first time visiting Rubble, while I do stick this sort of project update post in here from time to time, this blog is really devoted to actual content, a smorgasbord, really, from weird dives into old sci-fi and some creative writing, to my 2016-2017 National Parks Project (also coming back soon in a revamped form, focusing more generally on public lands) and just all sorts of history and exploration of interesting stuff locally in the Northwest and around the country. It's called Rubble for a reason!
Click on some of those links or tags over on the right (if you're on a computer, at least) and dive in!
Links
A Low Fire In the Night: https://amzn.to/3Aj0k2g
The Dead Wind Series by Jason Roberts (edited by A. F. Litt):
Wolpertinger:
https://jasonrobertsonline.com/the-wolpertinger (Free to read online)
The Yellow Painted Man (2nd Edition):
https://amzn.to/3670o8v (Kindle, Audio Book)
https://amzn.to/3weUywr (Hardcover, Paperback)
Tres Castillos:
https://amzn.to/3hb9vLu (Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback)
Wolpertinger:
https://jasonrobertsonline.com/the-wolpertinger (Free to read online)
The Yellow Painted Man (2nd Edition):
https://amzn.to/3670o8v (Kindle, Audio Book)
https://amzn.to/3weUywr (Hardcover, Paperback)
Tres Castillos:
https://amzn.to/3hb9vLu (Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback)
