Hi, Guys —
Duck dropped me a line to say that we might want to put up a progress report on exactly what I'm up to project wise.
A lot of what I've been up to lately is called Real Life™, and it's one of the big reasons that I missed last week's snippet posts. There are some other things going on, as well, though including the two short stories that I've done for Rob Hampson's upcoming "Legends" anthology; the treecat short story I've done for the LibertyCon anthology memorializing Tim Bolgeo, a very dear friend who was a great loss to anyone who ever knew him; and a fair amount of heavy-lifting prep work on other projects. Plus, of course, having a pair of eighteen-year-old daughters who are in their senior year which has, by my calculations, increased the school -related "running around like crazy" quotient by about, oh, 250%.
As far as what is on the horizon, some of it has already been reported to you, but other bits haven't, so let me itemize.
(1) Tom Pope and I need to get the current Manticore Ascendant novel back on track; Tim Zahn has been waiting patiently (fortunately he had other things he could do) for us for entirely too long. Part of that is the concussion effect on my part and part of it is Real Life on Tom's part. The ball is back in my court on the tactical portions of the novel, and that is my next project in line.
(2) Jane Lindskold and I have signed contracts with Toni Weisskopff for three more Star Kingdom novels.
(3) Richard fox and I will be doing a prequel series to In Fury Born. It won't deal with the characters from Fury but rather with the creation of the Terran Empire under Terrence Murphy.
(4) Eric Flint and I are working on the next Crown of Slaves novel, which will be set immediately after Uncompromising Honor and follow Victor and Anton (and new recruits Damien and Indiana) as they go hunting for the core of the Alignment onion. At least some of the Solarian Ghost Hunters will also be making an appearance.
(5) Jacob and I are looking at some overhaul of the Valkyrie Protocol after editorial input from Toni, and once that's out of the way, we will be starting work on the next novel in that series.
(6) I am looking at a collaborative sequel to The Apocalypse Troll, and I will be discussing that with my probable collaborator tomorrow afternoon.
(7) In the next week or so I will be doing a short story for Chris Kennedy's Trouble in the Wind anthology.
(8) As soon as I have all of my short stories out the door and have caught up with my part of the collaboration with Tim and Tom, I will be breaking ground on the sequel to Through Fiery Trials, which is my next solo project.
(9) My next solo project for Baen will be the sequel to The Sword of the South, which should follow directly after the next Safehold novel.
(10) And my next solo Honorverse project will be the story of Alfred Harrington's Marine service.
So, as you can see, I'm going to be busy for a while. It's good to be climbing back into the saddle after dealing with this stupid concussion, and I've been pretty satisfied with what I have produced over the last few months. There should have been more of it, but I am finally getting back to where I'd like to be in terms of productivity.
