June went fairly well, it seems. I was able to get a new section of Architect of Worlds written and pushed out to my patrons, I also shared a timeline for my Danassos setting as a free release, and I got another book review written.

The usual list of projects is getting a big overhaul this month. The thing is, that section of Architect that I wrote last month is the last section that wasn’t complete in draft. I’m now in a position to meld all of the pieces of Architect together into a combined draft for the complete book. The result won’t be finished by a long shot, of course. I have a lot of work to do before I can start thinking about layout and getting ready for final publication:

• Build the first complete draft for the book out of the separate parts that exist now.
• Polish up the world-design sequence.
• Polish up the “working with real-world astronomical data” section.
• Complete a few minor sections, especially in the “special cases” chapter.
• Add “modeling notes” sections, with references to scientific papers and textbooks, to any portion of the design chapters that doesn’t have them yet.
• Clean up the extended examples.
• Clean up the math throughout the book (rationalize variable names, be consistent about how computations are described, and so on).
• Develop images (diagrams, flowcharts, public-domain astrophotography, alien-worlds images) to fill out the content.

I suspect this is going to take at least a couple of months, and it’s going to be one of those cases where the draft looks terrible for a while before I get it under control. I don’t think this is going to generate any releases for my patrons until I’ve waded through most of the above steps. I’m therefore announcing now that there will almost certainly be no new Architect of Worlds releases to my patrons for at least the month of July, possibly the month of August as well.

Once I get close to having a really clean and complete draft for the entire book, ready to start on layout, I may share that with my patrons as a final charged release before publication. There will almost certainly be enough new material to justify that. We’ll see how things go. I’ve still got my fingers crossed that I might be able to release the first edition of Architect of Worlds by the end of this calendar year!

Meanwhile, regarding my literary projects, I’m switching over to the Danassos project as my top priority for the time being. I’m going to start working, as time permits, on a draft of the novel Twice-Crowned. If I can put down, say, at least 25 kilowords of polished narrative at the beginning of the novel, I may share that with my patrons as a charged release.

My intention is to divide my time between Architect and Twice-Crowned more or less evenly this month, and we’ll see what results I get. Watch this space for updates, as always.

Here’s the planning list, with two items in the “top priority” category:

• Top Priority:
  • Architect of Worlds: Work on preparing a complete draft of the book for eventual layout and publication.
  • Danassos: Begin work on a new draft of the novel Twice-Crowned.
• Second Priority:
  • Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
  • Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
  • Human Destiny: Begin work on a new Aminata Ndoye story, set during her first year at the Interstellar Service academy.
• Back Burner:
  • Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
  • Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
  • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
  • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
  • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine).

Aside from these items, I suspect I may end up doing a little cartography, certainly for Danassos, possibly for Human Destiny as well. I may have a couple of free sketch maps to share with readers and patrons this month.