Sharrukin's Palace

Well, September didn’t go according to plan on any level, but I did manage to get a few creative tasks done:

• I produced a new minor update for the main portion of Architect of Worlds, and shared that with my patrons as a free update.
• I finished revising “In the House of War” and published it through Amazon and a number of other outlets. The workflow for that involved the Draft2Digital service, which worked out rather nicely – I think that will be the default for future fiction releases.
• I published a book review.

Reviewing all of the open projects, I think I’m most concerned to get some new fiction written. Second Dawn has been hanging fire at six chapters since the Kindle Vella service went live. Even worse, it’s been over a year now since The Curse of Steel was released, and I’m no closer to having the sequel finished than I was in the spring. Time to start cranking out some chapters for one or both of those!

So here’s the plan for the month of October:

• Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”):
  • Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
  • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
• Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
  • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
  • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
  • Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.
  • Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
  • Krava’s Legend: More research toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow.
• Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
  • Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release. This work may involve updating all of the worked examples, and making mathematical notation more consistent.
  • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
  • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller.

Ideally, I’ll produce at least six chapters each of The Sunlit Lands and Second Dawn, that can be this month’s charged release for my patrons, and I’ll be able to polish and publish the Second Dawn chapters next month. If any of the Architect of Worlds documents or the Human Destiny setting bible make enough progress, those will turn into free updates. As always, I’ll want to complete one or two book reviews for self-published or indie fiction this month.

Watch this space for status reports, and if any of the above interests you, please consider signing up as a patron using the link in the sidebar.