The Murverse Mothership

Do you measure news by the bushel? I do, now. Here is the news from the harvest. Or something.

I took a good chunk of September off to finish my book, tentatively titled Six Wakes. I left social media, blogging, and did minimal podcasting. And I kinda forgot to announce this. Sorry about that.

But the book, at least draft 1, is done. I’m happy with it. It went some places I didn’t expect, which is always exciting. I know there are some things I need to fix on rewrite, and only hope that my editor and I agree on which areas need fixing. It was a hard slog. I was behind, and had really built up a lot of angst about how to write this book. But when the deadline began to loom, I got to work.

I may do NaNoWriMo this year, but on the other hand, September was my NaNoWriMo. I won’t tell you how many words I wrote, but it was a lot.

I’ve taken some days to recover. There was the mental strain, but also on the last day of writing I did so much that my right shoulder and neck muscles locked up big time. After five days of menthol patches, painkillers, massages, heat, and a massage pillow, I am finally feeling no pain when I sit at a desk. Now that I’m back, I have major work to do for the launch of Mothership Zeta this month, and some other work on some outstanding Bookburners work, and I have to think about the next thing I’m writing.

Well I’ve already thought about that last thing. I want to do a Christmas story, as I haven’t done one in a while. It will be set in the Shambling Guides universe, and have Zoe taking an unexpected trip to London during the holidays. I started it last night.

Other things upcoming for me: this month at Ditch Diggers, Matt and I are interviewing the amazing comic book writer Kelly Sue DeConnick. For ISBW I will be doing the debriefing on my novel. And for the Patreon supporters, I will be doing yet another NaNoWriMo note for every day of November. May be audio. May be video. Who knows? And to get these little nuggets of support, all you have to do is pledge a dollar. Yup. EVERYONE who supports via Patreon will get this special series of audio and video. *

For the rest of the year, I will also be showing the Softer Side of Mur when the holidays come around, as I’ll be reviewing Christmas movies and books. Many of them will be romcoms.** Unsubscribe as you like, haters. I like what I like. There is a place for SF and romantic comedy in my little heart. But I won’t be holding back. I will warn you off the bad ones. And lordy, there are some bad ones.

SPEAKING of Bookburners, episode 5 comes out this week, which starts the second chunk of stories. If you’re not aware of how we divvied it up, four of us split the season into four episodes each, and we’re more or less evenly spaced, having one story in each set of four. (meaning I could have written episodes 4, 8, 10, and 13 instead of, say, 5 6, 7, and 8. I think I wrote those four. Numbers are hard, I just remember plots.) Regardless, my first story, Episode 4: A Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is out now! Here is a peek:

Browsing Asanti’s library by herself was Sal’s new favorite hobby. She had never seen a place like this, though it reminded her most of a moldy old library relatives had shown her in Savannah, Georgia, with humidity-damaged first editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Gone With the Wind and A Christmas Carol.

Her team kept suggesting she should relax between missions. She really didn’t need to be at headquarters sitting around, they said, why didn’t she enjoy Rome when she had the chance? But in a city where she didn’t speak the language and had few—all right, the number was closer to zero—friends, Sal had nothing to do. There was only so long she could read, listen to music, and lie over Skype to friends in America about her life in Rome. At least here in the library she could learn something, or maybe run into a team member and have a real conversation.

That’s it for me. How are you? ***

* No I’m not calling it a podcast. I am an old school angry podcast veteran who knows that podcasts are something (ANY file – video, audio, even PDF) you subscribe to via RSS. There is no RSS feed for this content. It is emailed directly to you, and you will LIKE IT. *shakes cane at clouds*
** I’ve already started reading. Because to review a lot of content, you have to start early. This is brilliant. I have finally found a way to enjoy Xmas stuff early and no one can fault me for it.
*** Yeah, I know I don’t allow comments here. Tell me on Twitter. Or email. Just know I’m thinking fond thoughts about you, OK?