Another one in the can. Flight Blade is done. It’s now fermenting and awaiting the first round of revisions.
I managed to reconcile the overlap with Storming Amargosa, which sticks primarily with the so-called “meddling kids” (JT, Davra, and Eric Yuwono, along with another character revealed to have been missing during Second Wave.) I took a scene that hits a rather obvious plot point and rewrote it from my two main characters’ (Modesto and Mitsuko) POV, added some segments that don’t involve JT or have him in a supporting role, and made what is more a suspense-building sequence in Storming an end unto itself. Spoiler?
Not really. By the end of Flight Blade, it becomes obvious that the characters will end up there in Storming. The latter book will show what happened to them in the intervening scenes not in Flight Blade.
I’ve noticed I do that a lot. No Marigolds (the serial), The Roots of War, and The Marilynists all overlap, as does The Children of Amargosa and Tishla. One of these days, I’m going to have to make a timeline chart just to keep readers straight.
But for now, the last full novella is in the can. It actually made novel-length by reaching 41,500 words, though there will be cuts. That’s what revisions do.
The final Compact Universe novella (for now) is already under way. A serial designed to bridge Second Wave and Storming Amargosa, I plan to avoid the trap I got into writing Marigolds on the fly and do a chapter a day in 14 days. I got one day in before a family emergency interrupted. All is well now, but it was a bit jarring. Once this is done, it’s time for Jim Winter work as I do the follow up to Holland Bay (retrenching and heading back out with its proper byline.)
But it won’t be the end of the Compact Universe. Clayborn Press will resume releasing the existing books in April with a (much-needed) clean-up of Broken Skies. Also, after I do a new Nick Kepler novel (as Jim Winter), I plan to go all the way back to the beginning of the Compact, when a hapless probe wrangler in the Kuiper Belt accidentally discovers Jefivah.
But for now, the end is night. It’s all rewrites and revisions for the current batch of stories from here out.