Tip of the Spear is Finished!

Well, yesterday, at around 1630 GMT, I wrote the last word in the first draft of 'Tip of the Spear'...and I'm absolutely exhausted. I feel like all of my strings have been cut. This has been in some ways the most difficult of the four Alamo books to write; the three-month gap in between books didn't help, and this was the most pre-scripted of the four – in that it was hitting certain beats I already knew, and building more heavily on a previous book than the others have done. I expect the next one to be somewhat easier – I have an idea where that one is going, but I'm exploring unknown country again. Which should be nice; that's always more fun in many ways, and I get to play with the star charts again.

This one naturally had to focus on cleaning up at least some of the mess made in 'Victory or Death'; something that always infuriates me is when a world gets turned upside down and the starship – funnily enough, often named Enterprise – simply blasts off into warp leaving someone else to clean up their problems. TOS was littered with examples of this. I wanted to show the consequences of actions here – so in the third book, Alamo (some spoilers here) starts a planetary revolution as the result of rescuing their crewmen, and they then have the responsibility to follow up.

Now the scope of this was too big for just a single book; the first book in the forthcoming 'Espatiers' series will look into this as well – it might be a good idea to look at that, in some respects, as the third book of the 'Jefferson trilogy', though it will naturally stand alone, and feature a new cast of characters. I think 'Tip of the Spear' closes enough loose ends to be satisfactory, though that in itself was also a fun challenge – come up with a big ending that still left room for a sequel. First reports from the author suggest that this is so...

As for what comes next, well, I have some editing to do of this book and another, and then the release, probably in a week to ten days. I've got the cover already, of course, so that makes things a tad easier. Following that, well, it's a bit of a toss of a coin at the moment. I've invested some of my royalties in expanding my research shelf – that Saxon fiction is certainly very tempting, but probably next off the block is a revamp of an old book of mine that I was rather fond of, called 'One False Step'. After? Two possibilities, and I haven't 100% decided yet. I've been wanting to do another space history for a while, and there are some thoughts in my mind on that one – though writing the next Alamo is increasingly tempting. (Battle of Hercules; I already have the cover for that one as well.)

Naturally – I will keep you informed...