Goals for 2015: Battlecruiser Alamo

As I said yesterday, the plan is to publish Alamo novels on alternate months, with the first to come out in the last week of this month. I’ve been holding to that schedule since Battle of Hercules, so I don’t see any problem in maintaining that. The next five are already pretty clear in my head, so we’re set through to September in any event. That will take the series up to number fifteen...sort of.

That ‘sort of’ is something I have planned in between books twelve and thirteen. Pretty high up on the ‘what I should have done’ stakes when I launched the series was an introductory novella, something to be used almost as a sampler to help new readers get into the series, and so...it’s coming, likely in July in a simultaneous release with Alamo 13. I won’t go into plot specifics, to avoid spoilers, but I will say that it will be around 20,000 words in length, and that I intend to price it at 99 cents.

As for the rest, well, the first of the big things is happening in Ghost Ship, the novel I am working on now, and that is bringing the Spitfire Station and Alamo crews back together again - partly inspired by some of the reviews I’ve had, I’ll say, though it was always in my mind to do. For future books, I intend to vary the POV characters a little more than I have been up to now, in order to suit specific stories; it’s a flexibility that I think I will find valuable.

The current arc with the Cabal will be continuing through books eleven and twelve, currently titled ‘Take and Hold’ and ‘Traitor’s Honor’, at which point Alamo will shift into a new story arc. Again, I won’t give specific details, but that is the reason why I am placing the novella in this spot. If the first four books were ‘Season One’, the next eight ‘Season Two’, then this is ‘Season Three’. My intention with this series is more stand-alone books, though still with an overarching storyline running between them; the current run has already lasted two books longer than I had originally planned - Alamo was meant to get home in Book Eight!

There will, naturally, be changes. Some characters will be cycling out of the series, others that had departed will be coming back in - prizes if you can guess which ones! The idea that a complete command crew would stick together throughout their entire careers is extremely unrealistic, but I’ve got something interesting in mind that will resolve that little problem, and certainly some of the characters will be remaining on Alamo. You’ll have to wait and see for that one!

I know I’ve said this before, but there really will be aliens appearing in Alamo at last shortly; I never had an opportunity to really introduce them up till now, except as name-drops and part of the background, but that is going to change, especially after the current Cabal storyline is completed - not that it will mean the end of the Cabal as a major element in the universe, of course, but...well, you’ll have to wait and see what happens in the next three books, especially those being released in March and May.

Current Release Schedule
January: Ghost Ship
March: Take and Hold
May: Traitor’s Duty
July: Broad Pennant
July Novella: Empty Chair
September: Not In My Name
November: Into the Abyss

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