A new cover, and my next project...



Well, I've just returned from five days away, good and energized to start work once again. Just before I left, I got the cover art for 'Traitor's Duty', and I think you'll agree with me that it is another tour de force; speaking purely from my point of view, the book doesn't quite seem real until I have the cover ready to go. The current plan remains to release the book on May 21st, and it looks very much as if that will go according to schedule, fingers crossed. This will conclude the story that was begun in 'Take and Hold', and as I've said before, tie up quite a few of the dangling plot threads.

Within a few days, I'll be beginning work on 'Fleet Captain', Alamo 13, and already I've managed to give myself a hard time. Chapters Two and Three are set at Pluto, and this book will come out a few weeks after the arrival of New Horizons to that distant world; being a bit of a nut on the Kuiper Belt and all the recently discovered objects out there, I couldn't resist the urge of trying to get the new discoveries that are going to be made into print, but it's going to be tight – flyby takes place only ten days or so before the scheduled launch. Woe betide me if I get anything wrong. Still, something I'm really looking forward to.

So, Alamo 13 comes next – and you'll be happy to know that I have outlines now for books 14, 15, 16 and 17 in the current run, taking me all the way through to March next year. After I finish that book, and I have a very good feeling about it this time – yes, honest – I've got a couple of new projects in mind, one of which I am in a position to talk about now, currently slated for a June release. It's non-fiction – sort of – and is provisionally titled 'Creating the Space Force'.

This is to be a short book, probably around fifteen to twenty thousand words, which will focus solely upon the creation of realistic space navies for science-fiction novels or settings, looking at story potentials, past examples, taking lessons from history, capability requirements, spaceship design. I found the creation of the Triplanetary Fleet a lot of fun back at the start of the series, and I've been looking at the business of it again a little lately; it occurred to me that an interesting book could be made out of it. Look for this one around the end of June.

Then comes the next project. I'd like to talk about it here, but in all truth, I haven't finally made up my mind yet. There are two potentials dancing in my head, and I need to make a final decision by Monday – so I will write my next blog post then, and it will once and for all nail down what my next book – and my other series – will be. For the present, I'll merely say that it is not to be science-fiction...

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