As you all know (she says), we’ve reached the end of our last serial, Live, Love, Level, and I’ve been dragging my heels about what to do next… mostly because it’s hard for me to write more than one story at a time and if a serial goes on long enough, I’ll inevitably be working on another project. But I had a brainstorm when the Kickstarter got us every stretch goal except the Red Honey novella, which some of you have been waiting for, for decades. That story’s already 5000 words toward an expected 1,5000 (I know, I know) and the Kickstarter has definitively proved that the Jokka still have fans who want more stories.
SO! Our next serial will be Red Honey, the story of how the Jokka moved out of the nomadic age into the age of settlements. Some of you might remember the seeds of that evolution in Kediil’s second adventure, “New Stories.” And Roika and Keshul talked briefly about the first Jokku settlement during Pearl, hinting that there was some drama involved. Well, there is, and some romance as well, and it’s a story that’s been a long time coming. I’m going to gather all the materials I have about it and we’re going to find out what happened together!
This will result in a novella too small for a standalone book (stop looking at me like that), though, so we should probably think about a third Jokka collection eventually. I know none of you are disappointed about that!
For those of you curious about the status of Kherishdar 5, I am nearly 40,000 words into that project and it’s not done. Some of you will perhaps recall that I thought it would be wrapped up in 30-40K, and shook your heads at me, and all right, you were right. It needs more length. It’s going to be a proper novel but, I hope, a short one. I’m not making any more predictions though!
What interests me about the situation I find myself facing, though, is that when I had just started writing Black Blossom, I also took a break to finish a Jokka story—the rest of the Stone Moon trilogy. There’s a meta-conversation, in fact, where one of the characters (Farren? Kor?) told me that it was fine, the Jokka needed resolution more and I should take care of them first. And here I am again, letting Kherishdar 5 sit so I can return to Ke Bakil and finish up another story that’s been hanging, waiting for resolution, for years!
Weird patterns. Maybe it’s as simple as “one very alien setting summons thoughts of another.” Or maybe not. Who can tell…
This week I plan to finish the last of the writing for the Kickstarter volume, which will put that project in administrative-mode rather than creative-mode. So if all goes well we’ll begin the serialization of Red Honey in the first week of July.
I’m not entirely sure how the rest of this year will fall out, publication-wise, but I’m thinking it’ll be: Clays 2, Kherishdar 5, Conversations 3 (that’s the meta-conversations companion to Kherishdar 5), and then possibly Surela 3. We’ll have a four-or-five book year this year, maybe! Let’s see how it goes.
Illo is Kediil, a sketch from when I was first developing her. Seemed appropriate!
