I’ll be making a youtube video about my process in doing this a little later, but for now I’m just looking at the worlds I’ve built out, how the books have grown beyond just their original series, and am quite happy with where things stand on the writing front.
My first book, as most might know, is The Stars Entwined, a little space opera that took me 20 years to get into a publishable form, really the book I cut my teeth on, a book and world in which I’d imagined in my head for so long it’s almost a reality to me.
I’d always intended on The Stars Entwined to build into something greater. It’s loaded with background information about planets and aliens and major personalities, where it might seem like some of them are just throwaway lines, but I’ve got whole stories in my head around each of those incidents, some which will be told, some which I might not get around to just cuz of time.
The first of those is a mention of a Governor Antony Lemkin — in one line of The Stars Entwined — who I’ve taken his story and extrapolated it out into the book Colony Launch. While the two books overlap in timeline, they are completely separate, the characters in different parts of the galaxy. It’s quite a big writing task to keep all the details straight and get this going, but I’ve managed to do it.
Lemkin’s story popped into my head because I see the power-craving of politicians, the high they get from being in the limelight, and I thought “what would a real world politician never do?” And the answer is step down and remove themselves from power over PRINCIPLE.
As I like writing heroes who are heroes, I wanted Lemkin to be just that — the ideal politician, a man of principle and action FIRST and not a man who plays toward a populace to maintain power.
The story grew from there into quite an epic space opera.
I kept Colony Launch in mind while writing The Stars Asunder, which will be The Stars Entwined’s Sequel (50% through my edit pass before it goes to my lovely editor), and so it weaves like a beautiful tapestry into this giant world.
I’m excited to show you the next steps of where this goes, it’s going to be bigger than anything I’ve ever done, and might end up bigger than anything anyone’s ever done by the time I get it all complete. It may take the rest of my life, but I hope you’lll be along for the ride.
Pre-Order Colony Launch here, out April 22nd:
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