Hello again, everyone!

With vacation winding down, the writing and publishing’s picked back up a fair amount this past month. First off, as promised at the end of last month: My Alternate History short story “Les Mariannes”, set in the timeline of my earlier AH novella Divided Worlds, is up on Kindle as of 7/31! Two days ago, it got some company, in the form of my AH Civil War short work “Hero of Two Worlds” (formerly “World Emancipator”)! Set in a world where Italian revolutionary hero Giuseppe Garibaldi accepted an offer (made in real history) to serve in the Union Army, the story finds him leading a brigade in the Army of the Potomac, just as the Gettysburg Campaign nears its end…an end which may be disastrous, or even more triumphant than in our history, thanks in no small part to his actions. The release of these two stories signals the end to my (self-)publishing for this year (five titles, in all, as planned), though I’ll be continuing off-and-on outline and draft work on the other stories in both collections until officially restarting them in 2025!

In other, somewhat disappointing short story news, my AH work “Toe-to-Toe” ultimately didn’t receive the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. I’m still tremendously pleased and honored to have even gotten noticed for this honor, let alone made it to one of just two finalist slots, and offer all possible congrats to the winner, Rosemary Clare Smith, for her work “Apollo in Retrograde”! (check out her blog or Analog magazine for details on this outstanding story!)

Nor has this stopped the writing elsewhere–far from it. Work on Reckonings, the fourth book in my AH Cross & Flag series, has ended up taking far, far long than anticipated, even with flexible deadlines as the watchword. This is mainly due to “vacationitis” (for lack of a better term), but also thanks to good (or rather bad) old-fashioned “ennui”, making energy and effort hard to maintain even when the story’s set in my mind. This last might be the biggest issue, and may have been the same with past projects: oftentimes I’ve found that if I outline a story enough (as I certainly did here), the actual writing work (esp. with regards to finale sections) seems to lose some of the pull it had when inspiration first struck, and concentration’s harder to maintain. Nonetheless, I’ve maintained it enough with this draft that I’ve reached the penultimate scenes of Reckonings at long last, with a strong chance of finishing before day job work and other Outside World demands begin imposing themselves starting the second week in September. Taking a “No Screens Day” tmrw will no doubt help; writing somehow becomes easier for me, on a certain level, when it’s actually pen(cil) and paper, or at least enough to provide a much-needed boost in the stretches of “ennui”.

Since the draft work is calling insistently again, I’ll sign off here. For anyone needing a new fiction fix, please check out the links above; there’ll also be a sale on my AH anthology In Other Words starting next week, so feel free to grab a copy at the link below if you or a fellow reader you know haven’t already. Enjoy what remains of summer, and see you all next month!