I think I've finally turned the corner on a series of books I've been working on for almost two years now-- longer than it's taken me to produce anything else. The "Byrd" books-- about a pair of brothers taken hostage by the alien conquerors of Earth and raised by their royal family-- have up to now felt like a job that would never end, but just last night I realized that I ought to be done with the rough draft in a couple months, tops. Since I've already done a number of edits on the two longest books-- I wasn't able to do much else while recovering from a heart attack last summer-- I expect the series may appear on the market possibly as soon as next summer. Yay!

(For what it's worth, I hate it when authors publish the first books of a series and then never finish it, so I insist on having them all complete at least in rough-draft form before anything is released.)

If I've learned anything from writing these books, it's that I'm tougher than I thought. The scope of this series is huge, and more than once I nearly gave up due sheer intimidation and self-doubt. Yet despite multiple family deaths and numerous health problems I've plugged relentlessly away, admittedly slowed but never quite stopped. Thank you to the members of the mailing lists I send my rough drafts to, as always, for your support and patience-- I owe you guys _everything_!

In other news... I still don't have any idea what comes after the Byrd books except that I want to move away from action adventure for a bit. I've always felt that I can write many different kinds of fiction at least decently, not just blaster-and-planet stuff, and even though it's never sold worth a darn I'd like to try cranking out some literary fiction or classical SF or horror or _something_ different. At various times I've written and loved writing all of these. In any event I definitely need a change-up of some sort; time will tell what form it takes.

Let's just hope that it's not the long, long spell of writer's block that I'm a decade or more overdue for...