[I’m currently working on Princess, set several years before The Fall of Doc Future, when Flicker is 16. Links to some of my other work are here. Updates are theoretically biweekly–but not lately.]

An update. I am still working on Princess, but it has been very slow going. There is a certain necessary optimism required for me to write it the way I want, and the ability to concentrate while still leaving my mind open to inspiration is key to being able to write at all. That has been difficult to manage lately for some obvious reasons.

And some less obvious ones.

One of the less conventional heroes of Skybreaker’s Call is Dr. Margie Drozniakiewicz, epidemiologist and the first Chooser brought back to life in Kyrjaheim by Golden Valkyrie. For readers unfamilar with her, the first 7 paragraphs of Chapter 4 are a good introduction. She is who Doc Future, the smartest man in the world, calls when he needs a specialist in forensic epidemiology to evaluate the potential origins of an interstellar war. There are medical professionals dying right now who, were they in the same world as her, would surely join her in Kyrjaheim.

But they aren’t. It’s up to the rest of us to remember them and do better.

I conceived the Xelian Great Plague, and the Xelian society that emerged from it, to be plausible and work for the story. I did not think it likely to be relevant to our world. I used to think that SF writers who had elements of their work reflected in the later world would be happy about what they got right, and maybe that’s true for some of the more optimistic ones.

For disasters and dystopias it’s less pleasant. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately hoping I was wrong, or overly pessimistic rather than optimistic. There were a lot of details on the political and economic events in Xelia that I didn’t put in the story because they weren’t directly relevant–and they were relentlessly depressing.

For a few hints, read the first two scenes in Chapter 20.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep doing my best to write, and I hope to bring you something more upbeat before too long.

Take care, everyone, and thank you for reading.