It has been almost two years since my last update here, one that was about how well everything else in my life has been going and how that was taking away the time I once spent on this project. That has continued to be true, but as part of that, my time management has improved dramatically and I’ve decided to take a significant amount of time to get back to writing fiction. Some of that will be meaningful here, some of it will be on other projects. But I thought it was a good idea to make an update and tell you the plan for this project in the near future.
As I’ve been writing more, the first project, the most grabby project, has been finishing Hera of Lexington because that was so close to done and it has felt like it was hanging over me ever since I stopped. And that has been going well; I’ve written a little over ten thousand words on it. Chapter nine is drafted, chapter ten looks to be about half drafted and I know everything that needs to happen in it. And chapter ten is the last one in the book. So I feel like I can say that those will be coming soon. Nine still needs a copy edit and formatting, but it’s close to ready. I’m not sure if that will be next week but it will be soon. Once it’s done here, Hera will be published in ebook and paperback formats.
Once that is done I’ll be looking at a website format update, because it isn’t likely I’ll be returning to weekly publication here anytime soon; it’s definitely planned not to in 2026. I’m going to move this to something of a more standard author page setup; the existing stories/chapters will still be available but the design will no longer be centered around continued publication.
However, the next writing project will also be an Anta Baku-based project: a novella sequel immediately following The Cell Phone Towers of Elfland, where Beth visits Pol in Grand Marais and all sorts of interesting things happen. That will also be published in ebook and paperback, but not on the website.
After that, Anta Baku is going to take another break for the rest of 2026, as I work on finishing three partially-complete manuscripts that are going to have different publishing approaches. If writing them goes well, it’s likely that the first 2027 project will return here for the direct sequel to The Cell Phone Towers of Elfland, which is almost certainly going to be called The Twelve Labors of Ian, and be split about evenly between Ian and Beth’s points of view, in a season format much like the first one.
I have a lot more stories in that universe that I want to write, but after that book Ian is going to fade out of the spotlight a bit and it’s going to focus more on Beth. I also have a seven-book outline for Hera of Lexington that I don’t know if I want to write or not; I’m excited by some of the concepts but whether it ends up breaking into the limited time I have to write things is still very uncertain.
I don’t plan on doing anything else with Forty Days in an Elvish Prison; my feeling about that book at this point is that I did a lot of the things I wanted to with it, but in the process I forgot to make it likable. So at least for the moment, that one’s going to be left to sit. I pondered making a physical book out of it but even that seems like more work than it deserves right now. I’m just glad to be beyond the existential crisis of having written a book that nobody likes, including myself, and working on other things again.