My ebook goals for the next year

In May of 2017, I put up a post about My ebook goals for the next year.  The idea was to let people know what I was working on, and to be a reminder for me to actually get to work on them.  So I wouldn’t forget about them, I put a link to it on my webpage.

My hope was to get three ebooks out in a year.  But thanks to life be complicated, I didn’t get any done.  I recently put out the first on my list, “Seventh Story Stockpile,” but it was about … seven months later than I had planned. 

The second ebook on last year’s list is “Travels Beyond Imagination,” and I have a hard deadline for that.  It contains stories set on the moon, and next July will be the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, which is kind of an ideal point to have such an ebook out.  My plan is to have a rough draft of it done by the end of this year.  The main reason is that if I don’t have it by then, then I’ll really have to get my ass in gear to finish it in time.

The last ebook from my list last year was Book I of my Pathfinder Saga, “Scars of the Blood Fire Valley.” I’m putting that on hold, for a bit.  I have a rough draft of it done, but it needs a lot of revising.  Especially since the original version was a standalone fantasy story which I didn’t decide to make a part of a series until I was pretty much done with it.  So there’s a lot that I need to rejigger.  I’m about a third of the way through Book II, “What is Found in the Wilderness,” and my current plan is that once I have them both done, I’ll put out “Scars” and then a month later put out “Wilderness.” Hopefully, there will be some excitement to get me working on Book III, “First Steps.”

The only new ebook I’m adding to this year’s list is a so far untitled collection of scifi stories.  I have a few stories I’ve submitted to a couple of places, but none have taken them.  I also have a bunch of stories I’ve self-published that have been pretty well lost on the internet.  It’s probably something I could whip together in a month or so, but I’m going to leave it on a back burner to focus on “Travels.” So depending on how quickly I get “Travels” done, we’ll see when I get around to this project. 

Stay tuned to see how I do.

Grab two ebooks for free!

This Friday marks the 49th anniversary of when humans first landed on the moon.  As someone who supports lunar exploration (last year I announced my Stephen L. Thompson Lunar Exploration Prize) I wanted to do something to mark the occasion.  Therefore, from now through Saturday, you will be able to grab my two books dealing with the moon for free.

Hopefully, in the not too distant future humans will return to the moon. We will build bases and colonies, make farms and factories, and live, love and learn. “A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories” contains five of my short stories that are all set upon the moon. They give the tiniest glimpse of the possibilities awaiting us there.

Over the last few years a lot of people have caught Mars fever. It seems a week doesn’t go by without a report of some new group wanting to send people to Mars, or some big name in the industry talking about why we have to go to Mars, or articles talking about the glorious future humanity will have on Mars. All of this worries me. In my opinion, a Mars base is currently not sustainable because there’s no way for it to make money. A few missions may fly doing extraordinary science, but if it’s then cancelled for cost the whole Mars Project may just be seen as an expensive stunt.

Fortunately, there are other places in the solar system besides Mars. While bases on the moon and amongst the asteroids won’t be as inspirational as one on Mars, they will have opportunities for businesses to make goods and services as well as profits, meaning less chance of them being outright cancelled. This will make life better on Earth and secure a firm foothold in space for humanity. The essays in “The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars” allow me to describe my ideas on what can be accomplished on the moon and with the asteroids, and why Mars isn’t the destiny of humanity its cheerleaders make it out to be.