Plop!

Almost a month since my last post? How'd that happen?

At least I can report that Out of Orbit is underway. I'm not going to lie and say I have an astronomical word count I can brag about, but it's coming along. Really.

It's been quite some time since I've done serious sci-fi and the extensive world-building that goes along with it. (And to be fair, The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions is a sequel, so when I was writing that, I was working within an established universe.) In the beginning of this book, I'm facing the expected challenge: walking the fine line between world-building and info dumping.

It's not easy, and since I'm still in the early stages, I don't even know yet if I've been successful. I'm going with my usual technique of "assume the reader already knows everything and doesn't need to be spoonfed all the information, and it'll eventually make sense". I've got all my notes on the way things work in this world, and they'll come out when necessary. Even so, I'm still stressing about the pacing in the first couple chapters.

I'm confident everything will eventually come together. If I have to cut later on, so be it. I feel strongly about this project, enough that it bumped several other ideas that have been bouncing around for a while down the to-do list. I just need to make sure readers will love the story as much as I do and not get bogged down in all the details.