While my editor is pushing through with Hard Strike (Decker’s War Book 7), I’ve been writing Ashes of Empire: Imperial Twilight and this afternoon, I hit a point where to continue, I needed a schematic map of the wormhole network connecting Lyonesse to the wider Coalsack Sector so I didn’t trip all over the story.  If you’ve read Ashes of Empire: Imperial Sunset, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  If you haven’t, why not?

Thus, today, instead of writing, I designed.  MS Powerpoint might not be the first tool one thinks of for producing a network schematic, but it did the trick.  I deliberately stuck to making it a partial map of the Coalsack Sector, because a full map would be overwhelming – both for me and you.  All the important star systems and the links between them are there.  If you’d like to see what it looks like, I uploaded a pdf version – just click on the link:

Wormhole Network – Coalsack Sector (Partial)

I’ll probably include it in Imperial Twilight as an appendix, but since my books aren’t printed in color, I’ll need to revise the scheme just a little so it’s easy to differentiate the five types of star systems in black and white.

As for when Hard Strike will come out, that still depends on my editor.  But it’ll be by the end of this month.  All of the administrative niceties are geared up. I just need to finalize the manuscript.