Siobhan Dunmoore Book 2 – Eric Thomson's Starship Stories

Since the publication of The Path of Duty (Siobhan Dunmoore Book 2) earlier this week, I’ve been toying with story ideas for Book 3. I already know how it ends, seeing as how I intend a change in her career trajectory, but I had only vague ideas about how we get there. Seemingly overnight, a story line has emerged in my ever fertile imagination, and I put down the first 4,700 words today. I think I’ll be working on the second Decker’s War book in alternation with the third Dunmoore book over the next few months, as inspiration and ideas grab me, but I think we can’t expect Dunmoore Book 3 until 2016. So far, Book 2 seems to have been well received, if sales are any indication, so that’s encouraging me to get going on the next one.

Enjoy the weekend. Summer’s almost half-way through (or winter for my readers in the southern hemisphere).

The first re-write of The Path of Duty (Siobhan Dunmoore – Book 2) is complete. Now it goes to my editor for the first of several reviews and critiques. Her job, for this first round, is to tell me all about the weaknesses in the storyline, the loose ends, dangling subplots, unbelievable decisions and actions by my main characters, and all those things that need to be sorted before the novel is reviewed for grammar, spelling and typos. At this point, the story comes in at around 111,000 words and while it is self-contained, i.e. no cliffhangers at the end that force the reader to buy book 3, it continues along a broader arc that I started in No Honor in Death.

I’m already almost a third into the first draft of Cold Comfort (Decker’s War – Book 2), and that’s what I’ll be working on while my editor does her magic. I’d be further ahead with Cold Comfort, but I decided to realign the story a week ago and had to go back and essentially rewrite what I’ve written to date. The same thing happened with The Path of Duty several months ago, so I’m not surprised.

With the weather abruptly changing from an annoyingly cold spring to something that feels more like early July, the weeds have sprouted in their teeming masses, and I need to spend more time tending to other things. Combine that with the weekly hike in the woods, and my weekend time available for writing is feeling a sharp drop. I think I’ll be taking a hiatus after publishing The Path of Duty in early July, and since I hadn’t expected to put out Cold Comfort until sometime in the Fall, I’ll give myself time off this Summer to enjoy our brief bout of warmth. Working seven days a week can get tedious and make Eric a cranky boy (see my blog post of May 6 below). That means the as of yet untitled Siobhan Dunmoore – Book 3 won’t be out until 2016. I’ve already got the general concept of the story, and a more precise idea of some of the scenes, but I won’t be fleshing that out until Cold Comfort is undergoing the editorial review process.

I want to wish my mother, my mother-in-law and all mothers out there a happy Mother’s Day.