Wanderer,
Wee update for you: As you recall, you recently got us to our first patron goal, and I’ve drafted a Rucksack Universe story to thank you. That story, called “The Things She Made,” just went to my copy editor and proofreader. The cover is also getting finished up, and I’ll share that with you soon.
Here’s why that patron goal matters: Reaching that first patron goal helps me cover editing costs. That makes it more feasible for me to start releasing more stories as standalone ebooks!
I believe in a thorough editorial and quality control process throughout all my creative work. The same editor who works on my Rucksack Universe novels and novellas will be editing all short stories prior to release. I’m so pumped about this, because that helps keep the series consistent and the quality high and professional.
Throughout 2019, you’ll see more Rucksack Universe short fiction. Patrons will always have exclusive early access to these stories before they go up for sale to the rest of the world.
You’ll see a different side of the Rucksack Universe. All my books so far have been set after The Blast. Something I’ve been playing with in my short fiction is showing us Rucksack and his adventures in a pre-Blast world. After all, the dude’s 10,000 years old, so there was a lot of time before The Blast where Rucksack was heroing it up all over the world. Stories set before The Blast show us a different side of Rucksack—and we’ll see things happening that, as you can guess, have serious ramifications for later stories.
I’m so excited to bring you “The Things She Made.” This story is part of a bigger arc I’m working on with Rucksack and… oh, well, I just won’t say anything else right now. I’ll add only that I knew how I wanted to start this story, but it really took me on some twists and turns with how everything turned out.
Something to leave you with: I’ll be working on the proper story description once I have the manuscript back from my copy editor. I’ll leave you with one thing though (and I suppose the image up top may be a clue to something).
I start every Rucksack Universe book with a Guru Deep quotation from one of his Through the Third Eye guidebooks. Here’s the excerpt that precedes “The Things She Made:”
“It’s hard to believe. Yet there was a time when few knew of the continents separating the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Even harder to believe? In the northwestern USA, in what’s now called Oregon, grew woodlands the size of inland seas. To this day there remain places where no human foot has walked. Not even the boldest seek the mysteries that may be gleaming in the shadows of the forests.” – Guru Deep, Oregon Through the Third Eye
Thank you for your ongoing support, Wanderer. We are heading into a new phase for my fiction and non-fiction. I am so, so glad and grateful that we are sharing this ride together. See you next time!