Today was my first day of full-time work on the next Axis of Time novel. World War 3.1. This thing has been under construction for a couple of years now. I doffs me lid to Jason Lambright and Dirk de Jager for all the narrative scaffolding they've run up, and their long hours in the world building trenches.
Me, I spent the day plotting out character arcs.
At one point I had to go back and read at least half of the final Stalin's Hammer novel, to remind me what capers and hijinks Slim Jim got up to. And that reminded me how much I like spending a bit of quality time inside the mind of Slim Jim Davidson. What an agreeable villain he is.
Anyway, I think I've nailed down the broad outlines of the first book now. I originally thought it was going to cover the first month of the war, but I can see after catching up with everybody on the page that even at 140-150,000 words, I'll be lucky to get through the first week.
But I'm fine with that.
It's a pleasure to revisit old friends. One aspect of it that I really wasn't expecting was the weird way that stepping back into this time travel narrative would allow me to travel away from this, the worst of all possible timelines, for about seven hours today. It was great to leave this world behind and contemplate a 1950s Europe overrun by the Red Army using augmented technology.
There's a free copy of the entire Stalin's Hammer sequence for everyone who signs up over there.
In other scribbling news, I'm also working my way through the last third of The Shattered Skies, looking to send that off to New York sometime in early December. I've had a couple of months away from it while I finished the Zero Day series for Audible and it was just as much fun going back to Hardy, McLennan and the others as it was knocking the top of a cold one with Slim Jim.
Maybe there's something to this nostalgia publishing.
You enjoy being transported away whilst writing - we the readers enjoy being spirited out of our comfy chairs into the worlds and stories you create. Good innit?
You enjoy being transported away whilst writing - we the readers enjoy being spirited out of our comfy chairs into the worlds and stories you create. Good innit?
Do we have any idea when the next Zero Day is due to drop? Jonesin' for a JB fix, man....
JB, I'm very pleased that you're now able to concentrate your writing WW3.1 and also hope we'll get the opportunity to do some proofreading :)
Is there a way to get physical books of the three novellas in the US? Or are they only electronic?
good to see you back, hope to see plenty of gratuitous sex and violence.