So hello there, it’s been a while. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost three years since Reclamation was released. It’s been a long three years, and in the interim I’ve written a few screenplays, as well as done the hard work on finishing up my Cthulhu series, The Stepping Stone Cycle. That series is now in the final stages of editing, with a targeted release of February 2019, and as the work on that has drawn to a close, thoughts of what I’m going to write after that have been rumbling around in my head.
The great thing about my imagination is that it’s always far outstripped my capacity to write down all these ideas, a curse as much as a blessing. Even if I ignored the 3-4 part series that I’ve imagined to bring the Bridge universe to a finale, or the Bridge prequel set in the 2027 Riots that I have in mind, I have at the very least two full fledged novel concepts in mind, not to mention a screenplay or two in me. Picking which idea to turn into a reality is a simple process – either I want to write a new Bridge novel or I want to write something else. Writing new Bridge content is an easy choice, if for no other reason than putting out a new Bridge novel keeps the marketing push on the older novels fresh, which results in more sales. Bridge has always sold better than the Cthulhu stories, so it’s in my best interest financially to keep adding to the series so long as I can come up with a viable story.
That brings us to this announcement. My next project is a Bridge project. In fact, rather than a project I already had in mind for Bridge, this is a completely new idea. While it is a continuation of the Bridge Chronicles series, a sequel of sorts to Reclamation, it’s not the sequel I would have originally had in mind. Structurally, it will be very similar to Reclamation, in that rather than follow Bridge through the entire narrative, it will focus on a new character whose life intersects with everyone’s favorite near-future fixer. I can trace inspiration for this one directly to my rediscovery of Honoré de Balzac’s La Comédie humaine, with a desire to focus on a “regular dude” as opposed to the gaggle of broken, edge of society criminals that makes up the series’ regular cast of characters. Not to say that you won’t see your favorites, but they’ll likely be supporting cast members, similar to Reclamation.
I already have a title in mind and in an attempt to keep my writing fresh, the process of writing this one will be different as well. Part of the reason I believe finishing the Stepping Stone Cycle series has taken so long is that I got comfortable with my mechanical processes and slacked more than I should have. Switching that up might imbue the writing with some freshness, some tension that I might otherwise mitigate in my comfortable schedule. We’ll see, but I’m damned exciting to be writing this one. The ideas are really percolating.
If it all works out, I hope to have this one done quickly, as I’m targeting a September release. I can’t promise that I’ll stick to that date, but I really want to put this one out before the end of 2019. After that, we’ll see what’s next. All I can say for sure if that this one will push the universe in a different direction while maintaining the same wit, cynicism and style of the previous books.
Watch this space for details!