Back in early March, I switched gears away from the sequel to Hero of the Republic to work on a more humble concept. Across the Blue Line was getting bogged down and I felt I needed time away from the project. After all, the last thing I want to do is churn out a poor sequel, especially when I’ve worked so hard to set the stage for what should be pretty epic.

So, I started writing a smaller scale novel with new characters that still took place in the TCOTU setting. To my surprise, the humble story took off and flourished. Today, I have actually finished the rough draft to the novel I am tentatively calling Confidence Game. I’ve only just come up with that title this week, but as I edit I’ll see if something else jumps out at me.

Confidence Game has been everything that Across the Blue Line wasn’t from a writing perspective. The story just flowed, the characters fit almost too perfectly and everything just ran like a machine. I’m very excited about the story and I think readers of the TCOTU series will enjoy it (and even get a little piece of closure left over from the original series).

The story right now is 105,000 words, which should translate into roughly 330 pages or so. It’s in the sweet spot for my novels. Not too long, not too short. The setting is the Coreward Corporate Zone, the area of space between the Solarian Federation and the Brevic Republic. The time frame is a few years before the ending of Hero of the Republic but well after the Brevic-Hollaran conflict.

The process now switches to relentless editing. I’ll make the first pass starting next week, then hand it off to my primary editor. We’ll work together after that point and then hand the beta copy over to my beta readers. A month after that, it will go through a few more editing passes and then be published.

Confidence Game will be available on Kindle, Nook, iBooks, etc. by late August or early September. Check back here for some sneak peeks into the story and updates on how the editing process is going. See you next time!