I swear, this story has been one of the hardest damn things I’ve ever written.
It doesn’t help that it started changing character from being a bog-standard futuristic SF tale to a futuristic SF western. The ending is a very traditional Western ending, in its way.
44k for the words, and the back half of it is completely rewritten and totally different. But a lot of that rewrite needs to be embellished and rewritten and made to coincide with Dahlia and Winter Shadows. It’s not going to be a May release; more likely a September release with the combined volume to include all three stories and an appropriate omnibus title.
And now for something completely different. Methinks I have a novelette that could be dusted off, rewritten, and published. I think that’s what will happen in May.
Netwalk’s Children also needs to be written but, damn it, given the depths of this series, I think it’s time I got away from the Netwalk Sequence writing for a while. Well, there’s the nonfiction project. I think it’s time to work on that. And perhaps there’s some anthology short story stuff in the works I need to think about….
Onward.
But damn am I glad that’s done.
