In early 2014, I finished and published The Sorceress and her Lovers.  This book had a lot of set up for an additional volume in the series, so I immediately got to work writing an outline for the next story.  It is the most complete outline that I’ve ever written for a book, with much more detail than I usually include.

I started immediately on the next Astrid Maxxim book: Astrid Maxxim and the Antarctic Expedition.  I got about three quarters of the way done, very quickly, and then ran out of steam a bit.  I struggled to get back into it.  I tinkered with 82 Eridani and The Jungle Girl for a while.  When I went back to Astrid, I found that I had totally goofed around my outline and the book was going to be way too long.  I reordered my chapters and trimmed out a lot of what I didn’t need.  Then I finished it.  Consequently it has one fewer chapter than all the other Astrid Maxxim books.

As I was editing Astrid Maxxim and the Antarctic Expedition, I decided that I would publish a book of poetry.  I have about 1,000 poems I’ve written over the years, so I gathered up those I had already decided were my best and put them in a single volume.  I struggled to come up with a name, eventually deciding on Desperate Poems.  Of course, as an unknown poet, it would have to be a free volume.

Once Astrid was finished, I started on a horror story called Love and the Darkness.  When I finish, its going to be a free story.  I got about 75% done, and is so often the case, ran out of gas.  I’m not overly thrilled with the story, so when I get back to it, it will have to be much revised.

While doing Love and the Darkness, I sat down and wrote a dream sequence for an Astrid Maxxim story.  I didn’t really even have a story in mind, I just wanted to get down this idea.  I was so thrilled with the little bit I wrote, I decided to continue on and wrote Astrid Maxxim and her Hypersonic Space Plane.  I think this may be the quickest book I’ve ever written, but I really like the story.  I contacted Matthew Riggenbach at Shaed Studios to do a cover for the book and went ahead and had him do one for the following in the series too.

About this time, I had a great idea for a robot book.  It wasn’t a Mike and Patience story, but could work in the same universe, so that’s where I set it.  This too was an easy book to write and I finished His Robot Girlfriend: Charity just before the end of the year.