I’m still messing with the plot outline for Starforgers. Discovering new aspects of the story and some of the characters in it as I work out the various story lines. This is a grand old style of Space Opera, with twisting subplots and locations all around known space. When I wrote Starstrikers is was a straight military SF novel. Sure it moved around to various locations and had plenty of action and plot twists, but it focused on the military. There was very little politics, love interests or anything else for that matter. Lots of battles, fighting and explosions.
But with Starforgers, I’m taking a more classical Space Opera approach. First of all, more things are going on. There are four sub-plots and no less than three Point Of View characters. Oh sure, it has military characters in it and plenty of fighting and things blowing up, but there are also politics, pirates and sentient androids all mixed into the chaos that was the start of the Great War. If you have read the anthology of Stellar Ranger stories – Tales From Ocherva, Volume One, you are already familiar with the main character of Starforgers. She’s a hard drinking, hard fighting leader of the Rangers on Ocherva – Devon Ardel.
Believe me when I say that this book will be as much fun to read as it will be to write. I can’t wait to jump into it. But first I have to slug through the final draft of this year’s release – Tyrmia. My goal is to wrap it up in the next two weeks and ship it off to my editor. I may still do one or two short stories before settling in to write Starforgers. The reason being that those short stories are directly related to events that will transpire during the novel.
More updates as they happen.