Month: April 2025

The state of play (what’s up with this ‘new’ project?)

/ T W Iain / Leave a comment

It’s time to take stock. I’ve been working on this new project for a while. Before continuing it feels right to take a moment and see how things stand.

First, this is taking far longer than I anticipated. I started writing seriously back in 2015, and since then I’ve published nineteen novels and various shorts and novellas. That equates to roughly two novels a year‌—‌not fast by some standards, but not too shoddy. But the last book I released was the final ShadowTech novel, back in June last year. This will mean over a year with no new book released. It might even be longer until the first book in my Unity series appears.

There are reasons for this. It’s long. At the moment it stands at over 200,000 words, twice as long as anything else I’ve written. It’s also the most complicated story I’ve worked on. The first book has three separate arcs, in effect three short novels. These arcs have some connections, but won’t intertwine fully until later in the series‌—‌yet I’ve got to write them in such a way that they don’t feel separate.

I’m not making things easy for myself.

And the first draft was a mess.

I’ve been editing. I’ve worked on two of those story-arcs so far, wrangling them both into stories that work. I’ve strengthened connections between them. I’ve deepened character development. I’m pleased with them now.

Although they still need work. And the third story-arc pretty much needs a complete re-write to connect it properly with the other two, as well as to set up the rest of the series.

Problems, problems.

But this is why I started that side-story, right? The side-story that is the start of another series (Chronicles Of Seraph). Because why write a single series when I can work on two at the same time?

Yes, I’m an idiot.

But there’s method in the madness. The Chronicles Of Seraph books are going to be far more straightforward, containing only a single narrative. They’re going to be my palate-cleansers, stories I can work on when I need a decent break from Unity.

I have a first draft of the first Chronicles Of Seraph book completed. No title yet, but I’m thinking of it as Kane’s Tale (because it focuses on a character called Kane, in case you’re reading this before the coffee kicks in). I’m currently diving into the first major edit of this story. I already know some sections need tightening, even cutting. There’s at least one superfluous character who will be delegated to the Trash folder in the Scrivener file (and I’ve only just realised I could rename this‌—‌‘recycle folder’, or ‘scraps’ maybe). There’s another character that needs to be more prominent in the first half of the book. And I’m sure there are many other issues with the first draft.

But working on this edit feels fun. The book isn’t as serious (I don’t mean it’s a comedy, just that it isn’t as intensive as the Unity book), so the work feels lighter. And I anticipate finishing this edit fairly fast. Then, I’ll deal with the last story-arc in Unity. And that’s the one that needs a total re-write.

And all this makes me think I should alter my release schedule expectations.

Originally, I’d planned on releasing Unity Book 1 and Kane’s Tale at roughly the same time, then repeating this with the second book in each series. But the two series are different beasts. Chronicles Of Seraph will very much be individual stories. Yes, each book will build on the previous (I’ll be introducing the eventual crew of Seraph one character at a time, so they each get a book to show their stuff), but each one will be a complete story. It won’t be vital that they’re read in order.

But Unity will effectively be a single story (combined of different story-arcs slowly being twisted together) over multiple books. I have plans, tentatively for either nine or twelve, but I’m dividing this into sub-stories. The first will probably be a trilogy. While each story-arc in each book will come to some kind of conclusion (hopefully satisfying), the overall story (or sub-story) will run over that trilogy.

I don’t want to leave readers waiting too long between each Unity book. Ideally, I want to release the first group of Unity books (the first sub-story, that potential trilogy) over a relatively tight time-frame. This will not only make it easier for readers to keep track of the story, but will also make it easier for me to ensure consistency across the books. I’ll be able to easier spot story arcs heading in the wrong direction. When I have plot twists in later books, I’ll be able to make sure everything’s seeded properly in earlier books.

In short, I’ll be working on the first block of Unity books pretty much at the same time.

And, if the coffee’s kicked in now, you can see where this is going.

A new release plan. I won’t bring out any of the Unity books until I have the full sub-story (the first three or so books) written and edited to a stage where I’m happy with the story (where I only have ‘cosmetic’ editing to go). I can’t see that happening until next year at least.

But I still want to put something out into the world. I don’t want to leave people hanging too long. This is where Chronicles Of Seraph comes in. I’ll release the first book when it’s ready (which should be before the end of the year‌—‌I already have my cover designer booked). Then I’ll work on the second book, which is going to be Reba’s Tale (working title, and no prizes for guessing which character this one’s going to focus on). And so on. While carefully moulding those first few Unity books. I imagine I’ll have three or four Seraph books out before I release Unity.

tl:dr version: Current project’s taking longer than I anticipated. Expect a Chronicles Of Seraph book out before the end of the year, probably a couple of others in that series. Unity series won’t come out until next year at the earliest, but I’ll publish the first few books close together.

Does that make sense? I hope it’s not too confusing.

Oh, and to add to my work-load, as I work on Unity and Chronicles Of Seraph, I’m also tying up a few loose ends with older projects. I recently published ShadowTech: The Complete Series (all seven novels in one ebook). And I’m also going to be running a Kickstarter campaign in June for a collection of the short stories and novellas in my Dominions series. This’ll be called Tales Of Dominions, and will be the first time these stories have been available in paperback. I’m also doing a special edition hard-cover.

If that sounds interesting, I have a pre-launch page set up, where you can click to be notified when the campaign goes live. The pre-launch page can be found at kickstarter.com/projects/twiain/tales-of-dominions. I’ll also send out a link to a page explaining what Kickstarter is and how it works, for anyone unfamiliar with it.

And now, I have editing to do. Until next time…

This post is the latest in a series I’m running on Substack, chronicling my work on this new project. If you’d like to read these posts as they appear, please consider subscribing for free.

Learning what I dont like through reading

/ T W Iain / Leave a comment

I recently read Neal Asher’s World Walkers. I’ve read a few of Asher’s books before, and remember enjoying them, but World Walkers left me cold.

I’m not saying it’s a bad book. It simply wasn’t for me.

As I often do after finishing a book, I took a look at reviews, and it’s received quite a mix of opinions. It seems I’m not alone in being disappointed by World Walkers.

But, as a writer, I can still learn from this book. So I started analysing why it didn’t gel with me.

The first major problem was that I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters. One reason for this could’ve been the number of characters introduced in the early chapters, with each one following their own story arc, with only vague links to others. I trusted that these different threads would weave together as the book progressed, but it still felt disjointed. I didn’t have enough time with each character to get to know them.

This is relevant to the writing of my Unity series, as I’m juggling separate story-arcs that will only pull together in sequels. So I have to figure out how I can help readers care about my characters.

I tend to write fairly short chapters, usually between one and two thousand words (roughly five to ten pages). Initially, I thought it would make sense to rotate story arcs‌—‌have one chapter from arc A, the next from arc B, the one after from arc C, and so on. But that’s too much jumping about. I don’t see it working.
But I’ve come up with a different structure. I intend to bunch story-arc chapters together, so we’ll spend longer with each point-of-view character before moving to the next. In effect, these groups-of-chapters will work as semi-self-contained short stories (although the endings will be very open‌—‌not necessarily cliff-hangers, but if I close any loops I’ll be sure to open others in preparation for that character’s next group of chapters). It looks like these sections will be between 12,000 and 20,000 words‌—‌technically novelette length.

Hopefully, this will help readers engage with the characters without feeling thrown about.

The next problem I had with World Walkers was an aspect of the writing.

The main recurring character in the early chapters is referred to as the Fenris. This Fenris needs to solve all kinds of problems, and these are explained in some detail.

Problems are vital to most stories. Literary fiction might be able to survive without a character having any difficulties, but in the vast majority of stories we need characters to face challenges. We want our characters to struggle with problems both internal and external.

And these problems have to have stakes. Failing to overcome a problem should leave the character in a bad place. We want the hero to win because failure would hurt.

In World Walkers, this wasn’t the case. At least, not initially. Towards the end the stakes increased for the Fenris, but at the start the problems seemed impersonal. Reading the Fenris solving these problems felt like watching someone solve mathematical equations or brain-teasing puzzles‌—‌interesting to a degree, but not particularly engaging. It felt like extended world-building rather than a story.

Which some readers love. I’ll re-emphasise that these are problems I had with the book, and to others, such as hard sci-fi fans, the world-building problem-solving might be what they read for.

And these readers aren’t who I’m writing for. I want my characters to be engaging in a more personal way, so their challenges have to be more emotional than intellectual or physical. In fact, I’ve used character arcs (the growth or otherwise of characters) as the basis for my planning. While the overarching story concerns alien signals, I’m focusing how way this affects my characters, and telling the larger story through their struggles.

This isn’t the case with World Walkers. Like a lot of great sci-fi, it’s a book with big ideas. But it feels like, for Asher, these ideas are the driving force. While there are moments where characters struggle to do the right thing rather than what feels best, most of the time it feels as if the characters are avatars enabling the reader to see these big ideas.

Which isn’t what I want in Unity. Readers who love World Walkers probably won’t enjoy my book (once it’s finished).

And I’m fine with that. I have to write the book that suits my style, that suits the way I see story. I’m trying to write the kind of book I’d enjoy reading. And that means I need to remain focused on my characters — on the interplay between their external and internal struggles, and on the way their personalities influence their decisions.

Yes, I’m looking to have some big ideas in this series. But I want to show these ideas through the characters‌—‌through their actions and thoughts, but especially through their struggles.

And after all that, will I read more of Asher’s books? Yes. I get the impression he pushed himself to try something different with World Walkers, and I’d rather a writer do that than stick to what feels safe. I’ll most likely read his next book if only to see what he does next.

Was it a waste of my time reading World Walkers? Definitely not. While I didn’t necessarily enjoy the book, it was interesting. And what it taught me (and reinforced) about my own reading and writing has been very useful indeed.

Finally, would I recommend World Walkers? That depends on what you look for in sci-fi. If you like character-driven stories that are emotionally engaging, this might not be the book for you. But if you want big ideas, and don’t mind a more impersonal, less character-focused style, then you’re likely to get a lot out of Asher’s book.

This post is the latest in a series I’m running on Substack, chronicling my work on this new project. If you’d like to read these posts as they appear, please consider subscribing for free.