Emerald City Comic Con After-Action Report

TL;DR: it was awesome!

First off, the venue is just lovely. The con takes place across 2 convention centers, but the Writers' Block is in Summit, which is a new building, and it shows. The floor is carpeted and the ceiling is high with tons of skylights; even when it's cloudy (hello, Seattle....), the space is bright with natural light.

I'm a big fan of the "Writers' Block" setup, where all (or most) of the author tables are together in one place, complete with a giant sign hanging overhead so people can find it. I got to hang out with a bunch of authors (my favorite people after #MrJennsen, family and readers) all weekend. And most of the people who came down the aisle were there because they love books, so it was a target-rich environment.

Book sales were fantastic - comparable to Dragon Con, and my costs were much lower. I sold out of The Thief way early (the IAP award caught people's fancy!), so I'll bring many more copies of it in the future. Medusa Falling did great as well. Starshine always sells by far the most number of copies - but the people who love cyberpunk *really* love cyberpunk, so I'll always bring Machina as well. (Note: The Universe Within has also done well when I've brought it instead of The Thief, but, inside baseball: pitching readers on 5 different titles is too overwhelming; 3 to 4 is the sweet spot.)

Mr. Jennsen and I simply love Seattle and the whole Puget Sound region. We don't live there for several good reasons, but we get tempted every time we visit, and I'm so happy to live within driving distance of it now.

Galactic Core

A stunning new image of the Milky Way galactic core just dropped!

This view was captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a powerful network of radio telescopes in Chile.

What you’re seeing is the crowded, chaotic heart of our galaxy, a region packed with cold gas and dust, the raw material that forms new stars. The image maps an area called the Central Molecular Zone, stretching more than 650 light-years across.

Image credit:: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Longmore et al. Background: ESO/D. Minniti et al.

More info: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2603/

Deep Edit Is In the Books

And that's a wrap on the deep edit of The Theory of Everything! Next up, a fine-toothed-grammar/style-comb, then off for more objective editing.

When the book opens, things are in a bit of disarray. Nika and Mesme have vanished off to parts unknown, Morgan and Olivia are trapped on Mshak, and the Dzhvar are getting in the way of everything by accelerating their attacks.

Helix Nebula

Webb has dropped an absolutely INSANELY detailed image of a portion of the Helix Nebula. The image was taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera. From NASA: “pillars that look like comets with extended tails trace the circumference of the inner region of an expanding shell of gas. Here, blistering winds of fast-moving hot gas from the dying star are crashing into slower moving colder shells of dust and gas that were shed earlier in its life, sculpting the nebula’s remarkable structure.”

You can learn more about the image and the Helix Nebula here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/intricacies-of-helix-nebula-revealed-with-nasas-webb/

For comparison, here is the Helix Nebula as imaged by Hubble and Spitzer:

And a First Draft

There. Now it's a FIRST draft. What does that mean? No brackets. A theoretically complete book that I could hand to someone to read, and not have to caveat it with "but I haven't done X yet, and I still need to Y, and there are placeholders for Z."

Now to tweak and edit and slave and agonize and generally bring it up to the standard that has kept you guys around for 23 books.

Zero Draft Achieved

And that's a wrap on the Zero Draft of THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING! 117K words...good lord this book is a beast, and it has been a ton of work to wrangle it into submission.

Lol, who am I kidding? I haven't wrangled it yet - that's next. But I did commit a whole host of heart-pounding encounters, stunning revelations and emotional moments to the page.

So have a little teaser for one of them, and celebrate with me.

2025 Year In Review

It's time for a 2025 Year in Review! The immediacy of social media means important posts are quickly forgotten in favor of the Next New Thing, and I think it's important to pause every now and then and celebrate the many good things that happened as the year flew by.

I published 2 novels: THE UNIVERSE WITHIN (wrapping up the Cosmic Shores trilogy of stand-alone sci-fi adventure novels) and LIMINAL SPACE (the first book in the final trilogy of the Amaranthe universe).

THE THIEF was a rock-star of a novel this year, winning the Indie Author Project Sci-Fi Book of the Year and being named one of the best Alien Sci-Fi Novels of the Year by Discover Sci-Fi. (Yes, yes, and there was a tiny kerfuffle around the SPSFC in which The Thief was thrust into a semi-starring role. Let me tell you, going viral on X is not for the faint of heart....)

Five of my short stories landed on the moon! Thanks to the incredible Lunar Codex project and Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines' groundbreaking missions, "Apogee," "Solatium," "Venatoris," "Re/Genesis" and "Chrysalis" will reside forever in the stars.

I was a Pro at Dragon Con again this year, speaking on some fascinating panels, selling books and meeting awesome readers and authors at what is seriously the craziest geek con on the planet. I also attended Lilac City Comicon and the Local Author Celebration by the Community Library Network, fulfilling a promise to myself to put down roots in my new Inland Northwest home by getting involved in the regional author community.

Oh, and I sold my 700,000th story. Thank you, all of you, for enabling me to do what I love!

Favorite book I read this year? House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds; I deeply love that book. But it was a reread, so favorite first-time read of the year? Probably Ancilliary Justice by Ann Leckie; it deserves all the accolades it received. Favorite non-fiction? The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene; the prospect of multiverses is real science, guys.

Favorite video game? Baldur's Gate 3, again. It should be Clair Obscur, but I disliked the narrative rug-pull at the end. Also, Kingdoms Reborn turned out to be a delightful city-builder of a game!

What about 2026? THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING will definitely release, and I'll start writing NAKED SINGULARITY, the final novel in the 25-book Amaranthe saga (* sobs *). More regional author events are on tap, including my first time appearing at Emerald City Comicon in Seattle. I believe there's another lunar landing or two (or...four??) on the schedule, too.

I'm genuinely happy with the year 2025 shaped up to be, and excited for the opportunities waiting to ambush me in 2026.

How about you? What were the highlights of your 2025?

RPGs in our Gaming Future

The Game Awards were last week, a gaming event that, not surprisingly, hands out a bunch of awards (Clair Obscur cleaned up, deservedly so), but is more anticipated for its upcoming game trailer reveals. And boy, it did not disappoint for us sci-fi fans.

First up, a total surprise that came out of nowhere: Fate of the Old Republic, a "spiritual successor" to (but not direct sequel of) Knights of the Old Republic, one of the best stories in video gaming history (and definitely the best Star Wars story in video gaming history). It's being made by Casey Hudson's new studio; Casey was the Executive Producer of KOTOR and, of course, the Mass Effect Trilogy.

The trailer tells us almost nothing about the story, but eagle-eyed viewers quickly identified that the crashed ship in the trailer is the Leviathan, Revan's capital ship before the events of KOTOR - so that's a huge tie-in to the story. See the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAmkl1jL0fo

I am officially SO excited. Hopefully an in-progress remake of KOTOR (and 2, I believe) will release before FOTOR (we love our acronyms). As an older game, the mechanics of KOTOR are really, really clunky, which prevents a lot of newer players from experiencing what is an incredible story.

SECOND, we got a new, extensive trailer for Exodus, and a release window. (See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c80LMt_Uxs) That release window is, unfortunately, "early 2027," so still a ways to go. I honestly wasn't too surprised by this, though I'd hoped for holiday 2026. The trailer reveals more of the story and how it centers on your protagonist. (By the way, the player character in the trailers is the default, but they can be either male or female and will be completely customizable, yay).

With these games plus the upcoming Expanse game, the future is bright for sci-fi RPG gaming. But maybe not in 2026....

Warp-Drive Nacelles?

New paper just dropped! Dr. Sonny White, the physicist who took the energy requirements of Miguel Alcubierre's warp drive concept from "theoretically plausible but practically impossible" to "hmm...potentially doable," is continuing to pick away at the science and design concepts of such a drive.

Now he's refined the design of a theoretical warp drive, shifting from a single bubble to multi-nacelle channels, allowing for greater efficiency, stability and controllability.

Next, we just need to find the dollop of exotic matter required to create the field (and a few engineering breakthroughs, but we'll get those), and off to the stars we go!

Read more about the new design: https://thedebrief.org/new-warp-drive-propulsion-concept-moves-fictional-starships-closer-to-engineering-reality/