The First Journey of Amos Cutter is complete and in the bank, though it will need a few polish passes. This novel is self-contained, meaning that it has a concrete end, but the global story is episodic. The same characters and the same world will proceed with only a short time passing in world. The next novel will, of course, be titled The Second Journey of Amos Cutter. I almost certainly won’t start working on that until next year (2027).
Right now, I’m focusing exclusively on The Tower. I’d like to get this last volume of The Colossi out as soon as possible. The three books are actually just a single long novel (more than 200k words) and my goal is to get it out at least by September 2026, though August would be better. My long range plan for this series is a trilogy of long novels, each divided into digestible chunks, so nine books altogether. However, the story of The Colossi comes to an end at the conclusion of The Tower and future volumes depend on many factors beyond my control. (Like, readers.)
When the The Tower is published, I’ll fall back to The Chronicle of the Rider and work to produce new chapters of Rider’s Fate (free serialization on the website). I have another idea for a serialization called Letters From Poubelle, set in the PCF universe. I’ll probably work on those two at the same time.
I do have an idea, with nothing on the page, for a follow on to Not This Side of Never; from the POV of Rose and set in the Land of Oddz. I don’t even have the first scene of that in my head, and there are some in-world logistical issues to that story that I would have to resolve in Bonus Fiction, but if I go in that direction, it will be in 2027.
I have a number of other projects laying around as ideas. After RF, I’ll probably start something new and Sci-Fi. Writing epic fantasy exclusively tends to make it all run together, so I need to clean my writing palette from time to time.
Other potential projects for 2027 include:
Novelization of my short-story Virtue as Vice or Virtue, entirely from the POV of Harold. The first part of the novel would be a 1 for 1 transfer of the original story. After that, Harold and the Paragon would have various adventures as Harold attempted to shed his unwanted store of Virtue. It would continue in the same lighthearted vein and probably not have any major overarching “Save X” plot.
Expansion of my novella To End A War into a full novel called War Does Not Make A Soldier. This would only be a fill-in-the-blanks type expansion and the basic story would be unchanged. A novel would have a larger readership, I think, and I originally intended to write the story as a longer work. I’ve worked on this project from time to time and would like to finish it in the next year.
A third book in the Holes Universe from the POV of Boo. Since that’s all I have, this one might take a while.
Of course, all this is subject to change.