Yes, we need to get back to blogging here. But you know how it is, sometimes other priorities intervene.
Anyway, getting back to writing, we’re (still) finishing up the crime story Dispatch we’ve been working on for a while. We’ve spent the past two weekends restructuring a portion of it to address a draggy sequence that was proving impossible to edit into shape. It’s turning out nicely, with a much more consistently-paced escalation of events following the titular crime.
Meanwhile, Act I of the second Amber Jacobsen book, Ghosts of Tharsis, is complete but for some fact checking on orbital mechanics, Act II is written but for a few additional thematic elements and some additional action, and Act III is written but (frankly) the denouement is still a dog’s breakfast.
I spent most of July in Iceland, which half-expectedly turned into a “location scouting” trip for writing purposes. Drove Kaldidalur, Kjolur, and about half of Sprengisandur, each of which crosses a number of Mars-like landscapes. Also drove the segment of the Ring Road between Egilstadir and Jokulsargljufur that I bypassed in 2010, an area that looked like the Moon and Mordor had a landscape love-child. Once I finish processing the photos, I may do a photo essay on the especially Martian landscapes I encountered.