Well, it’s here at last. Who’d have thought that the book begun during my recovery from cruciate ligament reconstruction is now about to be a completely published trilogy.

From  an image sitting inside my head twenty plus years ago, Frontier, Shanna and her starcats, and the alien Garsal have now exited my headspace and taken up residence in the pages of the Frontier Trilogy.

The whole story has taken almost 390,000 words to tell, and tomorrow, the last 127,000 or so will be available to readers. I have thirty paperbacks sitting in my kitchen, ready for the official book launch on Saturday, and at least one of the boxes has been (very appropriately) tested for quality by the cat.

In some ways I’m sad to reach the end of this trilogy. It’s a funny kind of thing – Shanna and her starcats have been with me for such a long time that it feels sort of weird not to be constantly thinking about the story and the writing of it.

Having said that, a few more ideas have popped into my mind, and there is still much room left to tell stories about them and their role on Frontier – and perhaps even in the wider galaxy.

In the meantime, I’ve been writing several other things – a fantasy story, currently titled ‘Amethyst Pledge,’ which is book 1 of another trilogy, and a more adult Sci-fi space based story, tentatively called ‘Tainted.’ Amethyst Pledge has been out with a target audience reader group, and so far they seem to like it.

I’ve also written a few short stories. I’ve had another one rejected recently, but with rather nice comments (particularly one which told me that the dialogue, tension and world building were good), which is always helpful, and one which clearly tells me that I haven’t yet mastered the short form of story telling: “Overall, this felt like a couple of scenes from a larger picture/work, with the ending left unsatisfyingly open.”

I think I’ve written previously that this seems to be a theme of my short story rejection replies. Apparently nearly all my short stories sound like I’m writing a book, rather than a short story. Perhaps I should just stick with novels…

No, I’m determined to master the short form. I just need to figure out how. It sounds so easy, but it isn’t! I find it slightly funny that I can tell a story in tens and hundreds of thousands of words and keep my readers engaged, yet struggle to tell one in less than 5,000.

As some rather successful authors said at the NSW Writers Centre Speculative Fiction Festival – the two forms are very different, and require quite different approaches. I have to say that it was quite encouraging to hear that they had all had multiple rejections themselves.

Anyway, enough of short stories. If you’re looking to investigate my Frontier Series, here’s a book trailer.

You can purchase any of my books from Hague Publishing (eBook or Paperback) or from all the major online eBook platforms. Amazon also sells the paperback version.