Howdy, folks! I announced this earlier this week on my author newsletter (you can sign up here): Sector M’s first major book release, Axis Point, is now available on Amazon in a paperback, hardback, and Kindle version!
Front cover.
This book is the first installment of the Knight Wolf Saga, my military science-fiction series. It stars a character that came to me when I was 19, one of the most complete ‘downloads’ that my muse has ever sent my way. I knew everything about him instantly. To this day, I consider Caervus Dar’vall a gift.
In this blog post, I will take you through the need-to-know information about this book. Let’s get to it, shall we?
An Alien Protagonist? Really?
Really. Caervus Dar’vall (pronounced carevuss and the rhyme of barball) is the central character of this book and the series. He’s a wolflike alien, a Lykosian, that is close enough to human to be emotionally accessible but different enough to give the reader a different perspective.
Back Cover.
This also allows Dar’vall to act as an observer to humanity from the outside looking in. He occupies a sort of ‘balcony seat’ in that sense that allows me to write anthropological science fiction stories that shine a spotlight on humanity in all its flaws and triumphs.
Star Trek, (New) Battlestar Galatica, and Halo
I’ve been asked before what the vibe of this book is in terms of other sci-fi stories, which naturally covers my inspirations and influences. Doing so reminds me of the “comps” you use in a query letter, or the high concept used to pitch a television show.
If I had to describe this book in those terms, I would say that the base code of the series is Star Trek: The Next Generation mixed with the darker visual aesthetics of original series Star Trek movies and (new) Battlestar Galatica. Mix in some Halo due to Marines in power armor and ancient technology, then set it all to a Jerry Goldsmith/James Horner movie score, and you’re in the general neighborhood for Axis Point.
Something like that, yeah.
Of course, like many sci-fi writers, I’m also influenced by Heinlein, Herbert, Asimov, Bester, and several others both in and out of the military sci-fi subgenre. The list goes on and on.
How did Axis Point Come About?
I first tried to write a Dar’vall story in college. A noble effort, with moments of promise, but it just wasn’t working. I was still developing my writing voice, and I didn’t have the life experiences or philosophical understanding to really tackle a project of this scope.
When I left the corporate scene almost a year ago, I knew that Axis Point needed to be the first book project I delivered. I had previously said that I would “turn the page,” toward the fantasy genre, but that was when I was going the traditional publishing route for all my books. Now I want to maintain creative control over my books, and this series in particular. Thus, I’m going the indie route.
This is when I made the decision.
Dar’vall is near and dear to my heart, and I’m over the moon to be able to finally share his story with all of you. I hope you will join Dar’vall on his journey, which in many ways is also my journey.
I’ve linked to the Amazon page a few times here, but here it is again. Click HERE to pick up your copy of Axis Point.
Howdy, folks! Earlier this week, something happened that’s only come around in my writing career a precious few times: I got to see a brand-new exhibit I worked on being enjoyed by the public. Specifically, this was at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, and the new exhibit is Soccer: More Than a Game.
This is, without a doubt, the most complex and in-depth exhibit I’ve ever worked on for the Perot. I started on it several months back. Normally, I write all the copy for something like this at once, but Soccer: More Than a Game was large enough that it had to be split into three parts, each corresponding to one of the sections I’ll outline below.
Before I get started on this, however, let me give a Texas-sized shout-out to the team at the Perot that I worked with to bring this exhibit from imagination to reality. Color me stunned at just how well the concept art and ideas translated to real life.
I also want to say that photos don’t do this exhibit justice. The interactivity, the wonderful bursts of color, and all the minute touches that go through this whole experience are all incredible. If you are in the DFW area, I would highly recommend giving the Perot Museum a visit for this and many other cool exhibits.
Impact of the Game
Once you have your special RFID wristband, you’ll first get your profile together in the locker room. The majority of characters you see listed here above the lockers are ones that I named and even came up with some lore for them. If you get a chance, each locker in this area has a lot of little touches, like a movie set. It’s wonderful.
Once you head down the multicolored tunnel, you’ll find yourself in the Impact of the Game section. From there, you design a stadium out of LEGO bricks, build a mascot or a jersey, and look at a world map that allows you to pick a country and see their soccer jerseys, just to name a few.
There are freestanding displays here and there that scroll various facts about soccer, the careers that are involved, and some of the reasons that soccer is the world’s most popular sport.
C.L.E.A.T.S
In the next section, you’ll find the Coaching Lab for Excellence in Athletics, Technology and Science, or C.L.E.A.T.S. Here, you’ll find several stations that cover quizzes for different soccer balls, past and present, as well as some questions about various types of the eponymous cleats.
There are virtual movement interactive exhibits, photo opportunities, and many more informational displays. One exhibit that I found particularly compelling was the Make the Call station, where you can take the role of a referee and use various camera angles and playback options of a soccer field to call penalties correctly.
The Academy
Beyond C.L.E.A.T.S, you’ll get to The Academy, and this area made my little writer’s heart glow like an ember. There were long lines to several of the bigger interactive exhibits. I left and came back a little while later, and the lines were even longer than before.
This section is where you get a number of interactive games, including a medical care/repair station, an oversized skee-ball court, a robokeeper, the floor is lava, and other activities that are all super fun. The kids are going to love it.
Bonus Round: Minerals of the World Cup
As a tie-in, I also helped to modify the previous topaz exhibit in the gem and mineral hall on the third floor. In this one, you’ll see some of the dazzling mineral diversity of a number of countries competing in the World Cup. This also includes the host countries of Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
On a side note, I am always surprised when I see the vibrance and intensity of the colors on display in these gem and mineral exhibits. It really is a testament to just how beautiful, varied, and sublime our planet is when we stop to look. Stopping to smell the roses is great and all, but stopping to admire the fluorite can be even better.
In closing, Soccer: More Than a Game and Minerals of the World Cup were super fun to work on and see come to life. Once again, my thanks to the Perot team for including me in the fun. Here’s to many more projects like this one in the future!
But seriously, folks, if you’re in the DFW area, definitely check this out. You’ll be glad you did.
Giant black cats. Jack-o’-lanterns in a stack. Striped spiders, ghosts, grim reapers, even licensed characters like those from Star Wars, Peanuts, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. You’ve almost certainly seen these inflatable decorative items around, whether in someone’s yard, on TV shows or movies, or just on the shelves of your local big box store. Maybe you’ve even picked up a few for your own collection.
These distinctive inflatable décor pieces you see all over the place are Airblown Inflatables by Gemmy Industries. While many people read that name as “gimme,” the company’s name is pronounced like the first name “Jimmy.”
How do I know this? Well, as it turns out, I worked for Gemmy Industries for the better part of 10 years as their lead writer back in the day. I wrote everything from the text on the outside of the box, to the instruction manual — you name it, I did it. I was the writer and editor for thousands of SKUs for them each year, and even helped get it all translated into French and Spanish for sales in Canada and Mexico.
With one week until Halloween, let’s take a look at them, shall we?
So…What Are They?
If you’ve ever seen a giant purple ape sitting on top of a car dealership or the crazy-armed figure on a street corner that flails around while partially deflating and then re-inflating itself, Airblowns are like the decorative version of that.
There’s generally no internal structure to an Airblown. When you take it out of the box, it just looks like an empty bag or deflated balloon. When you plug it in, however, there’s an air fan on the inside that starts up, so it self-inflates in seconds. Yeah, that part in italics there? I can’t tell you how many times I wrote those words.
Then all you have to do is stake it down so wind and weather conditions don’t carry it into a neighbor’s yard, and you’re all set. Whether it’s an Airblown that’s just a solo character, or one that inflates into a whole scene, it’s a pretty easy way to decorate for Halloween, or really any themed holiday. And when you’re done with it, it’s pretty easy to put up since it deflates down for easy storage. (Another phrase I used quite a lot.)
Most Airblowns light up in some form or another. Some have specialty lighting effects or projectors embedded on the inside. For instance, there was a dragon Airblown a few years back that had a shifting flame pattern on the inside of it that looked like it was about to breathe fire. Pretty cool.
They come in all shapes and sizes, from 2-foot-tall static figures to giant displays that are animated. The ease with which you can put one up and the variety of price ranges out there are, I think, big reasons for their mass appeal.
But That’s Not All
Beyond just the ones meant for your yard, you’ll also find a vast array of inflatable Airblown Halloween costumes. If you’ve seen people running a marathon or attending events dressed as a T-Rex, a Thanksgiving Turkey, or Oogie Boogie, you can bet that Gemmy made it.
Like their yard-bound cousins, Airblown costumes run the gamut, from the simple to elaborate illusion costumes to look like you’re being chased by a monster or riding a bull. Many of them are meant to be cute or funny, while some are definitely…ahem…more adult in nature. Fun fact: way back in the day, Gemmy use to create novelties for the back shelves of Spencer’s Gifts, and there are still some remnants of that in their product line.
In any case, if you walk into a Spirit Halloween store and see inflatable costumes on the racks, it’s almost a guarantee that those are from Gemmy.
They’re Everywhere
While I have since moved on from the company, there’s no getting away from Gemmy products, particularly Airblowns. I’ve seen them in TV commercials, particularly for Lowes, and even spotted them in episodes of Doctor Who, most often in their famous Christmas episodes.
In my travels, I’ve seen Airblowns sitting in the yards of multimillion-dollar homes in gated communities, and I’ve also found them in the remote farmland communities in small-town Oklahoma. Like I said, everywhere. (And as many as you’ll see around Halloween, just wait until Christmas!)
When I run across one now, I can’t help but feel a sense of pride. It’s a reminder that I worked on something that people still enjoy to this day, something with the sole purpose of celebration and entertainment. I wish I had kept that part more firmly in mind when I had been in the thick of things back then, but I suppose that that’s just the way it goes sometimes.
So, if you’re out and about and see an Airblown Inflatable in a yard or on a passing trick-or-treater, I hope you’ll think of me.
The title of this blog post is generally good advice — however, I have elected to do the opposite. Yes, folks, after many years of office jobs, contract positions, and corporate roles, I’m hanging up my proverbial entry badge and lanyard, and cutting the cord. Am I retiring? Far from it.
I left my full-time role earlier this month so I could focus on the things that matter most to me. Namely, my books, my games, museum and experiential writing, and my family. I did not make this decision lightly, but rest assured that when I realized what I needed to do, a feeling of calm tranquility washed over me, and the path ahead became clear.
The Moment in Question
About two weeks after I graduated from high school, my godparents took me on a trip to Grand Cayman. I’ve written previously about the two of them here and here. We were accompanied by their son, whose tendency to get up super early in the morning gave him the lifelong nickname of “Rooster.” We went SCUBA diving on this trip in some of the most beautiful waters I’ve ever been in, especially around Devil’s Grotto. This was also the time I saw a barracuda way too up close and personal, but that’s another story.
It’s one of the most wonderful trips I’ve ever been on, together with three people I loved dearly. I remember the last few hours of that trip, I just sat under a gazebo, staring out over the brilliant turquoise and violet waters of the North Sound. I didn’t want to leave, and I think a part of me never did.
The Disney Treasure
I had always meant to go back, but could never find my way until just recently. My family went on a Disney Cruise in the Caribbean, and one of our stops was at Grand Cayman. I was on a different part of the island than the last time I stepped foot there, but the ankle-deep sand, the wind on my face, and the motion of the waves against the shore took me back to when I was a freshly minted 18-year-old.
The sad fact is that Rooster passed away when I was in college, taken way too early. I lost my godmother in 2020, and my godfather passed away almost a year ago at the time of this writing.
Now I’m the only one left who remembers that trip. To some degree this was my “Oak Tree” moment, but it was less about realizing the full scope of time in a place of history, and more about understanding that I only have so many years left to pursue my dreams with the vigor and passion they require.
Let’s just say that it brought things sharply into focus.
But How Will You Make This Work?
But Matt, I hear you saying: People don’t just quit their jobs!How will you pay your bills? How will you put gas in your car? Where will you get your protein, huh?!
First, thank you for your concern — it’s always appreciated. Second, I have been working towards this goal for some time now, trying to get things squared away and certain safeguards put in place before I could even consider making an honest go of it. All of those things had begun to align after years of preparation, culminating pretty recently. All that was left to do was to conjure up the will to finally break away, and conjure it I did, there on that beach in Grand Cayman.
Drink up, me ‘earties, yo ho!
So, here we are. This is what I do now. Sector M Games has two projects in the works, with a possible third to follow. I have decided to self-publish a series of books and short stories that I’ve been working on for a while now, while pursuing some traditional publishing routes for other books I have either finished or that are currently in production.
There are also some exciting freelance projects that I have in the works that I can’t quite talk about just yet, but there’ll be more on that as they develop. Additionally, I’ll be putting together a Sector M newsletter to keep everyone in the loop on the latest information and projects. Most importantly, I want to build up Sector M as a community that sci-fi, fantasy, and gaming enthusiasts can call home.
To that end, I need your help. I have a Patreon that’s been going for a while, and I’ve just finished a revamp of the membership tiers, so I strongly encourage you to check it out here:
These four are just the beginning. It may take me a while to spin up some of the new projects I have in mind, especially those that I’ll need to build from the ground up, but this will be my focus moving forward. For those of you who are already supporting this effort (and you know who you are), you have my heartfelt and eternal thanks.
To those of you who haven’t yet jumped on the Sector M train (in the strictly figurative sense), I hope you will check out what I have to offer and help me build towards the future. With that in mind, I hope to see you around the Sector!
Here’s a fact about yours truly you may not know: My writing career began at a metropolitan newspaper … as an obituary writer. I was 18, just starting out in college, and was recruited by the instructor of my Mass Communications class.
I stayed at this job for more than three years while I went to school. Once I graduated, I went into the world of marketing and advertising, where I have largely remained. Well, at my day job recently, I wrote an obituary for a prior employee who had passed away. For a moment, I dusted off that skillset of where I started out as a writer. It was a sad duty, but one I accepted, for reasons that I will get into later in this post.
While this was all on my mind, I wanted to put down in words some of the things I learned in this early role, why I ultimately left it, and why I think that obituaries and funeral services, in general, are important.
Life and Death in the Obit Department
For the most part, I was just a writer at a desk, working on a computer like everyone else, but there were additional elements that made the job emotionally challenging. We had a random number of obituaries that would come in each day, and this job taught me about deadlines. Do whatever you need to do, just make sure your copy is in by 3:00.
We would verify all the elements of an obituary with the funeral home, often just the spelling of a name that looked off, or a birthday if the one listed on the intake form didn’t match up, things like that. Most of the time, we would just call up the funeral home and speak to one of their representatives, but sometimes we would need to contact the family.
Understand that these were people who had lost a loved one a day or two prior to this call, or even that same day. They were often confused, angry and still trying to wrap their head around their loss, so we had to be very gentle with them. While we had to remain professional, everyone understood that a dose of empathy and understanding could go a long way.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking part was when they would show up to the office to deliver a photo of their loved one. They might even look fine and composed when they walked through the door. It was the moment that they handed the photo over that they almost always started crying. That act was what brought the realization of their grief to the forefront for them. It made the loss real. We had a special side room with a box of tissues and two chairs to give them space to compose themselves. I must’ve seen this scene play out dozens of times during my tenure there.
It wasn’t all bad, however. Because we dealt with dozens of names per day, there were times we started to see emerging trends in when a person was born and the theme of their name. For instance, from about 1908 to the early 1920s, it became popular to name girls after precious stones. Pearl, Emerald, Opal, and so forth. My great-grandmother, who was born in 1911, was named Ruby.
We also determined that the average age of the incoming obituaries was around 77, which was skewed every once in a while by a younger person, usually a teenager, who tragically died in a car wreck or a similar accident.
Of course there were exceptions.
Why I Stopped
Much of what I learned about journalism in those early days drove home the idea of professional detachment, of learning and reporting the facts without getting too close as that might harm your objectivity. That wasn’t always easy when you were dealing with grieving families on a daily basis. Even when they would sometimes call up the office and yell and scream at us for getting something wrong (whether it was actually wrong or not), I knew that was just their grief talking. I still had a job to do, and I couldn’t get too wrapped up in any one case or else I simply wouldn’t be able to function in that space.
As the saying goes, it was bound to happen, and one day it did. I received an obituary for an eight-year-old boy. Any time I received an obit in my queue that was in the single digits, it warranted a second look, just to make sure that neither the family nor the funeral home had left out a digit.
This one came with the photo, an Olan Mills portrait of the kid. And let me tell you, this photo was so good that it looked like one that might come with a wallet or a blank picture frame. He had a big smile on his face like he was about to burst out laughing, a smile that was reflected in his eyes. He just looked so full of life. I was immediately saddened just by seeing this boy who should’ve still been alive, but wasn’t. My professional detachment took a major hit. All through the day, I was haunted by the thought of this boy. Often, the cause of death wasn’t reported to us, so I never found out what had taken him.
As I worked through this obituary, I found that there was some inconsistency in the information that was provided. For the life of me, I don’t remember what it was, perhaps a family member’s name that looked misspelled or a mismatch between the day of the week for services and the day of the month. I called the funeral home, but no one picked up. Standard procedure was to then call the family. This boy had lived with his family in Alaska, so I dialed the number.
This was long enough ago that folks still had answering machines. Well, guess whose voice greeted me, inviting me to leave my name and number after the beep? I sat there at my desk, looking down at his photo while that boy’s voice spoke to me on the phone, and his voice exactly matched his photo. My detachment shattered at that point. I can’t remember now if I even left a message. I likely did, but it was suddenly my turn to use the side room to try to compose myself.
I never looked at the job the same way again. Sometimes in the hustle to meet deadlines, the names and dates and associations all blurred together. Sometimes you stopped seeing them as people and viewed them as just line items on a list, as tasks that needed to be completed. This little boy stopped me in my tracks, giving me a sharp reminder that each name was attached to a family that was morning their loss. But how could something as simple as an obituary encapsulate the fullness and nuance of someone’s life? The truth was it couldn’t.
It wouldn’t.
It shouldn’t.
I limped along in this job for another few months, but I knew I was done. I went to work for a local phone company, and while there were a few opportunities for me to come back to the obit department along the way, I never did.
Why They Are Important
Obituaries may be a flawed and limited way to mark someone’s passing, but time and reflection have changed my attitudes toward them. The same goes with funerals and memorial services. They are sad affairs, of course, but they help us frame the loss in our minds when everything seems in chaos. They are a necessary step to help us mourn and begin to heal.
“This is where we part.”
When I said earlier that I hadn’t written an obituary in a while, that wasn’t precisely true. What I meant was a formal obituary, one where I didn’t know the individual personally. The fact is that I have been writing obituaries of a kind right here on this blog, though they are a far cry from what I did at the newspaper. In these, my detachment had completely gone out the airlock, and rightfully so. These were people that I loved, that I still love, whose loss devastated me, and I still wrestle with their loss. (You can find them here, here, and here.)
Obituaries, like funerals, are for the living. While they can help us get back on the proverbial horse, they have another function, one that I think is the most important: It’s how we remember them. When someone is gone, that’s one of the greatest honors that one human can do for another — simply to remember them fondly.
A Note On Empathy
Of course, I couldn’t let a heavy topic like this go by without some sort of geeky reference, so here it is. In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf was an angelic being known as a maiar.Other powerful figures in the story, such as Saruman and Sauron, were part of this same group. Each of the maiar were at some point apprenticed to one of the valar, much more powerful beings that were effectively gods. In Gandalf’s case, he had served Nienna, the vala whose portfolio was grief and sadness. She continually wept for all the pain in Arda, even for things that had not yet come to pass. It’s thought that the reason Gandalf understood empathy and pity so well was because of this affiliation.
With that in mind, I’m a big proponent of the adage that we should always be kind to people because we never know what war they’re secretly fighting that we know nothing about. Our friends, our family, our co-workers may be going through some seriously emotional stuff, and we may never be aware of it. Perhaps a small kindness from you is what helps someone who is struggling to get through their day. Having been in various states of mourning for more than a year now, I know this to be true.
Yes, it’s easy to be cynical about this, especially with all that is going on around us, and it seems like it’s everyone for themselves. I’ve noticed a quote from Elon Musk that’s been floating around on Twitter these days. There are a few variations, but they all more or less come down to this:
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
I’m not sure that I could disagree with this statement more. I think that it’s a lack of empathy that is the root cause of much of our suffering, and the overwhelming majority of our problems. Our worst vices, our inhumanity to each other, all stem from a lack of empathy. So, in a world where we could choose to have more or less of it, I would choose more every time.
If you read my last post of 2024, you’ll know that my creative victories for last year were fairly sparse, particularly on the literary side. Overall, it was a pretty mixed bag, though there were some real bright spots along the way. Let’s go ahead and discuss it all, the proverbial good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Bad News
I thought I would change it up and deliver the bad news first. So, let’s go ahead and get this out of the way.
A Swing and a Miss: Early in 2024, an interesting opportunity presented itself. One of the Big Four publishers was interested in one of my fantasy manuscripts. It was sent on submission and we waited…and waited. Months passed with no news, but publishing is not a game for the impatient. Finally, the editor in question simply stopped communicating with us. It’s frustrating, as it has taken years to get to this position only for the editor to essentially ghost us. But, there is actually a mark of distinction for an author in having a project ‘die on submission.’ It means that you almost got there, as the next step would have been a book deal. Next time, if I can just achieve one step higher, I should be on better ground. As is the case with publishing, it’s nothing until its something. Back to square one.
IYKYK
A Shifting Situation: In addition to the copious amounts of personal strife this year, I also changed jobs around mid-year, and it has both been one of the most difficult professional transitions of my career and quite unlike anything I’ve ever done. Between that and some other potential employment issues with my family, the stress and lack of mental bandwidth pulled me out of my regular writing schedule. I couldn’t find my way back to one until the middle of November (more on that below). So, as a result, I have very little to show on the fiction side of things. Almost every goal I made last year failed, and I’m not sure when I will be able to circle back around to them again. I made marginal progress on the sci-fi novella I mentioned in the last State of the Sector address, but even that eventually hit a brick wall. If there is good news, it’s that the holiday break has seen a renewed fire in my veins when it comes to my fictional stories. We will see how that fares now that my holiday break is over.
Sector M Store is Closing: I will be closing the Sector M store in February. I won’t delete it entirely in case there is ever a renewed need for it. Unfortunately, it requires a decent amount of maintenance and costs to keep it running, and sales of any Sector M merch have effectively flat-lined. So, I will renew all the designs that are currently available for the time being, but I plan on shutting it down on Saturday, February 1. So, if there are any designs that appeal to you, now would be a good time to seize upon them. You can find the Sector M store here.
Sector M Games’ Future Uncertain: This year, we published two titles on the DMs Guild, The Artificer’s Guide to Magic Items and The Knights of SolamniaRevisited. Both have been well received by the community, and both were featured in the DMs Guild’s weekly newsletter. I did have a manuscript for a third installment for the DMs Guild, but it’s looking like that will need to be shelved for the foreseeable future. With so much uncertainty in my family’s situation, my disposable income (which I use to finance my game projects) just may not be available for some time to come. My philosophy for these supplements has always been to make them as good as possible, and I want to stick to that. So, I would much rather hold off on projects until they can be approached with high standards than try to rush something out. If anything changes on this front, I will make a special update post here on the blog to let everyone know.
Wavering Blog Deadlines: As a writer, I like to meet my deadlines consistently. My track record with 2024’s blog posts was…troubled, particularly as the year wore on. I still delivered all twelve as intended, but I found myself having to adjust publication dates, sometimes by a few weeks to fully deliver them. I will attempt to be more consistent in 2025, though many of the same factors that caused those delays are still in play. For this next year, here are my target dates for new blogs each month. Of course, there could be some wiggle room, but here’s the schedule I’m going with right now:
Okay, I know that was a lot in the way of bad news. Trust me, if it was difficult for you to get through, it was equally hard for me to write. It’s not every year that the wheels just come right off of almost everything. In light of all the things that went wrong or just didn’t materialize this year, it makes the bright spots shine all the brighter.
The Blog’s Best Months: Traffic on this blog has definitely picked up in the last couple of years. I’m now getting traffic in a week that might have taken a month or two before that. I think part of it is regular updates, in my case at least once a month. I’ve had this blog since May of 2013, and as far as I can tell, October, November, and December of this year were the three top months it has ever had. I know that many blogs tend to specialize and be mainly about one thing. This blog is a sort of potpourri of museums and history, nerdy/geeky stuff, writing topics, and just the odd things running through my mind. Thank you for coming back and checking it out. If you are a regular here, I strongly encourage you to follow this blog so you don’t miss a post. (There should be a pop-up when you visit that you can click on to do this.)
A tall ship and a star to steer her by.
DMs Guild Releases: As I stated above, we released two titles on the DMs Guild in 2024, one in January and the other in November. The Artificer’s Guide to Magic Items is the more expansive of the two, and it is available as either a downloadable PDF or as a hardcopy format (if you get the hardcopy, you also get the PDF version for free). The other title, The Knights of Solamnia Revisited, is for fans of Dragonlance, and it’s only available as a PDF. I do intend to follow up on both of them with some FAQ and example PDFs that will be available as a free download. That is in the works, though I’m not sure at the time of this writing when they will be ready for release. In any case, if you haven’t picked up a copy of either/both titles, check them out. I’m proud of how they turned out.
An Unexpected Wizard Story: As is often the case, when I’m deep into writing another story, I invariably have intrusive ideas for other stories. As I struggled (and ultimately failed) to maintain the thread of that sci-fi novella, I had an idea for a fantasy novella that followed up on the aftermath of one of my fantasy manuscripts. I finally resolved to start drafting it about the middle of November, and the story just came pouring out at the keyboard. My average number of words per hour more than doubled for each writing session, which tells me that I was truly dialed into it. Even with the holidays, which can be murder on a writing schedule, I’m happy to say that I finished the initial draft at 11:30 p.m. on December 31. So, if I accomplished nothing else on the fiction side in 2024, I was able to begin and end this novella, which clocked in at just under 27,000 words. Of course, it’s a hot mess right now, but one of my projects for January will be getting it into a readable state for my beta readers.
The Road Ahead
Normally, this would be the section where I would outline my goals and projects for the new year, but I am at something of a loss for the moment. I’ve finished the wizard novella, and I’m now at loose ends, at least at the time of this writing. Until I know more about how this year will unfold, and the possible ramifications it will have on my family, it’s difficult to make any long-term plans at this moment in time.
I have that partially completed sci-fi novella I could try to finish, or I could revisit the cyberpunk novel I have about two-thirds complete (both have a special place in my heart, even if I had to put them down). Or, I could try something completely new. I haven’t decided yet, though short-to-medium fiction has its appeal since there’s less time involved per project, usually between a couple of weeks and a couple of months. I wish I had a definitive answer, but the road ahead right now is too foggy for me to see.
Rest assured I will land on something. I scarcely want to have another year creatively like 2024 if I can help it. If 2024 has taught me one thing, it’s that we’re here for a shorter time than we think. I feel that I have barely scratched the surface of the stories I want to tell. If I’m going to make an honest go of it before my time is up, I need to stay focused.
So, it is my hope that if I can turn my situation around, I’ll be able to open the State of the Sector 2026 Address with the words: What a difference a year makes.
Until then, I wish you all a new year filled with the realization of dreams and solid metaphorical (as well as literal) ground beneath your feet.
It’s time to look back at the year of 2023 as well as look ahead to 2024. Right up front, I have to admit that 2023 was a creatively challenging year for me. There’s really no two ways about it — my day job started to infringe on my creative space in a big way for most of the early year.
I’m normally pretty good at keeping the two separate, but this time my work/life balance collapsed in its entirety. This continually compounded on itself, putting me further and further behind on my goals.
I look back at the State of the Sector Address for 2023 and just sorta sigh. When you’re a creative, not every year is going to go your way, and 2023 went way off the rails. (And definitely not in a cool, Ozzy, Crazy Trains kind of way.)
So, while certain parts of this address will be a bit of a downer, I’ve tried to look at 2023 as an off-season, a year of preparation to put me into a better place for 2024. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how 2023 went for Sector M.
The Good News
The Artificer’s Guide to Magic Items: In a year with so many misses for me, this one landed, and is so much better than I could have hoped. I wrote about it in more detail here. While it took a bit to find a team that was capable and willing to take on a project like this, when it came together, boy howdy. I give full props to Gabby (the editor), Natalia (the designer), and Miguel (the artist). Each one of them brought their A-game and elevated the project above and beyond what I thought it could be. At the time of this writing, I am waiting for the final proof from the printer. If all is well when I get it, we’ll be ready to launch. UPDATE: The book is now available here. Enjoy!
Sector M Games: There is a new section to the Sector M website aptly titled “Sector M Games.” It has a listing for the Artificer’s Guide there now. As I add more game projects and titles, this will be the place to find them. I also created a dedicated Twitter/X handle: @TheSectorMGames. If you’re still on Twitter/X, please go give it a follow.
Baldur’s Gate 3: So, by June/July of 2023, I was starting to recover from months of stress and burnout, making slow progress back towards the light. Then I found Baldur’s Gate III, starting in early August, which I detailed here. While it’s true that I suddenly wanted to spend all hours saving the world next to Karlach, Shadowheart, and Minthara, it did actually help reignite some much-needed creative energies. For me, playing a game like that is almost meditative, acting like a freestyle association exercise for the mind in contemplating the genre it occupies.
Besides that, being able to immerse yourself in a world with so many well-developed characters, each with incredible dialogue, is a good way to jump-start your muse. Even though I’ve had multiple playthroughs at this point, my second one (an evil one), still lives rent-free in my head with its implications and repercussions. While BG3 didn’t necessarily help me reach my word-count goals, it did put me on a better trajectory once I was able to return to writing. And you know, I’ll take that as a win.
Blog Delivery: In spite of everything that happened, I was able to keep my blog schedule, give or take a day or two here and there. Twelve blogs promised, and twelve blogs delivered. It’s my intent to keep going with the one-a-month schedule. See below.
A New Fiction Project: Last year I said that I was pivoting away from science fiction for the foreseeable future to focus on fantasy. While that’s certainly true for the books I’m shopping around to agents, just when one story stopped talking to me (see the next section), another started forming at the edges of my mind. Considering I spent much of spring and summer rewatching all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, it’s no wonder that the science fiction part of my brain couldn’t help but be reactivated.
So, I’m back to the universe I’ve been developing for years now, this time with a new approach, new characters, new environs, and a seemingly impossible challenge that the protagonist will need to overcome. I’m about 9,000 words into it at the moment. It (probably) won’t be a full novel length, but right now I’m shooting for around 50,000–60,000 words, putting more in line with a novella. I am tentatively hoping to finish it around April/May of this year.
The Not-So-Great News
Cyberpunk Novel on Pause: When things became unbearable at work, I had to put down Book #7, and it broke my heart. Previously, things had been thrumming with it. The story was really speaking to me. I was doubling or tripling my average word count per writing session on a regular basis. I was at about 135,000 words when I just lost the thread, and it was tantamount to crashing into a brick wall. It wasn’t writer’s block, per se, since I was working on other projects without issue. But as far as the novel’s narrative was concerned, it simply went radio silent. It hasn’t come back. I have a few projects I need to finish and deliver, but I’m hoping to try to rekindle this thread later this year. It won’t be easy, but then again, nothing worth doing ever is.
Board Game Still In Development: The board game that I’ve been developing for a while likewise had to go on hiatus. I was able to get some traction on it, especially in acquiring some initial artwork and completing the demo. I now have a fully playable demo set that I’ve playtested a few times. These playtest sessions were able to shine a light on some of the weaker elements of the play structure. I was in the middle of introducing a new mechanic when it also had to be put down as my mental bandwidth ground down to nearly zero. It’s still on my radar, and I hope to get back to the next iteration at some point this year.
Strange Reports Re-Release: To complete the anti-trifecta of projects, I had planned to release and revamp my anthology of short stories, Strange Reports from Sector M in or around May. That obviously didn’t happen, but is still something that’s on my list for this year. I’m clearing space on my schedule around June to get back to this and give it the attention it deserves.
The Road Ahead
The Knights of Solamnia Revisted: The next project I have in the works for the DM’s Guild is (as the name implies), a second look at the Knights of Solamnia as they appeared in Dragonlance:Shadow of the Dragon Queen. This supplement give players the option of playing a Solamnic Knight as a full fighter subclass with career paths that represent all three Orders of Knighthood: the Crown, the Sword, and the Rose.
I am over the moon to be able to write something for the Dragonlance setting, which has been a favorite of mine for a very long time. More on that here. This will be a much shorter entry than the Artificer’s Guide, short enough that it won’t have a print-on-demand version. That will greatly simplify the publishing process since as soon as we have a PDF ready to go, we can move forward. I have the manuscript ready for editing, so watch for that around the end of March/early April timeframe.
Blog Rollout: My blog topics are fairly eclectic, and that’s definitely going to be the case with 2024’s slate. Some of them I’ve been wanting to write for a long time now, so if you’ve enjoyed what I’ve done the last year or two, 2024 will build upon that. The dates the blog will drop will by and large be the third Friday of each month.
Of course, if last year taught me anything, it’s the futility of trying to plan too far ahead. So, the following are my intended blog dates, but there could be some slight variance to them. My current dates are:
I’ll link each of the blogs to the date above once it has posted. So, if you miss a blog along the way, you can just refer back to this post to get the links.
Recap from Above: To summarize from the points above, my additional goals for 2024 include:
Finish up on my new sci-fi novella — April/May
Relaunch of Strange Reports from Sector M — June/July
Circle back to Book #7 — August/September
Support Sector M
In closing, if you would like to support what I do, here are some of the ways you can help. If you have previously bought one of my books, one of the best things you can do is leave a review. It doesn’t cost money, it can be as short or as detailed as you like, and it will help with the algorithm that decides who gets to see what’s what.
2023 may not have gone the way I thought it would, but it has set up this year to be something of a clearing house for projects that have been waiting in the wings. I like to think of the phases of my creative journey as stepping stones. So, I believe that 2024 will, in turn, become a way to set up 2025 for something entirely new. I am certainly looking forward to that.
So, that does it for the State of the Sector Address for this year. If you’ve been here a while, thank you so much for sticking with me. If you’re just now joining us, welcome aboard! In any case, I appreciate you all — each and every one.
In December, Wizards of the Coast released Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. Like many fans, I was eagerly looking forward to a return to the world of Krynn. While the book itself was very hit-or-miss for me, especially as a source book, just looking at the map of Ansalon again took me back to the time when I fell in love with Dragonlance.
The story, the characters, the setting — all of it really resonates with me. In the pantheon of fantasy epics, the Chronicles and Legends trilogies rate right up there with Lord of the Rings in my estimation. So, for this blog, I thought I would share the particulars of how Dragonlance first came into my life.
It was, as it turns out, quite a happy accident.
The First Taste
When I was about 13, a relative of mine came down from Michigan. I had never met him before that summer. He was older than me by a few years and interested in many of the same things I was, including tabletop role-playing games. At that time, I had played some Palladium RPGs, but never actually played D&D itself. He was also a big fantasy reader.
Between trips to the local pool, he told me about this cool new fantasy series he was reading. (No, it wasn’t Dragonlance. That would come a bit later). The series he described was actually the Deathgate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. He had the paperbacks of the first two novels with him, Dragon Wing and Elven Star. Since he was big into collecting the hardcovers, he gave me those two well-loved (but dog-eared) copies of the books.
I devoured those two novels over the next couple of weeks, and loved every page, character, footnote, and appendix. That was my first taste of what Weis and Hickman could do when they collaborated together. It definitely wouldn’t be the last.
A Fateful Trip
Many moons ago, there was a B. Dalton Bookseller in the Broadway Square Mall in Tyler, Texas. I loved that store, and I was sad to eventually see it close down. I had an uncle who lived just outside of Tyler. Any time I would go to visit him, he would find an excuse for the two of us to head off to the mall to look at books. Like me, he was a voracious reader. While he was not a rich man by any means, he made sure that any novel that really caught my attention came home with me.
Not the precise one I went to, but it looked pretty much like this.
Normally, we would each get a book, read it, then give each other a verbal book report about it the next time we saw each other. We had similar tastes, so when one of us liked a book, we would let the other one have a turn at reading it. I didn’t realize until much later that he never asked for any of the books back that he let me borrow. This was just another way that he helped me fill up my bookshelves.
So, on one of these trips, he found an anthology of fantasy short stories called Tales 1: The Magic of Krynn. The cool cover had been what first piqued his interest. This is a photo of the actual book he got on that day. As you can see, it’s been read over many times.
He really liked the book and recommended that I read it as well. Looking through the table of contents, I found some familiar names. The very last story in the book was called “The Legacy,” and it was written by (you guessed it), Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
Raistlin Did Something Really Bad.
[Some DL spoilers ahead, so take heed.]
In “The Legacy,” we find an aging yet powerful warrior named Caramon who is worried for his son, Palin. Palin is going to take his test at the Tower of High Sorcery to see if he can become a wizard of the White Robes. There is an uneasiness hanging over everyone in the story. Caramon, Palin, and the other wizards of the Tower all seem on edge.
Turns out, it’s all because Caramon’s brother, Palin’s uncle, did something truly unconscionable. Everyone is really upset about it. But here’s the thing: No one says explicitly what Raistlin did. Whatever it was, it was so heinous and world-shattering that everyone in the story speaks Raistlin’s name in hushed tones. That’s one of the reasons that no one is exactly thrilled that Raistlin’s nephew wants to become a wizard as well.
Of course, now I know the whole story, but back then I had no idea who any of these characters were, what they had done previously, or what their interrelationships looked like. This was my very first introduction to them. “The Legacy” wound up being about 100 pages worth of pure foreshadowing for me. I was intrigued to know more.
Larry Elmore for the Win
Sometime later, my uncle and I were once again in the B.Dalton looking for new books. The fantasy novels had inhabited one back corner of the store for a long time, but the eponymous booksellers had rearranged the books since the last time we visited.
As I passed by one shelf on the way to my usual corner, I caught a glimpse of Caramon’s distinctive dragonhelm. I recognized it from the cover of The Magic of Krynn. In this painting, he was in his fighting prime. Raistlin was present beside him wearing the red robes of neutral mages instead of black. I was, of course, holding a copy of Dragons of Spring Dawning with cover art by Larry Elmore. Elmore had also done the cover for The Magic of Krynn, so his artwork was instrumental in introducing me to Dragonlance at two separate points.
I had thought that Palin and his brothers, Tanin and Sturm, were the main characters of the setting. Here, I was seeing compelling evidence that they were, in fact, the second generation of heroes in Dragonlance.
Without hesitation, my uncle bought me all three volumes of the Chronicles series. I couldn’t wait to dive in. I read the first lines of Dragons of Autumn Twilight in the car on the way back to his house.
A Lasting Impression
In no time flat, I had read all three books. Hungry for more, I picked up the Legends series, which finally revealed to me the epic bad deed that Raistlin had tried, and failed, to do. Finally, the circle I had started with “The Legacy” was complete. I moved on to many of the other books by other authors in the Dragonlance setting, but the six books by Weis and Hickman really stuck with me.
One of my favorite pieces of fantasy artwork. Ever.
I began reading their other series as well. The Rose of the Prophet. TheDarksword. Margaret’s solo series, The Star of the Guardians. Let’s not forget the rest of the Deathgate Cycle, which I didn’t finish until I was in college.
To say that Weis and Hickman were an inspiration to me is a massive understatement. Dragonlance had captured my imagination. It became the spark for me to start writing my own fan fiction. Admittedly, it was really bad fan fiction, but still a necessary step to becoming a writer myself. Krynn gave me a familiar place to set my stories, and I went all in.
Becoming a Hero of the Lance
When I first read Dragons of Autumn Twilight as a young teenager, I had yet to play D&D. So, I’m actually someone who fell in love with the world of Dragonlance before I ever played the game it was set in. Years passed, however, and I finally got my chance to play in Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and a few homebrewed settings. Never Krynn, though.
The source of the aforementioned fan fiction? That came when a good friend of mine announced that he wanted to run a Dragonlance campaign using the original modules. Here was my chance to step into the world I had been such a fan of for so long. I have to hand it to this friend of mine, he loved Dragonlance as much (if not more) than I did, and it definitely showed.
I took on the role of a gentlemanly Knight of Solamnia, who had seen a vision he couldn’t explain and had gone on a quest to find the story of the True Gods. He was joined by a tinker gnome from Mount Nevermind, a brother Knight of the Crown who harbored a potentially ruinous secret, an enigmatic mage of the red robes, and a dwarven drill instructor from Thorbardin. Together, they became the new Heroes of the Lance.
Everyone who made up characters for this game role-played them to perfection. I’ve played in a lot of memorable campaigns over my gaming career, but as Paladine as my witness, this one had a kind of life to it that I have never seen before or since.
Simply magical.
The Journey Continues
There have been occasional forays back to Dragonlance over the years, whether in the pages of a novel, or in game. Dragonlance is still very much a part of me to this day. This series was precisely at the right time/right place for me as a young man. It continues to be a source of inspiration. I have my annotated Chronicles and Legends hardbacks on display in my office.
I’m happy to say that I’ve been able to meet Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and Larry Elmore at various conventions over the years, though I’m not sure they would remember me. I’ve been off the convention circuit for many years now, even before the pandemic, but I’m hoping to catch up to one or more of them at some point in the future.
To the three of them, if any of you should read this, you have my most heartfelt thank you. Your work helped give a kid who was really struggling with, well, pretty much everything a place to go when the world grew too heavy to bear. Beyond that, I can trace much of my interest in becoming a fantasy author back to Dragonlance.
Lastly, I would like to thank my uncle, whom I sadly lost in 2015. I miss him still, especially when I set foot in a bookstore. It was through his understanding and generosity that I found the magical world of Krynn and was forever changed. So, to him, I’d like to simply say:
I have an admission to make: This was not my original idea for my last blog of the year. Recent events, however, have put my situation as an author in a whole new light, almost certainly setting the tone and focus for my writing in 2023 and beyond. As you read on, I think you’ll see why.
Science fiction has long been my “home” genre, the one in which I feel like I have something to say. This is especially true of military sci-fi. I love stories that feature new classes of starship, starfighters engaged with other starfighters in deadly dogfights in space, dropships carrying determined Marines in power armor into battle, pretty much all the tropes of the genre. Heinlein was a big influence on me early on, and my first published novel, The Backwards Mask, was steeped in all of that.
Unfortunately, the market for military sci-fi right now is pretty tough, especially for authors who do not already have an established readership. I had several conversations with literary agents, editors, and industry professionals recently about why this is.
I don’t pretend to know all of the internal workings of the industry, but from what I gather it’s like this: The pandemic really messed up the supply chain, including production of the book-weight paper that publishers use to print (you guessed it) books. Since there will be fewer books printed, publishers want to go with the books that they know will be a sure thing. They are less inclined to take chances when they have fewer resources to go around. The supply chain has improved somewhat since then, but the inertia of the industry still remains.
This has made midlist genres like science fiction instantly harder to break into since publishers aren’t putting as much resources towards them. The midlist genres are those that have an established readership, but don’t have the broad commercial appeal of, say, a mystery or romance novel. You are unlikely to get an international bestseller of the scope of TheDaVinci Code or The Bridges of Madison County out of science fiction.
After much soul-searching, I have come to the conclusion that I need to put science fiction down for the foreseeable future. I’m still trying to break into the industry, and it just doesn’t look like my path forward for traditional publishing has science fiction in it. At least for now. This is not to say that there isn’t a great demand for science fiction from book readers — there certainly is — but if publishers aren’t terribly interested in military sci-fi at the moment, agents won’t be either. Books have to have somewhere to go.
That means that the sci-fi series I’ve been developing, that already has two finished novels to its name, one that I’ve worked on for many years, needs to be shelved, possibly indefinitely. It’s hard to say what publishers may want six months, a year, or five years down the line, but it’s been made pretty clear to me what they don’t want right now. So, as much as it breaks my heart, I’m leaving science fiction behind. I hope to return to it one day, I honestly do.
Does this mean I’m going to stop writing? No, not at all. It just means that I need to change my angle of approach. I’ve decided to hang up my power armor and gauss rifle in favor of a well-worn travelling cloak (that may at one time have been green) and strap on my storied, ancestral sword. That’s right, I’m switching over to fantasy as my main genre.
So, why do I think fantasy might work if sci-fi can’t or won’t?
Well, I used to see the two genres as close family, walking essentially hand in hand. They are usually found in bookstores together. Depending on the store, they might even be lumped together into one section. We often see “SF/F” as a signifier for the two genres in concert. More and more, though, there are literary agents who represent fantasy but not science fiction. A recent convention I attended had only about three agents present who would consider sci-fi. For fantasy? Double that or more. Fantasy and sci-fi are no longer equals. Fantasy dropped a haste spell and raced ahead, leaving sci-fi behind in its wake.
Whether you attribute it to the long-standing popularity of Harry Potter, the Game of Thrones show on HBO, or immensely popular authors like Brandon Sanderson, people who wouldn’t have been readers of fantasy ten or twelve years ago are reading it now. Fantasy is the closest thing to mainstream that it has ever been, and publishers are looking for more.
Truth be told, I avoided the fantasy genre for the longest time. I didn’t feel like I had much to say that hadn’t already been said by much better authors than myself. Also, Tolkien’s effect on the genre can’t really be overstated, like the moon’s pull on the tides. It’s exceedingly difficult not to be influenced by his work in some way or another, if you trace it back far enough.
Conversely, it’s almost too easy to find yourself walking along some of the paths that he first blazed. I didn’t want to be just another author rearranging the furniture in his house and trying to file off the serial numbers, nor did I want to chase the trend of grimdark fantasy when it became popular in recent years. So, what’s an author to do?
Little by little, one idea that I’d had in the back of my mind for a while fused with another. I started making connections in my head. New concepts and old designs began to temper each other. Not long after I had an outline and a map. Then I started writing what was essentially an experiment. I don’t want to give away the name, but the initials for that manuscript are “DMM.” I was happy with the result, and I found my voice in the genre, opening the door for more.
When it came time to choose my next novel, I wrote another experimental manuscript, very different in tone and execution, but tangentially set in the same world, as well as on the same continent (though separated by vast distances and set in another age.) This one’s initials are “AOTO.” While the book is finished, and I believe it’s the best plotted and paced book I’ve written so far, it still needs a lot of polishing before it’s ready for the querying process. That’s on my to-do list for the near future.
Both DMM and AOTO are each meant to be the first volumes in their respective series. Without spoiling anything, one story is a meditation on war, society, and coming to know yourself when everything else has been taken away. The other is about an outsider finding a place to belong and coming to understand why the cause he follows is the right one for him, while also discovering the strength to stand up for what he believes in, no matter the odds. I’ll leave you to decide which one is which.
I pitched these ideas to some industry professionals, and their feedback was that these two books might be able to land in the current publishing environment where my sci-fi series couldn’t. So, starting next year, both DMM and AOTO will be entering the query trenches, likely in that order. Let us hope that the light of Paladine, Crom, UL, Primus and/or Eru Illúvatar can shine down upon them as they seek to find their way into the light of day. It won’t be easy. Then again, nothing worth doing ever is.
So, that’s where I am at the moment. The New Year will see me switching gears and continuing to push forward. I hope that you will continue to join me on this journey, albeit along a path I had not intended.
I wish you and your families a happy and safe holiday season! I will be back on Friday, January 6 with the State of the Sector Address. We’ll talk about what worked, and what didn’t, for 2022 and set out our goals and aspirations for 2023. I hope that you will join me for this.
Now that the holidays are behind us, I’m happy to come before you today to talk about 2022.
Geeks, nerds, pop-culture aficionados, lend me your ears.
I have big plans for Sector M, so I thought I would take a few moments to outline what I’m working on currently and let you in on my plans for the future.
So, without further ado, let’s dive right in.
A new day dawns, bright and filled with promise.
On the Horizon:
Website Update:First, my author website is long overdue for an update. I’m going through every page and link to see what needs to stay and what can go. My goal is to have a refreshed site somewhere around the end of February. [Update: the new site is live here.]
Patreon Revamp: I’m also in the process of completely overhauling my Patreon benefits. I’m going to add new tiers, new ranks, and lots of cool rewards. There will be ample opportunity for us to build something worthwhile together. So, if you like what I do, please consider supporting Sector M on Patreon when the time comes. My current plan is for the new stuff to go live in May. In the meantime, I’m pausing donations from all current Patrons until these new updates go into effect.
New Merch: While all that is going on, I’m reworking my merch store, too. It was on Redbubble, but I am planning to migrate my store over to another platform, possibly Printify. This will give me more flexibility to bring you all new designs, better pricing, and additional options beyond just T-shirts and mugs. I will unveil the new store here when it goes live, which I’m hoping is in the April timeframe. [Update: the new merch store is now live here.]
The Sector M Podcast: I am blessed to know a number of truly geeky people, and we’ve got opinions. Boy howdy, do we. Thus, I’m going to try my hand at podcasting to share our thoughts, hopes, and opinions with all of you on a whole host of geeky and nerdy topics. I’m still in a fact-finding mode on this, so more on it as it develops.
Σε έκανε να φαίνεσαι!
Now the Author-y Stuff:
Finished #6, Started #7: 2021 was a difficult year to be creative (for many reasons), but I was able to finish my sixth novel at the beginning of July. It’s a fantasy book that I hope will be the start of its own series. After a few months for edits, polishing, and querying (see below), I started my seventh novel on Halloween. This is my first excursion into the cyberpunk genre with some fun twists. It’s also a book that might truly be a standalone, a one-and-done. I’m trying to have a working draft by Halloween of this year.
I’m Querying #3: My third novel is a military sci-fi/space opera novel. Some version of this story has been with me for a long time. It’s changed a lot over the years, but I’m glad to finally arrive at a point where the on-paper version has aligned with my vision for it. As I said in my Alive and Kicking post, querying is not for the faint of heart. It can be pretty brutal, and it’s definitely a marathon and not a sprint.
The Sector M Blog: For a few years I haven’t been in a position to regularly contribute to this blog, but that is changing. My plan is to release an original piece of blog content on the third Friday of each month (with a few exceptions). The first one will post two weeks from today on January 21. In addition, I hope to have more announcement-style blog posts to keep you apprised of merch additions, writing updates, news, and more. Currently, these are the dates I plan to post a new blog entry:
Facebook No More: This happened a while back, but it bears repeating. I have put the Sector M Facebook page into indefinite limbo. I did not delete it, but it is no longer an avenue I use for communication. It just doesn’t align with what I want to do anymore, and I was at a point of diminishing returns with it. I would encourage you to follow me instead on Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads. Also, I highly encourage you to follow to this blog.
Strange Reports from Sector M: If you’re new here or you want to get an idea of my writing style, my anthology of short fiction is available through Amazon in both an e-book and hard copy format. It’s 13 stories ranging from very short flash fiction to full-length novellas. A veritable sampler platter of genres, you’ll find urban fantasy, military sci-fi, and even some horror within its pages. You can find it here.
Say it with me: “Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Kodan armada.”
How You Can Help:
If you like what I do, here are some of the things you can do to help Sector M grow:
Follow this blog: If you’re reading these words, please follow this blog. This platform will be a large part of my online presence moving forward. The number of followers will be something of a barometer on how much I’m able to get the message out, so please join either by regular subscription (the “follow” button should pop up in the bottom right-hand corner), or follow by email.
LEAVE A REVIEW!: Sorry for the all-caps treatment, but leaving a review is one of the greatest things you can do for an author aside from buying a book. This goes for any independent author, not just me. Reviews, especially on Amazon, are the key to the site’s referral algorithm. So, please-oh-please, if you buy one of my books, please also leave a review. Please and thank you.
Support Sector M on Patreon: As I stated earlier, I’m in the process of reworking my Patreon experience with new perks, new rewards, and more ways to be collaborative with the Sector M community. When it’s ready, I urge you to give it a look and see if it’s for you.
Tell a friend: No, this isn’t a pyramid scheme. It’s the fact that folks who love science fiction, fantasy, and geek/nerd pop-culture tend to flock together. Word of mouth is extremely important, so if you know of someone who might also enjoy my work, please tell them.
Contact me: I have a dedicated email address for all things related to Sector M. If you have an idea or suggestion to make things better, or just want to drop yours truly a line, you can contact me at: TheSectorM@gmail.com.
Well, that about wraps it up for the State of the Sector for 2022. It is my intent to make this kind of update a yearly thing in early January. Whether you are just now finding out about Sector M, or you’ve been here from the beginning, I appreciate you all.
The Sector M 