Enjoy the view when you have a chance.

I am almost always the one driving, mostly because I actually like the process of operating a motor vehicle. It's one of the reasons why, despite most vehicles in One Day Lucky being capable of driving autonomously, there are still cars and motorcycles that people operate manually. But recently, I've been in the passenger seat a few times, passing through some of the areas from the story and just enjoying the view.

Which has been how the publication process has felt lately as well. Now that the launch date has passed, it feels a bit like I am now just a passenger on this journey. The book is going to go where it will, and maybe I can make some suggestions on the route but it mostly has a path of its own. It hasn't been entirely unpleasant to just sit and watch for a few minutes, but the time for rest is over.

The first edit pass has come back for the Hux novella. With every edit pass, I tend to crack the email open immediately and sneak a peak at the doc preview, get increasingly despondent as I scroll through all of the red ink, and pretend for two days that everything is still OK. Then I get to work, and realize that everything is actually OK. Part of the fun of writing for me is finding solutions to plot problems, so picking the red ink apart and finding better ways to tell the story feels great. I'm not a passenger in that journey. I'm still driving, just with someone who knows how to get where I want to go with me, pointing out the places where my route is suboptimal. It always ends up in a better place, once I get over deleting things that I probably thought were very clever when I wrote them initially.

Once you are done reading One Day Lucky, here are a few more options for your summer rides in the passenger seat. This batch focuses on dystopian themes, so there is some dark stuff in here. I am grabbing B of the Bang. I've read Shanahan's Before and After so I expect this one to be good as well.

If you're after something a little less dark, I've read both of Mira Wendam's books and loved them. Dead Line is a crazy cross between the hard cyberpunk of T.R. Napper and a John Wick style action flick. The Live Machine is a lovely, almost utopic character-driven book that builds an excellent platonic love story into a dystopian action setting. It seems weird to say that it is both utopian and dystopian at the same time, but it is a deep story that captures both. You can find more info on Mira's site, and get a free short story called Warship City that I also loved. As a bonus, she does all of her own covers and they are lovely.

Thanks,
Dave