On Ordeals, Great and Small, and Their Crashing

by rsbakker

I’m always amazed at how alien words feel after taking a break from writing, almost as if they’ve used the time to talk amongst themselves, rehearse their grievances, then set about organizing various work-to-rule actions. Plant shut-downs never fail to unnerve me with the possibility that I’ll never get things back up and running.

But I need to get the plant back up and running, and quickly too, because… my UK publisher has finally come to terms on the fourth book.

I had intended on chronicling what’s been going on behind the scenes these past months, the ups and downs, the false starts, the miscommunications, but now I’m really not sure what purpose would be served outside prolonging the prolonging. The important thing is that The Great Ordeal will be published next year, and The Unholy Consult will be published the year following. The exact dates still need to be worked out between my US and UK publishers–I’ll pass those along as soon as I know them.

Why has the book been split? For the same reason The Prince of Nothing was split into a trilogy many moons ago: not because of greedy publishers or a greedy me, but because the story proved longer in the execution than in the planning, plain and simple.

In the meantime, “Crash Space” has just come out in the esteemed Midwest Studies in Philosophy, part of an entire issue dedicated to the relationship between philosophy and science fiction. I’ve yet to receive my gratis issue, but I already know from reading the contributions by Eric Schwitzgebel, Pete Mandik, and Helen de Cruz that it is well worth perusing. If you don’t happen to have a visit to the library in your near future, you can find the archived draft version of “Crash Space” here. Let me know what you think!