Running a little late this morning and so this post will be a brief one.

With my latest novel now off to a publisher and query letters off to new agencies it is time to turn my attention from my former Work In Progress to my next one.

I had two in mind, one the idea came quite recently and would be a direct sequel to Vulcan’s Forge as I had some rather intriguing ideas, at least to me, on the fall out of the vents of that novel and the larger ramification it had for the fictional setting as a whole.

The second is a more fleshed out novel about ‘no contact.’ A situation where aliens have arrived at earth but have no communication with humanity and one person who thinks she has fond to key to bridging the gulf between the humanity and aliens.

The ‘no contact’ idea has won out, principally because I see the arc of the entire story including the ending. It is a truism that I cannot write a story or even a decent outline until I know how it ends. Endings are critical. To me they are where plot, story, and theme unify. And so soon I will begin the pick-and-spade work of hammering out an outline for my next novel.