(Image is of our two cats, Freya and Skadi, looking out the front door above a “Beware of Cat” welcome mat”, with Halloween “Caution-Danger” tape above their furry heads)A bit late on retrospective, but I’m looking as much forward as backward today.
I didn’t do one of these in 2023. Things were chaotic and messy at the end of that year, and it took a lot longer for things to settle down than I had hoped or expected.
At the end of 2023, my partner and I moved back to Calgary to be closer to family. After losing my mother and everything around that, we wanted to make sure that we were available to support my siblings and father—and with some of what happened in Ontario, we needed their support in turn.
It seems to have worked out in some ways, if not as well as I’d hoped. To manage the workload for both of us, I slowed things down and we only released six new titles in 2024: Chimera’s Star, The Exodus Gambit, Wartorn Stars, Ambassador for Mars, The Old Guard and Raven’s Hope.
2024 saw me kick off a new series with House Adamant, which has been greeted warmly by fans old and new. There’ll be two more books with Lorraine in 2025, and then I will see where that series goes. I have an idea for books five and onward!
Starship’s Mage continues, with poor Roslyn getting into deeper and deeper trouble while Damien keeps the home lights on. There will be two Starship’s Mage books in 2025 as well, delving deeper into the events at the frontier with the Reezh / Reejit.
2024 also saw the ten year anniversary of the Starship’s Mage series starting and the end of our existing audiobook licensing agreements on the first five books. This fortunate coincidence struck us as a chance to do something special with the series, which became the Anniversary Editions—edited ebooks and paperbacks with new audiobook recordings.
There’s been some unexpected difficulties there, mostly caused by Audible not handling books that are no longer in circulation at all well.
We have two more Anniversary Edition books to release in 2025 (noticing a pattern of twos here? I am!).
Raven’s Hope marked the end of the Peackeepers of Sol series. While there are open threads in the setting, Hope wrapped up the Expeditionary Fleet’s arc nicely and made for a good point to leave the series. While I never say I absolutely will not return to a series, there are no plans.
I do plant to continue Teer and Kard’s adventures sometime in 2025 and I will also be releasing a brand new science fiction adventure novel (potentially the kickoff for a series, depending on how well it does, since nothing stays a standalone in my brain!).
While I work hard to be optimistic in all of my work, I have definitely seen that the presence of a real war on people’s minds has slowed the interest in military science fiction overall. I will be experimenting with more adventure-focused works, stepping away from the more directly military style I have written in the past.
We’ll see how it goes.
I’m hopeful for the new year. The last few have been non optimal for us, but we seem to finally have our feet under us.
Plus, in the immortal words of Alanis Morissette, “the only way out is through.”
Happy reading everyone. I hope your 2025 is full of calm, warmth, and highly precedented events.
-Glynn Stewart
Best of luck in 2025, looking forward to all your new titles!
Thank you for the retrospective, I realised I missed the last two Raven books somehow. Error corrected)
Cheers!
The end of the Raven! Do you mean you are going to leave this universe, or just this storyline?
Do the Kenmiri survive?
Why do the Ashall all look the same?
I have no plans to return to the universe.
While I know the answers to most of the implied mysteries of the setting, this was never intended as the type of series where all of the questions were going to be answered.
I might turn my notes on that into a blog post at some point, potentially as part of a piece on worldbuilding and how much of the iceberg the reader needs to see.
Was a great series, am catching up on the 2nd book I missed last year.
Would appreciate if, at some point, you would do that blog just to tie off those interesting loose ends; will bring that little cherry on the top for completness.
Thank you for all the hard work you do and great stories you tell!
Quick question: given the market shifts you mentioned, would you consider doing more adventure oriented stories in new settings or also in old settings potentially suited to a side expansion (eg scattered stars universe) with some indication on a different tone? Personally, would happily read both.
Cheers
Raven’s Hope was the last in the series?? Wow maybe I read it too quickly as I had no idea. I was looking forward to the next one!
In any case glad to hear you feel you’re getting your feet back under you, and looking forward to the adventure book.
I see Chimeras Fall is live – but not Kindle Unlimited. Is that intentional?
This has been fixed.
I hope you will also still write military scifi. It’s hard to find good authors in the genre and I do really enjoy it. And in the books at least the good guys win. But to be honest I also really liked the found family and fight against the crime syndicates in Scattered Stars: Evasion.
I would like more adventure instead of fleet based stuff, more in the vein the first Starship’s Mage book which was a fun fugitive adventure semi the same with The Red Falcon trilogy