In my 2025 year-end entry, I announced that I have been working on a science fiction novel, which really is my first-ever book. Its present working-title is “Reconnect” and I’d like to let you all in what it is about.

A quick summary of the story is as follows:

Keira Carroll is the Chief Security Officer aboard The Robyn, a passenger ship travelling its usual route between the planets Hibernia and Augustia.

After a mostly typical transit through a gate leading into The Hub, she and the crew encounter an unusual distress signal and are obliged to investigate.

Boarding a vessel of an unusual design, they find themselves with a crew and passengers seeking refuge claiming to be from somewhere long unreachable. However, doubts about the improbability of their origin are dashed when they witness technology far more advanced than seen before.

This discovery thrusts Keira and her compatriots into a multi-system conflict that had been brewing unbeknowst to the public for decades, with her becoming public enemy number one merely due to her helping those in need.

The summary really is the reason why I have been putting off this blog entry as nothing I wrote was approaching perfect. It has stressed me out to no end and so I have decided that since perfect is the enemy of good, I will post something that is good enough as it is unlikely to be whatever is on the back cover or some listing.

Earlier last year, I started to spend a lot more time compiling my thoughts and notes into a universe of my own creation. It takes place about eight hundred years into the future and its setting involves a period where much of humanity is no longer able to make its way back to its home world. I am trying to adhere to physics to a certain degree although I take some liberties with how things might transpire over the next near-millennia.

Naturally, this book is being written without the aide of any sort of large language models, meaning that if the book is terrible, you can blame me and me alone. So that should be exciting! Much of the book is inspired by Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer series, Andy Weir’s Artemis, James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series, and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion. The Expanse in particular is a fun one for me because as I built much of the core universe for the book, I began reading the series only to discover that much of what I had in mind was similar to theirs.

Although I have no plans for a protomolecule-like McGuffin I must lament.

I have no idea on how I will publish this book, but I will do my best to keep folks abreast of how things are coming along on my Bsky account. I tend to allocate up to three nights a week to working on this novel.

I’ll close off this post with two drawings from one of the pages of notes I’ve been keeping while putting this all together.

These probably make no sense on the surface, but that is okay! They’re for me to know what is going on and where things are! I can think of things in my head, but it’s easier to draw it all out so I am not later altering what I saw in my memory.

If you’re looking to help me out or offer any advice, my contact details are available on this site, but note that I do have a group of other writers to lean on so I am not doing this without the aide of wonderful people.