New Sci-fi Loading

There are some of you who may be familiar with my novella series, The Journey to Vega but by way of a quick intro, the series is made up of stand-alone stories set in the same universe. While there is light crossover between some of the stories, and some overlap of generation ships’ adventures (or should I rather say misadventures?), you are able to read each volume on its own. The stories take place in a universe where the last of humanity has set out to colonize a distant planet in the Vega system because Earth has been destroyed by runaway climate change, war and famine.

The first three stories (A Dark Genesis, Erebus, Ghost of Time) take place in more or less the same time period (some hundred years into the almost millennium-long journey each ship undertakes). But my new novella, Vega One, brings you the origin story of the entire series as we read about the lead up to and launch of the flagship, Vega One, in the beginning of its journey to Vega.

Vega One is set to be released late September, online on the 23rd (ebook pre-orders have already started), and in-person on the 26th when I will be a participating author at HalCon Stories From the Stars sci-fi book fair. I have another event a week later, the WFNS Booktoberfest, at which I will have an author table and be a workshop presenter. I know I’ll be excited for Vega One’s release as events approach and the marketing builds up some visibility around this new title, but right now, my main emotion is relief.

Relief? Well, this book almost DIDN’T get finished.

2025 was an incredibly difficult year for me and work on Vega One straddled the year (I started it in 2024), and was not in good shape for most of the year. There were critical problems with the story, and in real life, I was struggling.

I lost someone close to me, almost lost someone else, then found myself in the latter part of the year battling chronic personal issues and burnout from too many responsibilities (including new writing events that were great, but a real drain on me mentally and physically). The rise of AI-generated books, and the “enshittification” of the publishing environments us indie authors occupy had me throwing my hands in the air and seriously questioning my life choices.

Then I took a month off. In my mind, I had quit. I was done.

I stepped away from everything.

I took a break from social media, took a break from writing, took a break from the world. I built puzzles, read books, played games and planned Christmas. December was a month of as little as possible, and it was what I craved and desperately needed at the time after the go-go-go of the past four years, and an especially lousy 2025.

When January rolled around again, I started planning to do other work, ostensibly repositioning my skills to take on more editing work. This shift from full-time writing to bringing in some additional paid work felt necessary. Somewhat onerous, but necessary (it was a way for me to keep one toe in the writing world I had come to love). That side of business is going so-so (editing is yet another branch of the writing experience to see a major influx of AI-generated solutions, so the work is slow to get right now, especially since I am a fledgling editor and almost everyone wants way more experience).

I started 2026 very tentatively, and set some small writing career goals:

1. Get some books into local bookstores,

2. Redo my novel series, The Rubicon Saga (I’d lost the layout files I’d previously used, and wanted to do some refresh of the content and covers, so it meant a complete rebuild of three books, and the ebooks for them too),

3. Connect with more people locally. I was in need of friends and support in a new city (we’ve been in Halifax, NS, three years) to help me feel more grounded and connected to the place. I recognized that the loss of connection was a big thing adding to my burden, it can be hard figuring out how to step out into the world as a middle-aged woman, because, where do you start?!

Well, I did find friends. I also found a wonderful new writing group online. I’ve met up and made friends with a few of the people in the group. It was the thing that brought me back to life. Suddenly I felt more inspired, more interested, more engaged in my writing than I had in years.

In addition to this, I met the other goal of getting books in stores, and have recently celebrated the relaunch of The Rubicon Saga in an in-store event that went terrifically well.

Back in March of this year, an idea hit for how to rework Vega One, and I sat down to do the painful work of rewriting the story. I got amazing feedback on my rewrites, finding the input and support invaluable in propelling the book over the finish line. I found that support around me in my LOCAL writing community. This is something new to me. I’ve been part of writing groups before, but this encouragement, this engagement breathed new life into a writing career I felt was on its way out.

And now I have a new science fiction book loaded and ready to launch into the world – something 2025-Me didn’t think would ever happen again. I’m glad I stuck it out.

Am I excited? More terrified than excited. Am I happy I did the unpleasant work to rebuild the Vega One’s flawed story? Absolutely!

If there’s something I’ve learned from this whole experience it is that it’s okay to give up, but only for a little while. The answers are there, and sometimes you can’t hurry them into revealing themselves. Sometimes you just have to sit down and build a really big Star Trek puzzle.