Hoorah! I finished the second Hak Iri story Motive of Man and submitted it to Cirsova.

I started it near the start of 2022 and stalled at 1k words. I wrote little more until this past May. I had hoped to keep it to a reasonable length of 10k words, but I ended at 14.5k. Cirsova does publish novelettes, so I haven't disqualified myself.

I'm very happy with it. I managed to give it a decent love element, even if it's primarily an adventure. There's a touch of my usual discursive philosophy, too. The varied aspects do account for its length!

There's even a complete poem (one that uses the rhyme scheme I learned from Pushkin's Eugene Onegin). Including the poem may have been a terrible self-indulgence, but the narrator is ostensibly a poet, so hey. It serves the love story in a hefty way, I think.

Fear not. There are mecha-men with blastors, too.

As I've mentioned before, whether or not Cirsova accepts it, Motive of Man will find its final publication paired with the sixth and ultimate Hamlin Becker tale, in a sort of postscript book to the Stellar Stories trilogy.

My first Hak Iri story was, of course, The Impossible Footprint, published by Cirsova and re-published in my Stellar Stories Vol. 2. When I first thought to continue Nictzin Dyalhis's Venhez stories (see here), I didn't know how far I'd get. Two is more than zero and maybe a third will happen.

I've had fun developing the mythology (the Lords & Ladies stuff is mine, not Dyalhis's) and I've especially enjoyed fleshing out the characters.

The precedent of Dyalhis's purple prose has also allowed me to employ a rather purple style of my own. It's a shame I need the excuse of "precedence," though. Purple is pleasing. But I guess I'll be more restrained in other stories, haha!

While I have an idea for a third Hak Iri story, of course my priority is the sixth Hamlin Becker story. Since that already has the weight of at least a novella, I'm going to write it a little differently.

Thus far the Becker stories have been rather from Becker's POV. There is some divergence from this, but not a lot. In the new story, while I won't be doing explicit POV changes, I will be narrating things that Becker is not a part of. It will mostly be a step up to 3rd-person omniscient, I guess.

I need to do this because so many threads are coming together and situating Becker in every thread would be impossible.

Now I just have to get over my postpartum lassitude from Motive of Man...

From the get-go I've wanted to use different artists for the covers of Stellar Stories. For a while I had a hard time finding the right artist for Volume 3. This week I got lucky. The Fiverr search presented an artist I hadn't seen before. He took the gig and the art is done!

When I got the final art for Volume 2, I didn't have to contain my excitement for very long. I was able to share the art right away, since Volume 2 came out right away. The release of Volume 3 is, for various reasons, months away. You'll have to wait! But trust me: You'll like it.

If you're here you've probably already bought Volume 2 of Stellar Stories. If not, why don't you grab it now? It's really good! Go here...