A Long Overdue Writing Update

It’s been over a year since I last posted here, so there’s quite a bit to catch up on. I’ve been working on both my fantasy writing and a Star Trek fan audio drama, and I realised that I need to introduce some of these projects properly before talking about what comes next.

I’ll start with Edge of the Federation, because if you only follow my writing through this blog, you might not have heard about it.

Edge of the Federation is a five-episode Star Trek fan audio drama, available on Spotify. It follows the USS Iona and its crew, and it introduced a character who has become an important part of my writing: Ebah Ezala, a Betazoid Starfleet officer.

Ezala’s story also continues in my novel Kzinti Will Rise. Spending more time with him gave me the opportunity to develop his character beyond those first audio adventures. I wasn’t finished with him, though, and that brings me to the project I’m working on now.

Beyond the Edge is a new fan audio drama that picks up later in Ezala’s career, after the events of the novel and the Khitomer peace accords. He is now a captain, taking command of the USS Shran, an Excelsior-class ship.

The first episode is called The Price of Peace. Its script is complete, and I’m now working on Episode Two while also developing the audio production.

The setting gives me plenty to work with. Peace has been agreed, but that doesn’t mean everyone suddenly trusts one another or that the problems along the frontier have disappeared. K7 is an important part of the story, and I’ve been interested in looking beyond the familiar image of the station to the people trying to keep it running.

Some of the recent writing has involved Kishna, a Bolian trade officer working there. She has her own reasons for wanting K7 to survive, and I’ve been revising her scenes so those reasons come out naturally in conversation. I want her to feel like someone with a life and a history, rather than someone who appears simply to tell the captain what is happening.

There is also a new crew to get to know aboard the Shran. One of them is Ell’viam, an Efrosian helm officer who is an exceptional pilot but has concerns about how others might judge her place on the ship. Ezala brings his own experiences to the command, while most of the people around him haven’t shared those experiences.

Episode Two continues the investigation into a missing freighter. I’ll leave the details there for now, but it’s giving me the chance to develop both the mystery and the relationships aboard the ship.

Producing the drama is another part of the work. I’ve been experimenting with AI voices, listening to different performances and working on the timing between speakers. A line can look perfectly reasonable on the page and then sound wrong when spoken aloud. Hearing the scenes has been useful for spotting dialogue that needs another pass.

Alongside all of that, I’m still working on The World of Eltheran.

Book One remains the foundation for the series, and my focus now is on developing Book Two. There is already a working draft, so this involves returning to existing chapters as well as planning and writing what follows.

The aftermath of the first book gives the characters a difficult starting point. Survivors are scattered, resistance is forming, and the consequences of earlier events are still unfolding. I’m working through how those larger developments affect the people caught up in them, including characters who will become more important as the story continues.

I’ve also been revisiting the history and mythology of Eltheran to make sure the next book holds together. There are things I want to explore further, but I’m being careful about when readers discover them. I don’t want to explain everything simply because I, as the writer, need to understand it.

So that’s where my writing is at the moment: back aboard a starship with Ezala, and back in Eltheran working out what happens next. I’ll try to make the next update a little sooner than this one.

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