Last Thursday I asked those who've read my books, particularly the Maxwell Saga, to give me their views on whether, and/or how, to continue that series, or replace it, or take another direction. As I write these words, there have been 40 comments on that post, and I've received 23 e-mails offering additional perspectives. That's a great response! Thank you all very much.
The consensus seems clear. I'll include Steve Maxwell as a "visiting character" in other books and series, as he continues his rise up through the ranks in the Lancastrian Commonwealth Fleet, but I won't pursue the Maxwell Saga as such any further. It was my first venture into fiction writing, and I enjoyed it very much, but I've developed as a writer, and I think I can do better than the structure I established as my first effort. In addition, I don't want the series to drag on and on, because readers and fans get turned off by something that never ends. There are plenty of examples where that's happened, and I don't want to make the same mistake.
A few of you asked about nominating one or more of the books in my new trilogy, "Cochrane's Company", for the Dragon Awards this year. I'm looking into that, to find the answers you need, and I'll post something about it within a few weeks. I'm very flattered that, having read only the first book in the trilogy, you think it's worth nominating. I hope you'll find the second, which comes out next week, to be even better!
Watch this space for more details. Thanks again!
Peter
6 comments:
So far Maxwell, Laredo, and Cochrane's has all been destroyer/patrol craft space combat, I've been looking forward to see Steve run a cruiser or battleship and how you do them in this universe.
Speaking of the Dragon Awards, have you considered coming to DragonCon as a guest? I have no idea if they've invited you before or not, but they've invited Larry Correia, Eric Flint, and Michael Z. Williamson, so I think you'd fit in perfectly well. :)
@TheAxe: Watch this space . . . :-)
In this Universe, as I understand it, Cruiser or higher command would be utterly boring. It was hinted that there are only a handful of powers that can field anything bigger than cruisers, so these mostly take the role of the core of the home fleet (the 4 LIGHT cruisers of Quinjan for example). The number of powers that could challenge the Commonwealth (wich can field Dreadnoughts IIRC) is extremely small, and of these at least one (the Bismarck Cluster) is described as an Ally of the Commonwealth. Even a shooting war with one of the smaller powers will be no more interesting than the US Navy against Togo. So unless one of the "Superpowers" of this Universe gets a Megalomaniac as supreme leader any cruiser command will consists nearly solely of garrison duty.
Extremely comfortable for the crews of the ships, especially if it is the home planet of the crew, but from a story point of view, not so interesting.
I was hoping for that wrap-everything-up-with-a-bang book 6. And I think that full Commander Maxwell as a destroyer captain would be interesting.
However, past that, I tend to agree with MadMcAl - the bigger ships don't, apparently, operate as independently.
Also, wasn't his next step up likely to be as exec on a bigger ship? Unlike his assistant-navigator cruise, that's too high to be readily given a detached assignment. And unless his ship's captain was incapacitated or killed, being an exec looks to be a hard, relatively thankless, job with little scope for independent action.
So maybe this is a good place to stop the main series. But does your decision preclude, several books and 20 or so years down the timw line, a book focused on Captain or even Admiral Maxwell dealing with some larger problem?
@Javahead: No, it doesn't. We'll see what happens.
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