I officially started writing my new novel tonight, set in the Birthright universe during the War with the Tahni. It’s tentatively titled “A War to the Knife,” though that might change.
I had to make a choice about what to write next after Glory Boy, and it was a hard one to make. Glory Boy was a novel I’d first envisioned in the late 80s, so that one was a no-brainer, but after that, for the first time in 5 years, I was entertaining the idea of creating a different universe besides the Duty, Honor, Planet timeline and the Birthright timeline. I’ve put a LOT of thought, time and effort into fleshing out both of those universes, and the idea of trying to come up with yet another was a bit daunting. In the end, I decided to hold off on doing that for a bit, both to put a bit more time and thought into it and also because I felt like there were more stories to tell in the Birthright timeline.
One of them, a very compelling one, I thought, was the Battle for Demeter. I’d first referenced it in Enemy of My Enemy, then explored the very beginning of it in Glory Boy, but there was a whole novel’s worth of story to be told there and I had to find someone’s eyes to tell it through. That character is Randall Munroe, a young Force Recon Marine who lands with the Glory Boys in their initial, ill-fated attempt to retake the colony, and is stranded there when most of his platoon is mowed down in an ambush and he’s left for dead.
Randall Munroe has a colorful history before Demeter and I hope he’ll be an intriguing voice with which to tell this story.