Glynn Stewart
patreon
2024 in retrospect, 2025 ahead
🕑 Added 2025-01-03 00:30:13 +0000 UTC
(Image is of our two cats, Freya and Skadi, looking out the front door above a "Beware of Cat" welcome mat", with Halloween "Caution-Danger" tape above their furry heads)
A bit late on retrospective, but I’m looking as much forward as backward today.
I didn’t do one of these in 2023. Things were chaotic and messy at the end of that year, and it took a lot longer for things to settle down than I had hoped or expected.
At the end of 2023, my partner and I moved back to Calgary to be closer to family. After losing my mother and everything around that, we wanted to make sure that we were available to support my siblings and father—and with some of what happened in Ontario, we needed their support in turn.
It seems to have worked out in some ways, if not as well as I’d hoped. To manage the workload for both of us, I slowed things down and we only released six new titles in 2024: Chimera’s Star, The Exodus Gambit, Wartorn Stars, Ambassador for Mars, The Old Guard and Raven’s Hope.
2024 saw me kick off a new series with House Adamant, which has been greeted warmly by fans old and new. There’ll be two more books with Lorraine in 2025, and then I will see where that series goes. I have an idea for books five and onward!
Starship’s Mage continues, with poor Roslyn getting into deeper and deeper trouble while Damien keeps the home lights on. There will be two Starship’s Mage books in 2025 as well, delving deeper into the events at the frontier with the Reezh / Reejit.
2024 also saw the ten year anniversary of the Starship’s Mage series starting and the end of our existing audiobook licensing agreements on the first five books. This fortunate coincidence struck us as a chance to do something special with the series, which became the Anniversary Editions—edited ebooks and paperbacks with new audiobook recordings.
There’s been some unexpected difficulties there, mostly caused by Audible not handling books that are no longer in circulation at all well.
We have two more Anniversary Edition books to release in 2025 (noticing a pattern of twos here? I am!).
Raven’s Hope marked the end of the Peackeepers of Sol series. While there are open threads in the setting, Hope wrapped up the Expeditionary Fleet’s arc nicely and made for a good point to leave the series. While I never say I absolutely will not return to a series, there are no plans.
I do plant to continue Teer and Kard’s adventures sometime in 2025 and I will also be releasing a brand new science fiction adventure novel (potentially the kickoff for a series, depending on how well it does, since nothing stays a standalone in my brain!).
While I work hard to be optimistic in all of my work, I have definitely seen that the presence of a real war on people’s minds has slowed the interest in military science fiction overall. I will be experimenting with more adventure-focused works, stepping away from the more directly military style I have written in the past.
We’ll see how it goes.
I’m hopeful for the new year. The last few have been non optimal for us, but we seem to finally have our feet under us.
Plus, in the immortal words of Alanis Morissette, “the only way out is through.”
Happy reading everyone. I hope your 2025 is full of calm, warmth, and highly precedented events.
-Glynn Stewart
Comments
Mark Evans
Anyone else keep checking here for the patreon edition of the chimeras fall to drop available..... i'm dying here waiting for the next book.....
Jonathan Amundsen
I'm looking forward to whatever you put out this year. I love it when you move the stories forward. I get very excited for new worlds too. And I had actually been thinking it would be nice to tell some of the same morals without the war/combat/military focus. I've thought that some of these universes/social/economic backgrounds could be great settings for stories about small businesses, volunteer groups...more common folks than military leaders. Also, often military conflicts are zero-some without ways for multiple winners. I think reality has more win-win opportunities usually. I've often thought more good fiction where the ideas and tools of Non Violent Communication solve some aspects of the problems would be a good thing for humanity. Just some of my thoughts. Excited for whatever you write this new year, and hoping you experience this coming year as a good one.
Jennifer Baratta
Will continue to enjoy reading your work and sorry for your loss.
Michael Murakami
Sending best wishes and blessings your way. I’ve always loved your work. Hoping 2025 is a great year for you.
Cameron Craig
Warm wishes to you and yours for this next revolution around the sun for our favorite mud ball! I’m looking forward to whatever is next on the agenda for you as you’re my auto-KU, then auto-buy author! Really curious, what’s Maria Soprano up to lately? I think she’d be an interesting pic for a Hand focused on espionage, and that ilk!
Christian Klein
Understandsble, a minority of fans would of course be very happy but it would be a hit or miss in terms of feasibility... Especially when you depend on the translator to get the vibe across. For myself, I adore the Starship's Mage universe and the characters. Your worldbuilding is great, it felt like you were there when Blue Jay got ambushed.... I am hyped for Chimera's Fall
Glynn Stewart
Unfortunately, Audible appears to default to trying to search the database of books for sale even when you are looking for books you own. Since the Tantor versions of the first five Starship's Mage books are no longer for sale, this means you need to manually force it to search your library instead. I have never used Audible or Alexa in my life, so I can't give advice on how to do that. While I recognize everyone's frustrations, this one is entirely on Audible.
Glynn Stewart
We have only made one attempt to create translations and we ended up pulling them because of the feedback I was receiving from German readers. I'm a bit gun shy at this point, to be honest, so I can't promise anything.
Christian Klein
Quick question that may relate to the next years, will there ever be translations of Starship's Mage into German?
Mark Evans
I’ve had loads of problems with Audible and the Starships mage books. And the Alexa devices not finding my audiobooks.
