I’m at work on Know Thy Enemy, the second book in the CAA Adventure series.
The process isn’t glamorous. I outline the arc, write the chapters, then go back and fix everything the outline didn’t survive— pacing, plot holes, characters doing things they wouldn’t do. The research is the best part: this is hard SF, so the strategy and the tech have to hold together, and I spend a lot of time making sure the complicated stuff reads simple.
This one’s a bigger swing than book one. The biggest change is the cast. The mysterious Karl Holzhauser makes an appearance. He’s Merlyna’s absent husband from Book 1. In Know Thy Enemy, Karl, our four hundred and fifty year old AI engineer and devour Christian, has been shuffled into Patrick’s expedition last-minute by MOMI. CAA is up against an enemy that doesn’t fight fair, and the interesting problems aren’t the ones you solve with firepower — they’re the ones where every option costs something. The characters on the expedition get harder choices this time, because that’s where you find out who they are.
I’m keeping one eye on continuity, too. A series is a promise that the universe plays fair: the rules don’t change when it’s convenient, and what happened in book one still matters in book two. That takes more bookkeeping than you’d think.
Same goal as always: a story that moves, people you’d follow into a bad situation, and an ending that earns itself. If you haven’t read Innocence Lost yet, now’s a good time — it’s revised and back in print. I’ll share more on Know Thy Enemy when the manuscript stops embarrassing me.
