Starwalker Book 3: Complete!
After three and a half years, the first trilogy of Starwalker is complete. The last post of Book 3 went up last week, and I can’t be more proud of how the story has come out.
It has been a long journey. From the moment the Starwalker‘s AI was initialised, through her discoveries of who and what she was, to the relationships she built with her crew. And onwards, to the realisation of what the experiment she was built for really meant, the hard decisions about what they should do about it, and what that would mean for the little ship and her people. Through their choices and sacrifices, through chases and battles and long days in the dark, to a smoking, stumbling end where they might look at themselves and all that they’ve done. And maybe start to heal.
It’s a relief to get to this point, and a little sad. This is the original story arc I plotted out when I first began considering the story of the Starwalker. Twelve notecards on a pinboard with the section names in coloured, glittery ink. Beside it, a column of shifting crew member cards. Below, random other cards, mostly to serve as reminders of facts I needed to know, like colony details, ship names, and characters outside of the ship’s crew.
It feels like I’ve reached the end of that pinboard, the end of the story, but that’s not true. There’s one card left, a note I added about halfway through the first book when I knew there was something else I could pull into Starwalker‘s world. It’s an old idea of mine, reworked to fit into this world I’m in right now. It’s a link to the next phase, the next tale to open up before the ship. And beside it, there’s a second, imaginary card, the one I’ve had buzzing around in the back of my mind for a while. I think it counts, even though I didn’t get around to writing it out yet. Those two cards might be a link to a whole new pinboard; I’m not sure. Is there enough for another trilogy? It’s too soon to say. I’m not even sure there’s enough for another full novel at this stage.
I am sure that Book 3 is not the end of the story. I’m not ready to leave the huggable Starry behind, still a fledgling ship despite all her adventures so far. She has so much to figure out and her crew still have journeys to take.
But this tired writer needs a break. There won’t be a headlong rush into the next story (as tempting as it is); I would really like to do some prep on it before it’s ready to write, anyway. And a chance to catch my breath would be nice. To look back over the past three and a half years and remind myself: I just wrote three whole novels, and that’s pretty awesome. On the web serial, the wordcounts come out as follows:
- Book 1: 99,734 words
- Book 2: 119.213 words
- Book 3: 127,014 words
(I like stats. Stats make me happy. Also, they show that I apparently can’t help but get more spammy as I go along. Oops?)
Over on the Starwalker site, I just announced that I’m taking a hiatus, and that’s what I mean to do. I’m going to reflect a little bit and feel proud of myself. I’m going to rest and catch up on a few things that have fallen by the wayside. I’m going to make plans and maybe start on a few things that have been on my list for a while. And I’m going to prepare for the next run of Starry’s story.
More on this soon, once I figure out exactly what I’m going to do with my time off!
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