Time moves fast. You start writing in earnest in your early twenties, and before you know it you look around and you realize that you’re creeping up on fifty. It’s enough to make you want to move to a deeper gravity well just to stretch things out a bit. But then, of course, your subjective time would still be the same. Oh well.
As crazy (and difficult) as the last few years have been (hopefully visible from your side of the screen only in my relative scarcity from the podcasting and publishing scenes), they have been rewarding. Even kinda fun.
People always say “Time flies when you’re having fun.” This is a dumb idea. I can think of few things more likely to ruin my fun than looking for flies with a stopwatch in my hand.
Nonetheless, I’m now officially in the second half of my forties, and that has me looking around thinking “What do I want to have finished before my fiftieth year is up?”
I’ve been thinking about it since my birthday, and I got one thing right at the top of my list:
I want to finish—and get to market—my fiftieth book.
My bibliography currently stands at 37 books. 25 of those are on the market, the remaining twelve are somewhere in the publication process.
Their titles? Glad you asked:
The Auto Motive, a new fantasy Heinlein-style juvenile
Death Flight to Mars, a hardSF locked-room thriller set aboard the first colony mission to Mars
Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact’s Bible
The Art of Agency: A Guide to Self-Ownership
Unfolding the World: A Guide to the Changing Epoch
The Briggs Defection (Joss Kyle #1)
The Hartman Gambit (Joss Kyle #2)
The Orinthal Deception (Joss Kyle #3)
Deep Characterization (Every Day Novelist #3)
And a new short story collection, as-yet-untitled
But wait! There’s more!
In progress, there are several other volumes:
Marking the Grey Dawn, a standalone near-future science fiction novel
Extinction Tango, the final volume in the Clarke Lantham series
The Secrets of the Heinlein Epic
A new Heinlein-style Juvenile, as yet untitled
Books 4-6 in the Joss Kyle series
Another new book in the Every Day Novelist series
Suave Rob #4
That’s a total of ten works-in-progress.
So to get where I want to be in my fiftieth year, I must:
Publish those twelve existing books
and
Finish those nine works-in-progress
and
Write a further four books
and
Publish all of them, and publish them well
All over the course of the next four years.
In a previous life, I’d have considered that an almost underwhelming goal, but since my time is now split between the usual writing and podcasting and boostrapping a farm and building a retreat center with my bare hands, it’s looking like a bit of a tall order to me.
So here’s me planting my flag in the ground:
I’m going to get to fifty by the end of my fiftieth year, and as I do I’m going to make it entertaining for you who follow along.
If you’re following this blog, you’ll get periodic samples and teasers of the works in progress, and announcements on the progress. If you want to join me with your own challenge and be part of the solidarity group, a modest donation will get you into the forum/discord server/etc.
Let’s face it, the 2020s are shaping up to be a hard decade, but hard times are where the artists that shape the future find their voices. I’m going to be forging my legacy in this crucible. Come along and watch—or, better yet, use me as an excuse to start forging your own!
jdsawyer
After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of silicon valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him.
Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past.
To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world.
For news and free stories, sign up for his occasional newsletter. Or find his contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net
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