AFTERWORD

This is a very important book for me. It saw my fandom grow– after the first book's lukewarm (charitably) launch. Speaking of the first book, if you, like most of my readers (I think?) started with Marathon, and now want to move on to that one…

Don't. Not yet. Because the first book is very, very janky. It was my first long-form writing ever. I will be doing some heavy editing on the first half of it (and perhaps the ending to a lesser extent + some parts in the middle). I don't expect that to take longer than two weeks. Likely less. I will announce it pretty much everywhere I set up for this series (except the subreddit, I left that one to rot admittedly).

I have rewritten it. Here it is. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/73240/stardust

And then what?

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Well, I have plans for Stardust: Horizons, the third book. It will be somewhat closer in structure to the first book. Civilians getting dragged into an adventure. But it would be even less of their own volition than in the first book, and overall the prose there will be somewhat more experimental.

Yes, civilians. Frankly, I'm burnt out on writing military stuff set in Stardust for the time being; this book was 30k words longer than the first book and nevertheless had many fewer environments. We didn't see a planet from further than a long-range scanner in this whole book! I felt like I had cabin fever by the end of it. I still somewhat enjoyed writing this but I'm full, to the point where space travel in general will be less prominent in Horizons.

I hope you enjoyed reading this book more than I enjoyed writing it, by the end of it. 💀

Update: the third book is not Horizons. It is Labyrinth, and has a different premise. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/85822/stardust-labyrinth