Susan Sto-helit. Because in this world, after everyone panics,

So here I am again, pulling out notes and past writings and assorted research materials, organizing my thoughts and thinking about worldbuilding. 

Guess that didn’t take long. It’s been just over a week since Vision of Alliance’s launch spluttered and crashed, in spite of me doing advance work that included an absolutely marvelous blurb from a writer and friend whose work I respect. Just under a week since I decided that nope, I’m not going to continue with drafting the Goddess’s Vision trilogy, even though I have a somewhat solid outline and 15,000-some words into the second book. 

Sometimes the Universe needs to clobber me with a clue-by-four. Let’s just say that this trilogy has been a real struggle for me and…well…someday I might pick it back up. Or not. I’m not going to let it suck 2026 down the drain, though. Major relief washed over me when I made that decision, which tells me that it was the right choice to make. 

Meanwhile. I’ve been poking at the concept of a SFF/Western crossover for some years now. A big chunk of the Martinieres was about letting me play in that world in a more contemporary/near future setting. However, I’ve been wanting to do more with alternate histories and how could things have gone differently and perhaps better with regard to European expansion into the Pacific Northwest. 

The history of the region where I grew up is deep in my heritage, at least as far as such things go. My mother’s family was among the early Oregon settlers but, unlike the ancestors of a number of other settler descendants I’ve known over the years, they didn’t seem to aspire to fame or notoriety, even at a local, “old family,” level. I like to joke that they deliberately sought out obscurity. There are several family stories claiming good relationships with the Modoc and Klamath peoples—all fairly obscure connections, of course. Hard to say what the truth of it is, and I’m really not in a good position to prove it one way or the other. 

However, I find myself wanting to tell stories in the nineteenth century Oregon Country setting. I suppose it’s something vaguely similar to what John Steinbeck was trying to do with East of Eden (to be honest, I had a high school teacher get me hooked on Steinbeck so he’s been an influence on me for a long time). I’m not as ambitious as Steinbeck, though he has inspired my desire to write about the country where I’ve lived. The land is a living, vibrant character of its own in Steinbeck’s Salinas novels. I’ve found myself drawn to Pacific Northwest writers who evoke that same deep love and knowledge of the land, both realistic and fantastic alike. Ivan Doig. Molly Gloss. Ken Kesey. Mary Emerick. H. L. Davis. A host of others, and…the queen of them all, Ursula K. Le Guin. 

My perspective on writing in this land and this setting isn’t about historical realism. There’s lots of that about. Nor am I particularly interested in writing a historical romance. Science fiction and fantasy is the world I like to play in when I’m writing, and…I had several ideas on tap whispering that it was their turn to come out and play. 

These ideas don’t slot nicely into categories of “Weird West,” “alternate history,” or “steampunk.” Oh, there are elements of all three categories in the two major ideas I have but the notions don’t fit into any one of them. As a result, I’m calling it all “neoWestern fantasy.” The story I’ve picked to work on is set in the world of my Bearing Witness novella, with something malevolent attacking the multiverse at roughly the same time and place in each universe’s history, around the mid-nineteenth century in North America, and the characters are rallying to protect the multiverse’s last refuge, Kalosin, against the baddies. Time travel gets involved because the baddies want to homogenize all the universes in their image, and they are from the far future. One of the characters is a nineteenth century person abducted from her world at a very young age and conditioned to be a time cop for the baddies due to her skill with languages. Then…she finds out the truth and flees to Kalosin. 

Sounds more complicated than it really is, but I’m still building that world. There’s going to be a lot there because I may end up fleshing out some short stories to get a deeper understanding of this particular world. Lots of backstory present, and some of it may well appear in different books. I have a loose idea of what the story is going to be—but where I start it will be what needs to emerge as I rough out my plans and research over the next month. I may start at the beginning…or not. 

In any case, off I go on another worldbuilding adventure. We’ll see where it takes me. I’m planning to share the journey of this novel on an irregular basis, but hoping to shoot for weekly updates. At the moment, it has the working title of Vortex Worlds. But whether that becomes a book title or a series title…remains to be seen. 

(Will the Martinieres sneak into this series, given that it’s a multiverse and by all logic they’d be part of it? Probably not. Oh, Etienne might make a cameo appearance but the Vortex is not the same thing at all.) 

Anyway, right now I’m promoting a bundle on Itch that features several of my women characters with agency. If you haven’t read my work before, it’s a good introduction to several of my series. $18.90 for ten books, or 50% off of individual books. Check it out!

https://itch.io/s/181380/joyces-womens-history-month-special-sampler