“Well,” John scratched at his head as he stared out at the massive silver edifice spinning in front of them. “That’s something I didn’t think I’d be seeing today.”
“Is there a day you did think you’d be seeing it?” Tim asked from his chair beside him.
John thought about it for a moment. “Next Friday,” he decided. “The weird shit always happens on Fridays.”
“Whatever it is, there’s more than one of them,” ISAC interjected, enlarging the radar display to fill the entire screen on the central plinth with a sea of blurred blips. “A lot more.”
“I think it’s awesome,” Jim rested his arms on the backs of John and Tim’s seats and leaned forward. “Mysterious space station abandoned in the time stream’s evil cousin? You can’t tell me you don’t want to look inside.”
“I’ve seen that movie. It doesn’t end well for us,” John retorted. “Besides, what makes you think it’s abandoned? Looks like its operating pretty well from here.”
“…Dramatic effect?” Jim offered after a moment.
I’m pleased to announce that small snippet comes from the long promised but generally undelivered second entry in the Shadows of Time shorts series, The Trap. There’s still a fair bit of tweaking and editing to be done so I can’t give a release date more specific than “Early to Mid February” but it is indeed coming. And, for those of you who have been asking me about it (a group that much to my surprise actually seems to be steadily growing in number) yes, this is the first indicator that Titan’s Fall, AKA Shadows of Time 3, is on the way! Unfortunately, that one isn’t even done being written yet, so barring a sudden Howard Hughes type breakdown where I lock myself in a room for several weeks and do nothing but write, edit, and overhaul the entire publication industry, it is highly unlikely it will also be released early to mid February.
Anyway, enough of that, probably time to actually talk a bit about the story itself.
Much like the previous short, 2?, The Trap is told from a single character’s point of view, in this case that of Jim. Personally I’ve rather enjoyed this as Jim really didn’t get much to do in Probable Outcome, and given his expanded role in Titan’s Fall I’m glad to get the opportunity to introduce you all to him a little better. Unlike 2?, The Trap is actually set during the events of the main series, roughly 2 years after Probable Outcome. In fact several parts of The Trap were originally written for Titan’s Fall and then cut due to issues with the overall pacing of the story. Fortunately I’ve always been a firm believer in never throwing anything out, and what didn’t work in the longer novel actually turned out to work considerably better as a stand alone story.
That said, fans who weren’t particularly fond of 2? don’t need to worry – like that story, this is a completely optional addition to the reading order, and if you really want to skip it you can without risk of getting lost in the plot of Titan’s Fall. That said it’s also far closer in tone and style to the regular books, so I do hope you’ll check it out come Early-To-Mid-February. And not because I like getting royalties. Well, not JUST because I like getting royalties.
And I suppose this is the point where I really should talk about what the story’s about… Eh, see the excerpt at the start.
Happy New Year, everyone!