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I’m currently writing my Great Lost Opus, which is to say the third book in the Metropolitan sequence, which was never written because my editor was fired and his fiction line canceled before I could get started. I’ve been promising it for 25 years, and I’ve decided that it’s time to deliver.

Starting work on this long-delayed project involved my reading the first two books, Metropolitan and City on Fire, for the first time in many years. And my reaction, from the perspective of 25 years, was “Holy shit! This is the best stuff I ever wrote!”

So now I have to ask myself if after all this time I can make the third book as good as the first two. It’s an intimidating prospect, even though I know I’ve learned a few things in the last two-and-a-half decades. I’ll try like hell to make it better than the first two, but at this stage I can’t guarantee anything.

Certain elements of the books seem more of-the-moment now than when they were originally published. The two main characters are people of color, and the book’s discussions of race and privilege seem more a part of today’s discussion than what was happening in the Nineties.

Accordingly I’ve commissioned new covers from Elizabeth Leggett (including a cover for the book I haven’t actually written yet). Back in the 1990s you couldn’t put a person of color on the cover of a fantasy novel, but you sure as hell can now, and I want the covers to make clear the diverse casting of the books.

And then, of course, there’s the question of whether I can sell the series again to a publisher. I’m reasonably confident that I can, though maybe not to the Big Five. If I can’t sell it, I can publish it myself (and hey, I’ll already have cover art).

I’m writing the book entirely on spec, the first book I’ve sold in, well, ever where the serious writing didn’t wait until I had a contract in hand. So it’s a bit of a risk, but I’m better situated than I was a quarter-century ago, and I can afford risks now.

So far the writing is going slowly, which was also a frustration with the first two books. But COVID and the lockdown have made it difficult for me to maintain concentration— I’ve become very easily distracted— and the war in Ukraine hasn’t helped. So bear with me, this may take a while.

You have my permission, however, to salivate.