Another quiet week for the inbox. I’ll chalk it up to the lull before the news cycle starts to pick up with Ardent Wings on Jealous Skies barreling toward release and cover art reveals forthcoming for Seven Days of Mercy for the Apostatic Priest and Ophiuchus Flinched. This week’s solicited question from Anthony D. in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Which forthcoming High Trestle Press series is your favorite?

You monster. You would ask a parent to choose between their children? Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose, and I did say I would answer anything.

As a reader, I honestly do not have a favorite. I write the kinds of books that I like to read, so each series is pretty narrowly tailored to my literary tastes. I enjoy the melodrama and high adventure of the Tales of Ciel just as much as the more elevated, literary style in The Divine Heretic. Shattered is a collage of my favorite influences across media, and The Compact Cycle is exactly the kind of sprawling, political space opera I feel like I’ve been searching for my entire life. Each series started as a story I wished already existed. Since they didn’t, I wrote them.

Speaking as a writer, I can give you a less mealy-mouthed answer. The Compact Cycle is the most fun to write. The universe is so expansive that the creative possibilities are endless, and the motley cast of cynical POV characters allows me to inject more humor into the story than in the other three series. It’s Saga and The Culture and Star Wars and The First Law and The West Wing. If that sounds weird, you’re not far off the mark.

I do have a favorite character. This will mean nothing to most of you for a few more months, but I’ve always enjoyed writing Aurelius Zender from The Compact Cycle. There. I picked.

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