I’m not complaining, honest.

Publishing is a strange business, and you couldn’t pay me enough to be an editor. Still, I haven’t mentioned Cyan since May ninth, and that is a problem.

I started this website about a year ago in support of Cyan, which had been accepted for publication as an e-book. Not self published, which offers no guarantee of quality, but published by EDGE, Canada’s premier publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

So what happened? Nothing very terrible, or very unusual. The editor who was handling EDGE-lite, as they call their e-books, decided to work full time elsewhere. I would guess from the vagueness of some emails I received that this decision took a while to make. I don’t know any details, and I wouldn’t give them if I knew. I’m not a fan of gossip. Anyway, the handling of my book has changed to a new editor, and that always leads to delay.

I finally got the word of what had happened in July, from Brian the publisher.

I am writing this on September fifteenth; I have mentioned before that I hate deadlines, so I try to have my posts ready well in advance. I expect word soon on what will happen next, but I can’t wait any longer to comment.

I have followers who have been with me for over a year, and new people who drop in every day. The former have probably been wondering what happened, and the latter have never heard of Cyan. So here goes.

Cyan returns to the style of science fiction in which the restrictions of relativity were exploited as plot elements. It gives a full picture of the exploration and colonization of one planet through the eyes of characters who are somewhat larger than life, in a tone designed to attract the general reader as well as hard core SF fans.

The story begins en route to the Procyon system on board the starship Darwin with her crew of five men and five women, and details their explorations. The planet they discover, Procyon A III – Cyan – stands straight up in orbit, with no inclination and no seasons. It has bands of unvarying temperature, from burning desert at the equator to permanent icecaps. Near 40° latitude is a broad band of eternal springtime.

Just as the explorers are falling in love with Cyan, they discover a group of creatures who have the beginnings of intelligence and culture. For the first time, Man has encountered a truly sub-human species. They call the creatures Cyl. Viki Johanssen, their anthropologist, recommends denying colonization to protect them, but Keir Delacroix, the crew leader on whom the novel focuses, will not endorse her proposal. 

The remainder of the book deals with this conflict and much more.

This is the first part of the summary I sent EDGE; I have chopped the last 342 words to avoid spoilers.

Scattered among the last year of posts are discussions of and excerpts from Cyan. You could go to the tag cloud, but it wouldn’t help much. The earlier posts were not tagged (I was still learning how to do a blog) and many of the later ones bear mention of Cyan without being primarily based on it.

I could bring you an annotated index of Cyan posts, as I did for early posts at 212, or I might recycle them. It all depends on when Cyan is going to be published.

Cyan is not forgotten. Stay tuned.