May, 2025 - Steven R. Southard (Poseidon's Scribe)

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Launch of The Seastead Chronicles

My newest science fiction book, The Seastead Chronicles, launched today. You can purchase the ebook version on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords and soon at Apple Books.

The Seastead Chronicles takes you through the 21^st century struggle to colonize the seas, to carve oceans into nations, and to build cities on and under the water.

Spanning decades of time and several generations, these fifteen tales include the early efforts to construct sustainable seasteads, the hostile reaction of land nations, and the scramble for seabed resources. After the pioneers come the settlers, who battle over territory and then form a new, ocean-based culture with fresh music and a new religion.

Seasteads are permanent dwellings located in (what are now) international waters. The word combines “sea” and “homestead.” In my book, seasteads form the cities that comprise “aquastates”—nations in the ocean. Not all seasteads stay put. Some move around, and one (an aquastate by itself) wanders the world. Aquastate borders sometimes change through disputes, or even conflicts, as land borders do.

The stories all take place in this world, our world of the near future, but each follows different characters as they grapple with the challenges of living at sea. As always when humans do something or go someplace new, they bring what’s best and worst about humanity with them.

A huge thank-you goes to Pole to Pole Publishing for accepting this book and for believing in it.

Today, you can only purchase the ebook version. The publisher should release a paperback version soon, and I’ll let you know about that in a future blogpost.

Get ready, readers, for The Seastead Chronicles, by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 17, 2025Poseidon's ScribePermalink Leave a comment

Cover Reveal – The Seastead Chronicles

Soon, my next book will launch. It’s The Seastead Chronicles, the first book in a series by the same name.

Throughout history, humanity confined itself to a small fraction of the Earth—the land. In the future, we take to the sea.

Fifteen short stories chronicle humanity’s 21st century struggle to colonize the seas. They include pioneering attempts to own and defend sectors of the ocean, scrambles over vast mineral resources, and quests by oppressed populations to live free. You’ll follow fierce sea battles over boundaries, experiments with unique forms of government, and efforts to forge a new, ocean-based culture.

Along the way, you’ll meet the bold and quirky characters who defy continental powers and their innate, land-adapted nature to settle and thrive in the water. You’ll get to explore the seasteads where they live, their shining aquatic cities—some fixed and some mobile—on and under the ocean. In reading this book, you’ll view life from their perspective, a world where water isn’t just for travel or temporary work—it’s home.

As Ray Bradbury did with Mars and J.R.R. Tolkien did with Middle Earth, I present a new world, but it’s our Earth with fresh borders within its oceans. Welcome to The Seastead Chronicles.

Stay tuned to this blog for further details. The book could launch in just a few days from Pole to Pole Publishing. It’s the first published story collection by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 13, 2025Poseidon's ScribePermalink 2 Comments

NaNoWriMo — Gone in Body, Not Spirit

NaNoWriMo is dead, long live NaNoWriMo. The ending of the organization behind National Novel Writing Month shocked the writing world. After over twenty years of operation, the group folded in March.

Organization

The interim executive director of NaNoWriMo, Kilby Blades, explained in a video why the organization folded. It terminated for financial reasons, she said, with income falling short of expenses.

All organizations face monetary challenges at some point, with infinite wants competing for limited assets. Only stern leadership with the strength to say no and a focus on top priorities can help an organization weather the occasional financial tempests.

NaNoWriMo’s leaders might have done their best, for all I know, but in the end their striving fell short.

Concept

When I first heard of NaNoWriMo, I marveled at the idea. Write a novel in a month? Amazing. It compressed the most daunting form of literature down to a manageable chunk of time. It made the unimaginable attainable. Even people who shied away from the imposing length of a novel could spare a month of concentrated effort.

The idea helped people realize how writing at speed, with the story notion fresh in mind and the passion for it still blazing, could provide a first draft in just thirty days. A very rough draft, true, but one you could polish. And you’d be one draft ahead of where you were just a month before.

The Future

Alas, that inspiring concept now lacks an organization backing it up.

But…wait a minute.

Do you need the organization? You still dream of writing a novel, and have some ideas for it. Thirty-day periods still exist in every year. What’s stopping you from vowing, at least to yourself, that you’ll write 50,000 words in the next 30 days? You needn’t even start at the beginning of a calendar month.

You’re free to declare your personal NaNoWriMo any time you want.

We can all lament the death of the NaNoWriMo organization. But the concept behind it never lost validity. Your next novel’s first draft might await you just thirty days from now, as might the next first draft written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 11, 2025Poseidon's ScribePermalink Leave a comment

Afternoon with Authors

I participated in an Afternoon with Authors event today at the Leaves Bakery & Books store in Fort Worth, Texas.

From left to right in the photo are Megan Dawn, Fabiana Elisa Martínez, Amanda Russell, and me. I learned a lot from listening to them discuss the writing process. Each of us, of course, does things in a different way.

We discussed our individual writing rituals, the reason we started writing, our writing influences, our preference for outlining or free discovery, the reasons humans like stories, and the ways we hope our stories affect our readers.

Each of us read some of our work. I read the beginning of my short story “Its Tender Metal Hand” from the new anthology Spring into Scifi (2025 Edition) by Cloaked Press.

I wish to thank, not only those fellow authors, but also the staff at Leaves Bakery & Books, and those who attended the event.