E.S. Raye

We’re more than halfway through 2026, so it feels like a good time to share a run-down or roundup or whatever you prefer to call it of my writing so far this year!

Let’s start with what’s been published!

Short Stories

While I have ramped up my novel writing, short stories have fallen to the back burner. But despite that, I’ve still managed to get a few published this year.

“The Séance“

Published in April’s edition of Blood Moon Rising, this short, sort-of horror story features a non-believer, a roadside psychic shop, an ectoplasmic entity, and an ancient deal now concluded.

Influenced in no small way by Hellboy, this story was fun to write and is a taste of some of the style for projects I have planned but have yet to put down on the page.

“Athenaeum 496”

Published in June in Other Tales Vol. IV, “Athenaeum 496” is a stand-alone spin-off of my novel Gas Giant Gambit. It features Hector Vega, a little boy in GGG, all grown up and off on his own adventure to save Las Ráfagas from a natural disaster. While he does find a solution, the moral dilemma that stands between him and saving his family and home is major.

Since I wanted to get this one out to a broader audience, I abandoned much of the “space-western” aesthetic that GGG is heavy with, opting instead for a harder sci-fi feel. But some of it remains, and while you don’t have to have read GGG to read this, there are a few connections I think readers will enjoy.

And one final note, this one took a while to get to publication. It received many rejections, most of which came as the normal form denials, but it also received the most positive rejection I have ever gotten. The editor basically told me the loved it, but their audience wasn’t so into hard sci-fi. It was disappointing at the time, but I am grateful now, as it has found its perfect home with Other Tales.

“Visitors”

Also published in June, this time by Flash Fiction Magazine, “Visitors” is undoubtedly my most experimental and most overtly political short story published by a third party (my self-published flash fiction “Today’s Undead Forecast” is similar in its experimentation and politics, and all my stories have some political bent, most are just buried deeper in the narrative).

Told exclusively in dialogue from news and opinion TV broadcasts, it tells the story of flying saucers appearing all over the world. Not a unique idea, I know, but it goes on to make a pretty topical point regarding immigration.

Screenwriting

Like short stories, my screenplay writing has also been largely put on hold as I focus on my novels, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a small bit of news to share!

After Gas Giant Gambit won an award or two, and a random encounter from my wife Jessie, one of my older short screenplays may be getting made!

To make a long contextual story short, the connection I have with a Canadian independent film company came to me through Jessie, who works in mainstream film and television. I had been working on a pair of low budget feature films with the company a few years ago, but since the people who run the company also have day jobs in the film industry, as well as the nature of getting budgets for independent films, both of those projects stalled.

As I got more into editing and publishing GGG, I also became busy, and the relationship sort of stagnated.

But, one of the indie producers crossed paths with Jessie on the set of the show she was working on, and it sparked something new.

A fresh contract has been signed to see if they can get funding to turn one of my short screenplays into a short film! It’s a fun and gory little cosmic horror script I wrote for a contest a while back, then adapted into a short story, which was immediately accepted by Lovecraftiana for publishing next year (and it’s the first time a short story has been accepted by the first place I submitted it!).

There is no guarantee the screenplay will get made, but how fun would it be to have the same story in both print and film?!

Works-In-Progess

As you’ve probably gathered if you’ve gotten this far, my main focus this year has been accelerating my novel writing. As such, I’ve got three project currently on the go.

Shallow Trenched/Open Skies

As a follow up to Gas Giant Gambit, which takes place around 200 years into the future, I decided to go back in time. Shallow Trenches/Open Skies takes place during World War I, specifically around the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as the Battle of Passchendale. It deals with the urban legend that the Red Baron shot down a flying saucer over Belgium in the spring of 1917.

The main character, Lt. Bernard “Griz” Behr, fresh out of West Point Academy, is sent to the front line ahead of any other American soldier to recover the craft which both the Germans and the Allies assume belongs to the U.S.

Tiny Spoiler Alert: while the U.S. is happy to let everyone think that, it does not.

Griz starts the book angry about the war, as it has impacted him in a deeply personal way, and he is eager to get to fighting. This despite his supreme lack of leadership, marksmanship, and general combat skills.

Suffice it to say, he gains new perspective on humanity and war, and he ends the book a changed man.

Featuring a diverse cast of characters, including an African-American pilot, an Sikh infantry man, and a Canadian woman who I don’t want to give too much away about and spoil the fun, Shallow Trenches/Open Skies‘s also takes place in the same universe as Gas Giant Gambit, and acts as a backdoor origin story for Gus’s ray-gun, Delilah.

The first draft is complete. Now I’m letting it marinate in the back of my brain for a bit before I tackle editing a second draft.

Untitled Cosmic Horror

While ST/OS simmers, I am working on world building and outlining the novel that will follow it. This one doesn’t have a title yet (although a few are percolating), but the broadstrokes are taking shape.

Set in a fictionalized version of the California town I grew up in, in late 1957, I am attempting to tackle a wide host of subjects. The main theme will be about faith–not necessarily faith in a higher power, but faith in something–but will also touch on topics relevant to the time, like the fear of Communism, racism, televangelism and faith healing, and more.

There will be a quasi-elder god seeking a physical form, a man building a cult around it, and a female main character who has lost faith in her country, her body, and her life.

And yup, you guessed it, this one is also part of the Delilah-verse, though the connections won’t be made clear until several other novels are released that connect it more overtly.

I’ll probably start writing this first draft after the second draft of ST/OS is done.

The Cobalt Fist

And finally, I am still working on outlining the entire seven books as well as the over-arching story for my superhero/sci-fi/cosmic horror/alternate WWII history series. I am hoping book 1 of this series will be the manuscript I write after the cosmic horror one, but we’ll see how far I get into the outlining by the time I’m done.

As you’ve probably caught on by now, this one is also a part of the Delilah-verse, but this is what the Delilah-verse is designed to build up to! In fact, Delilah herself was designed for the main character of this series, not Gus from Gas Giant Gambit. What’s more, each of the novels that come before it set up The Cobalt Fist in some way that will become apparent later.

I’ve put off writing this series because I wanted to improve as an author before I got to it. It is by far the most ambitious thing I will have every attempted, and I think I’m almost ready for it.

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It’s gonna be a busy few years, and I hope you’ll stick around for the ride!