How To Combine Three Stories into One - My Latest BIG Idea

Okay, so here's the scenario. In the story, The Star Trader, Tycho Station has been devastaed  The big battle is over and the survivors are picking up the pieces. Bane Sollar is on his way home after delivering young baby Morgan to his grandparents on TS9329P3. His job now is to get the surviving Tycho Star Traders together, protect the remaining assests, rebuild the family. Oh, yeah, find the people responsible for the attack and destroy them, knowing that most of the Trade and all the Planet Corps are against them.
Meanwhile, running parallel to The Star Trader is Dragon Summer. In this story, we find out that Morgan did not make it safely to his grandparents. The robot carrying him to the monitoring team was intercepted by a local cop and has disappeared into "the system." His grandparents and the rest of the team don't know anything about the Tycho Massacre or their now missing grandson. It is not until Sollar sends them a message, explaining his actions, that they realize something has gone terribly wrong.
Dragon Summer picks up 15 years later, when Morgan successfully escapes from the school orphanage and starts out on his own to find out who he is and what happened to his family.
By the time Morgan finds his way to his grandparents, the Star Trader Galaxy is five seasons into a war that has united Star Traders, Planet Corps and the Frontier Council into a new Alliance. Their goal is to destroy the Hoards of Horath, a warring race from a neighboring galaxy that has set out to conquer the Star Trader Galaxy and in particular, the Star Traders. In the Star Trader, Sollar has had to postpone his hunt for the people who murdered his brother's family as the Tycho Star Traders join with the Trade to battle the Horath. And over in Dragon Summer, the time has come for Morgan to travel to Gaanard to establish his presence in the Trade and start on the long journey to claim his Family.
So you see, we have three stories running at the same time, The Star Trader featuring Bane Sollar, Dragon Summer featuring teenaged Morgan Elias Hawkes and Heritage, The Horath War, featuring a cast of thousand. About half way the the war, The Star Trader and Dragon Summer come together to blend in to a fourth story, Gaanard Station, which takes us out to the end of the war, the rise of the Alliance and a bunch of other stuff as Morgan becomes a Star Trader, and eventually, the StarHawke Tycho, the Elder of the Tycho Star Traders.
So I am going to blend Dragon Summer and The Star Trader together then finish up with Gaanard Station, with the war coming along for the ride. Instead of four different novels, I'll end up with two.
The first one will contain Dragon Summer, The Star Trader, and the first half of Heritage, the Horath War.
The second one will contain the merged ends of Dragon Summer and The Star Trader, Gaanard Station, and the second half of the Horath War.
I need to update some diagrams, so I will end for now. I'll try to make a flow chart that shows all of this. In the meantime, don't worry. Its all clear in my brain...

Stress

Doctor says I have to reduce my stress. In today's time, that should be fun to do, hey? Let's see, what shall I do?
Can't stop working, can I? Big Project. Lots of work. Lots of deadlines. Lots of stress...
Can't go on vacation... Got to work on Big Project. Don't have the money or the time. More stress...
Gee, I guess I could stop writing... You know, staying up late, using some of that quiet evening time when no one is around to really get things done...
I've sent the first story to two different publishers with no luck. Just more stress...
Should I send it to others? Should I give up on this project?
Stress, stress, stress...
Maybe I will...
Maybe I won't...
Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets...

What do you think?

Hurricane Cats

I was looking through some photos of the cats today and got to thinking back about the time we brought them home. They had been to the vet in Galveston, and Big Boy was pretty loopy from the medicine they had given him for an abscess on his head. (Probably from fighting?). We had a pen set up in the back yard for them. The plan was that they would stay in the pen for a couple of weeks until they got used to us.
Well, Baby Girl escaped the first night, disappeared without a trace. We started letting Big Boy out of the pen bit by bit. He would walk around the back yard but then come back to the pen. About a week after Baby Girl disappeared, Big Boy took off.
We were disappointed but we kept a watch for them, putting out food on the front porch from time to time.
One day Cindy looked out of the windows in the study and saw Baby Girl. She put some fresh wet food out and backed away. Baby Girl came up and very carefully ate the food. Then she disappeared again. But she came back the next day. And the next... And the next...  About a week later Big Boy showed up.
Slowly but surely we made friends with them and invited them into the house. Now they are part of the family.
This photo is one of Big Boy and Baby Girl eating together on the front porch, getting used to coming around each day and getting fed.
Now, when I come home from work and the cats see my car coming down the street, they head for the house, knowing its time to eat.
I really love these two cats. I hope they stick around for a long time.

Back up and do it right?

Wednesday I received a rejection e-mail from the Donald Maass Agency. Really bummed me out for a couple of days. I was already in a funk, and that news did not help. Not that I hadn't expected it.

But Heinlein's Rules are starting to take effect so I should get back to work soon. Maybe a bit this weekend.

The problem is that I really want to rewrite Tycho Station. That would be breaking the rules... hmm...

Okay so last night I dug out an old document I started. The document is a history book, the history of the Star Folk and the Star Traders.  Its basically a twenty thousand year outline of the Star Folk and Star Trader.

I'm going to try to update and flesh it out some more. Try to resolve some issues by having something concrete to rely on. Then I might take a shot at Dragon Hunters this summer. July is NANOWRIMO at Rivendell, so maybe I will outline it and then start it during the contest. In between I'll work on Dragon Summer.

And sneak a peek at Tycho Station along the way.

Next week's job is to find another publisher or agent to send Tycho Station to.

In the meantime, I have been looking at a website called Smashwords. They take you paper based book and "smash it" into an e-book, Kindal doc that I could sell electronically on the web. Sounds interesting, so I'll have to look a bit further...

If I take Tycho Station the e-book route, I have to go through it and strip out the formatting, which would give me an excuse to edit it...

So, lots of options. Biggest problem is time. And patience. Got to stay patient to work a few hours here and there. And not stress out when things don't work out.