A New Story Underway

Well, after some idle time over the summer and fall after finishing up The Lost Star's Sea, and several false starts, I'm 25,000 words into a new, stand alone story. Ideally, I'd like to see it finished and published in the Oct - Nov 2018 time frame, which is quite do-able. But it will be done when it is done, and I'm not feeling any pressure to get it done by a certain date. I will keep you informed as to landmarks in its progress.

It has been rather slow going, three steps forward and two back. I've rewritten the opening act several times over the last two months. After getting some 20,000 words into the story I realized that I had focused on two characters that I didn't actually need, and who would play no part in the rest of the story after the first act. Now, I'm never one to start a story off like a bat out of hell, so spending 20,000 words on non-essential characters right off the bat seemed like a pretty iffy proposition. So I started over. I've had to revise this second start several times as I change my mind on how I want to stage the action. The opening act needs to set up not only the rest of the story, but the climax as well, so I have to make the actions in the opening act justify the climax. I think I have the first act down now, except for the usual tweaking -- that is best done by coming back to it after the story is completed. 

With the opening act more or less done, my writing is now bumping up against my day-dreaming. While I have the story sketched in, many of the day-to-day scenes need to be dreamed up, and to do that I usually have to replay and revise every scene many times in my head to get it right -- preferably before I put it into words. If I put it into words too soon, as I have been doing, I then have to go back and change those words. And then go back in subsequent revisions and try to get the words right. I have a ways to go... But I've been putting 2 - 4 hours a day into it, so it will get done, if I live long enough.


You may have noticed that I've been very vague as to what type of story I am writing. I want it to be a surprise. I will only say that it is something different than what I've written before. Life is too short to do the same thing over and over again -- without a regular paycheck. So you can expect that it will not be a space opera, a planetary romance, a steampunk adventure romance, or a new adult SF romance.