What's Next & When

It has been a year since I published anything, though not for a lack of trying. Last fall, after spending all summer trying and failing to come up with a new stand alone novel, I turned to writing a sequel novella to Kieree and then a new Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure. I got a few thousand words into the Kieree sequel, Sian, and something like 17,000 words into the new Rafe D’Mere and Kee’s story The Aerie of a Pirate Prince. But finished neither.

In the Guy & Molly story, Sian I had Guy and Molly going back to the non-conforming society that Guy had escaped from in his youth, though, of course, 700+ Marian years had now passed since he left it. He felt the need to rediscover his roots and to see if the decedents of the family he left behind still existed. I had something of a story in my head, but couldn’t get it to the point where I was excited to write it. 

I ran into a similar problem with the Rafe D’Mere’s story. I had the beginning – all 17,000 words of it – written, and I had a definite ending in mind… But I then realized that I needed to come up with some 20,000 words to fill the middle of the story before the ending I had in mind -- if I wanted it to be a novel. And I did. I didn’t have 20,000 words worth of ideas readily on hand to do that, so I had to stop and try to dream up enough action to write about to fill the needed 20,000words  to get me to the ending I had in mind, which was a too daunting task. 

So I shelved that idea as well, and instead, returned to my summer project with some new ideas that eventually turned into The Road to Eura, my 2023-24 novel.

So here we are. What's next? I recently watched an interview with the SF and fantasy author Adrian Tchakovsky. During that interview he said that he could write a novella in a month, because a novella requires only a beginning and an ending, thus avoiding the long, hard slog through the middle to make a novel. It seems that if I’m to self-publish anything in 2022, I'm going to have to take that approach to heart. So, any port in a storm – or a story – it’s going to have to be a novella this year.

And with both the beginning written, and the ending planned, that novella it is going to have to be the Rafe D’Mere story.  At present, I have almost 24,000 words written, and have reached the beginning of the ending of The Aerie of a Pirate Prince. Now I only have to try to recall how I had that ending working out… The details are long gone. But I still have the twist, so it is mostly just a matter of choreographing action – which I hate doing. Still, I think I am not going out too far on a limb to say that I should be able to come up with another 10,000 to 12,000 words for a nice fat novella. And that I should be able to completed it within the next two months. All I really need to do is get excited about it, think about it, and then finish it. Stay tuned.