Still working on Stolen Property. The great thing about having a second set of eyes on a story is that I can get someone’s feedback on things that seem “off.” When you’re the writer and spend all of your time in the trees trying to get all the details right… well, you miss some of the moving parts that should connect together. Michelle and I are halfway through the editing process, progressing rather well. I have rough notes of things I need to add or change to improve the story. I’ll be fixing those today. I’ve also split my time over the week, writing rough drafts for various stories. Here’s the rundown:
- Mon, Aug 1: 3,179 words on Daphne
- Tues, Aug 2: 1,577 words on Daphne
- Wed, Aug 3: 2,438 words on Escape from the Abyss
- Thu, Aug 4: 1,243 words on Escape from the Abyss
- Fri, Aug 5: 257 words on Escape from the Abyss
I had a home improvement project I did on Friday. That cut into my writing time. I spent some time on Tuesday with a rough outline for a potential series based on the short story The Traveler. If I decide to write that one, I’m going to keep the books around 60k each. Bite-sized chunks. Plus, that series will start in the middle, where the main action is.
The Traveler Series
If you sign up for my email list and download the free short story (3.5k) you can blow through it in an hour or two and get an idea of the seed of a larger story that could be written. The first book will start with Earth already under attack by aliens. The story will take place in the future when humans have colonized Mars and some asteroids as well as moons around Jupiter and Saturn, etc. Humans do not yet have faster than light travel or any means to get to another star in a reasonable time. The Traveler is an interstellar probe sent by the Earth. In fact, the short story is about one of many probes sent out to every star that surrounds the solar system. Each probe takes 40 to 60 years to reach the star that it will radio back from (1/10 of the speed of light travel). Plus, radio speed back to Earth would be at least 4.3 years (for the closest star).
Anyhoo… The first book of the series will start years after the Travelers have reported back and aliens have begun a siege on Earth. The alien creatures can jump from one location to another by forming a portal in space and sending machines through to attack Earth. It’s grim. It’s desperate. Earth and Mars are throwing everything at these aliens just to try and keep from being wiped out. Ships and humans able to operate them get slim and desperate measures must be taken. So the protagonist is sent through a portal that opens at regular intervals to send attacking alien craft. The purpose of the mission is to try and get the technology that the aliens are using to form portals. The second purpose is to destroy the machine on the other side that generates the portals (because the attack craft they send through are too small to do it and they are just disposable robotic craft that comes through in threes).
OK, so that’s the basic story in a nutshell. Of course, there’ll be a twist or two (maybe more). I already have one twist in mind (don’t want to give any spoilers).
What’s next?
I wish I could just hammer out 15k words a day and put out a book a month. But, you know, the bills must be paid. I’ve got my weekly average up to over 1,700 words per day. If you include weekends, it’s over 2k on average. I’m trying to get my weekday up to 2k. It’s very achievable. If I’m lucky I can get up to pulp speed one, which is 2,778 per day on average (that would include the weekends). Pulp speed one, in case you’ve never heard of the term, is one million words per year. That’s 84,000 words per month, or easily a book a month.
So, publishing Stolen Property is priority-one. Next, is Daphne. That’s a free reader magnet. Then there’s Supercomputer. That’ll be the last book in the series. I would like to release the first book in the Escape from the Abyss series. That is going to be a big deal because it’s more of an epic series. The twists and turns that I’ve already laid out for the series are big. The story is complicated and there are many characters. Most of them hate each other and have their own agenda. They are also very broken people that are just trying to survive.
Where will the first book of The Traveler fit in? I’m not sure. As you can see by my word count at the top of this post, I’ve focused some energy on Escape from the Abyss. I’m trying to get the rough draft for the first book completed as quickly as I can. Then I can tweak it and try and amp up parts that I think should have the most impact. I’ll still have to get a cover and, of course, there’s the editing. On top of that, the Tome of Revelations must be released at the same time (or just before). It’s a companion book that gives a few Easter eggs into the story. I’m sort of basing it on the idea they used in Battle Star Galactica. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have a made-up copy of The Book of Pythia?
Once the first book of Escape from the Abyss is published, I’ll analyze how that does to determine where to take it (I think I’ve beat that dead horse a few times in previous posts).
Butt in Seat
Basically, it all boils down to me getting my butt in the seat and writing. I can crank out 1,200 words in a 45-50 minute time span. I’ve gotten to a point where I can produce a book in a reasonable time frame. It used to be a struggle to write a 50k book. I remember in 2019 when I set myself up to write a book during the NANOWRIMO month (November). I made it with some time to spare. That was a pantser-written book. When I was done, that book was a hot mess. I spent from December to March cleaning it up and setting up my business. Then I published it to see how the process is done. The book is on Amazon (Crimson Justice). It’s a fun book. I’d like to go back and rewrite the thing someday, but I probably won’t. Too many new ideas to pursue. Crimson Justice could be expanded into an entire series. It would be more of a detective story with a Mars background. I really didn’t have any type of series in mind back then. Now, I analyze a story based on the idea that I would want to write five or more books on the concept. As I’ve mentioned before, Daphne started as a writing prompt that I wanted to write a short story on. My original intention was to produce a couple of short stories per year and put them up on SmashWords for free. I think my skills have come to the point where I can take a one-sentence description of a story idea and expand it into a mega-series. I can usually take a small scene and expand it with something to make it into a larger scene.
I feel like I’ve come a long way since the early days in 2016 when I struggled to write a few thousand words of a story. I have a few practice stories that I wrote from a prompt just to see what I could do. By 2019 I had a couple of series that reached over 30k in size. Those felt like mega stories. The two I recall off the top of my head were written in pantser style. I ran myself into a dead end and couldn’t do anything about it. It took me a few short stories and books (MacKenzie series) to figure out that I can write faster and more effectively if I put the story into an outline first. It’s just my thing. Micheal La Ronn talks about writing into the dark, and I like the concept. Someday, I’m going to do a book using that style. I’ll probably love it and switch to that method of writing. Who knows?
Well, I have to stop putting words into this blog post and start putting words into a book. Right now I’m doing the changes for Stolen Property.
Oh, here’s the status of each of these books:
- Stolen Property: 56k (50% edited)
- Daphne: 16.7k
- Supercomputer: 714 words
- Escape from the Abyss, book 1: 38k
- The Tome of Revelations: 12.6k