So far, we’ve managed to complete 28 of 66 chapters of RUSTY’s memories. There are quite a few changes I need to finish (I’ve been working on them for the past couple of days when I’ve had time). The story pulls you along so well that my wife read ahead a chapter while I went to get coffee. She couldn’t help herself. I consider that to be a good sign of how well this story came out. I still want to see what her opinion is on the last half of the story. I’ll make changes if she has any reservations, even if they’re major.

I’ve learned a lot of writing craft techniques since I published the last Daphne book (Supercomputer). Writing skills never stand still. I anticipate that I’ll continue to learn new things constantly. I spend a lot of time reading books written by the masters like Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Mick Herron (to name only a few). I’ve also taken a lot of advanced classes from Dean Westly Smith. He teaches stuff I had never heard of, like Tags, pulling the reader down using depth, forgettable characters, etc. (I could list a hundred things I’ve learned, but those are some of the biggies). What’s crazy is that a lot of the techniques I’ve learned after writing the first five Daphne books are things that the reader doesn’t notice when they are there. Oh, they see “something” is amiss with a story that doesn’t contain those things, but they can’t necessarily put their finger on it. And that’s what happens to new writers. They don’t really understand how the masters make good books work (including me).

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I started the Daphne series because I knew I didn’t have a lot of writing experience, and I didn’t have the tools to tackle the Abyss series, even though I knew how I wanted that series to come out. The first Daphne book was supposed to be a short story. Maybe 10k words or so. Just to keep my fingers warmed up while I noodled on The Archons. Once I started writing that book, I realized I had more in my head regarding Daphne and her robot, RUSTY, than I initially thought. By the time I hammered out the first Daphne, I already had several more stories in my head. In fact, I sat down one day and made a bullet-point list of basic story concepts in Word. That led to about 8 to 10 stories. Eventually, I expanded it to 15. I listed those out in this blog post: Progress on RUSTY’s Memories.

After a year of writing Daphne Chronicles, I shifted to one book for The Traveler series (Desperate Action), then I rolled up my sleeves and produced The Archons alongside the companion book called The Tome of Revelations. The extra difficulty in producing the companion book was the graphics (or rather, the ink drawings I did by hand).

Now, I’m trying my hand with a different Genre: Cozy Mysteries. I haven’t exactly let go of SciFi. Oh no, I will probably always keep a little something in my books that is technology-related. In the case of my first Cozy series, I’m writing about a freelance computer programmer with a realistic robot dog named Bolt. The dog is so real-looking and acting that nobody knows he’s a robot, except Q (the protagonist’s name is Quentin or Q) and his friend Fin (which is short for Finley). I already plotted out five books for that series, with plans to expand it to ten books (if it does well). Those books will be published under my pen name: Elliot Droit. Why the pen name? Well, Amazon does some strange stuff if an author attempts to publish books from different Genres under the same name. In fact, it’s difficult to advertise because Facebook and Amazon Ads get confused as to who the customers are. For instance, those who come here might be looking for hard sci-fi or military sci-fi, and those looking for a cozy mystery would be confused if they landed on a page with The Archons listed. Better to just keep each genre in its own box.

Anyway, I still have plans for more sci-fi in the future. I have far too many ideas to just dump the genre and move on (plus, I’m a huge sci-fi reader myself). I also have plans to write one more Daphne book (Shadows of the Bloodline). I only have a collection of ideas for that story, but it will be deep. It’ll be a tear-jerker but will also contain the expected level of humor and adventure demanded by the Daphne series. I’m already anxious to write this story, but I have to complete the next four Q mysteries before I get started on that book. I’ll probably jump right into it when I drop the cozy series. It’ll take some time to analyze sales and determine how the Q mysteries are going to perform, so I can fill that time with Bloodline.

There is another sci-fi that my brain can’t let go of. It’s an epic, or it could be a trilogy. The material I’ve accumulated on what I want to do with the story is extensive. Over the past couple of months, I’ve started keeping journals with each story. I use Scrivener for my writing, and that program allows me to add folders with chapters, notes, and anything else I want under them. Scrivener is a really good tool for organizing a book. So, I added a Book Journal folder, and I keep anything random that pops into my head about that story in that folder. I’ve already recorded over 2,000 words of ideas and notes in my journal for Rim Worlds (tentative book name). What’s crazy about writing books is that they always start as a feeling. I know how I want the story to “feel” before I start writing it. What’s tricky is translating that feeling into writing that can convey the same feeling to the reader. Which, of course, is the hardest thing to do. For this book, I’m getting my gut feelings about this book into the journal right away. Everything that I think about goes into the journal. That way, I can review what I wrote, regain the same feeling, and make sure it gets into the book correctly.

Of course, there are so many unknowns about this book. Right now, I know how the story will begin, and I know how it’ll end. I’m not sure about the middle, but I have ideas. I’m also not sure how large the story will be. I just know that it’ll exceed 100k, and I’d like to make it into a Brandon Sanderson level tome. It also means that I might fit into a trilogy, but that could make the story tricky. Trilolgies must be broken into three complete stories, and the first book has to kick things off without revealing the deepest, darkest secret of the story. Then, the second book needs to dive deep into the darkness, allowing the antagonist to get the upper hand. Then, of course, the final book wraps up the story and finishes with the win for the antagonist. If I write the story as one large book, I only have to worry about Act I through Act III and follow the tropes for that (which apply to all three books of a trilogy). But trilogies are cool (always the pull to do something big).

We’ll see what happens when I start the rough draft for that book.