I don’t write as much as I’d like to here, as I put most of my efforts into the novel I’m working on. As you can see from the cover above, the current book I’m writing is “Until we cross this bridge again.” The word count stands at 127K, targeted for 150K. But it may go further if the story requires it.
There are a lot of moving parts in this one. A large cast of characters, taking us places we haven’t gone before. Places, in fact, we didn’t know existed. This world, Planet X037.54501, continues to grow and intrigue me the more I learn about it. Surprise after surprise, things I didn’t expect to happen at all do. Often in ways, I wouldn’t have guessed. “Uncovering the dinosaur bones,” as Stephen King would say. His book on writing helped me discover my own method of writing when I first started. My first book (I’m now working on my sixth) was one of the most difficult things I had ever done, yet the easiest, most creative, and exciting. Each one after that has been challenging, teaching me so much about writing, world creation, characters, dialogs, and much more.
Inspiration comes easily when you give up the things that distract you, that you choose to escape into.
I constantly take notes. Many times, I have an interesting thought, a bit of dialog, a strange idea, while in the shower, laying in bed about to go to sleep, only to jump out of the shower and write it down (on my phone notepad), or put on my glasses in the dark, tapping away furiously recording it for future use. Only my day job pulls me regularly away, to do the things that make money, save, and so on. Eventually, that too will pass.
In the meantime, I’ve been working on closing a story arch that began at the beginning of the arrival of the Mongruxx at the S.A. Mursa base. Something they didn’t become aware of until this novel. Funny because this novel isn’t entirely about the Mongruxx. The bulk of the book is more about “The Lost.” Another human attack tank unit, similar to the protagonists of the “Bleeding Fist.” Only these characters didn’t meet the Mongruxx. They survived out on their own. Grit and determination are leading them down another path, a darker one. Perhaps due to their character? The callousness of mind that develops over a lifetime? It’s easy to hate what you don’t understand. To think you understand someone when you don’t.
Life isn’t easy.
We often make choices that come back to haunt us. Harrigan and Seeliger certainly do. But we’ll wait and see. The final pages of this story haven’t been written yet. Although we might glimpse the horizon, we still don’t know what’s ahead until we cross this bridge again.
