So It Begins

I’ve begun work on book 4. It is tentatively titled The Brightest Star. I think that’s what it will stay, but if I’m paid enough to change it, I would. It’s the sum total of what I have learned and what I have taught myself as a writer, and it is following ‘the rules.’ I’ve set the story beats, I’ve journaled, I’ve outlined, I’ve made an ending for the story, and I’ve scooped out all the useless middle before I even started writing. It will have an effective query and an effective synopsis. It will conform with the standards for genre writing. It will have a grabber of an opening line. It will have a voicey MC. It will have a well groomed opening chapter. It will not have a messy unending middle. It will have an actual finale, i.e. Stand Alone With Series Potential.

This one will be submitted to agents for hopeful publication with an imprint that can put me on shelves other than the ones in my own house. If I am picked up, I will take down the others in the series from publication and I will rework them and offer them as the next in the series. With 3 already written, that puts me ahead if they want them. If they are paying me, no, I won’t mind reworking them to what they need. They’ve been put out exactly as I wanted them, at the best of my ability, at the time. The first one has been put out twice, so if they want it, but they want it different, that’s fine by me.

I liked the idea of having the series be a bit of a ‘puzzle box’ series, but now that The Ivory Pick is out, I think I might pull all of them and re-release them in order of The Ivory Pick first, The Holy White Fire second and The White Dragon as third. It does make more sense that way, and I think The Ivory Pick might be the best written of the three, so why not start with a grimdark bang right out of the gate? They are horror fantasy, and I’ve come to terms with that, but I do think they have literary aspirations and could aim slightly higher than their genre label.

The Brightest Star will be high fantasy. Full on, but again with literary aspirations and definitely bits of horror thrown in there. It has conventions, it has tropes, but I think its going to be literary enough to raise it above those expectations. It has a gay protagonist that is not human, it has other LGBTQ characters including a gender fluid sidekick. All with tragic pasts for sure, but what story of mine goes without past life tragedy? I mean really. The rough draft of the Brightest Star is at about 80,000 words. I will look at pushing it right to 100,000. Most of that will be in the acts leading to the finale. Previously, I had planned it as another 170,000 word monstrosity where the entire series more or less wrapped up, but now I see it will have another book beyond it. That will be the conclusion. I have an inkling of what that will be, but no story of any kind set up for it.

In the grand scheme, there is a sci-fi book that could be in the series about a colony on Mars that through disaster, its population is dwindled to one or a few, and there is no answer when calling home. I doubt that will ever be written, but it’s an interesting idea. The world of the twin moons, Sei-Teybarune, is where The Brightest Star is set, and there are several high fantasy, epic ideas for books that have nothing to do with The Blasted Earth which I have already sketched, if not plotted out, set in that world. I would like to do some of those. All the tropes are there and accounted for; it would be up to me to make them more modern and have reason to fit into the modern fantasy market.

So at this point I’m on Chapter 3 of the first revision of the rough draft and I’m looking to gain a beta reader or two. You know who you’re real friends are after that… wow…