novel – Page 8 – Ridley Park

Sanity Check

December 4, 2023December 4, 2023Posted in Awakening, Book, hemo sapiens, Hemo Sapiens, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening, Status Update, WritingTagged characters, hemo sapiens, novel, organisation, settings, WritingLeave a comment

Continuity is important to me, and I haven’t got to the end of a novel yet, so I’ve mapped out the characters by chapter, so I can ensure I didn’t leave someone unintentionally hanging.

This also gives me the ability to track character arc and development, so I can focus on a particular character and tweak either of these aspects. Monitoring character voice is another plus.

I can also count in how many chapters a character appears. In this case, Emily and her daughter, Grace, are two primary characters. It doesn’t tell all the story because, for example, Daisy is in a few chapters and impacts the story, but she’s less important than Ravi, who’s in fewer chapters.

Ben is barely hanging on in yellow, but he is a key character. To be honest, I didn’t even catalogue some single-chapter characters after a while because I knew they wouldn’t be making a return, and they had no unique character arc or voice.

I also track settings, but this is not captured here.

I have a first draft of a cover. I expect to be sharing it here soon. I’m considering an 8″ x 6″ form factor, but that’s not set in stone.

What do you do to help to organise your larger works, anything?

The World is Watching

November 22, 2023November 23, 2023Posted in Book, WritingTagged Book, conflict, family, Israel, novel, Palestine, pitch idea, WritingLeave a comment

I woke up today with a new pitch idea. It’s a thriller that resolves into a courtroom drama. Hear me out if you’re an acquisition editor or publisher. Any resemblance to persons or events living or dead is coincidental.

A rogue family wants a new home, but opts for home invasion, what with home prices, interest rates, and all. They invade an inhabited house and relegate the current residents to a corner in the dark and dingy basement.

One day, the detained family attempts to escape, but their plans are thwarted, and they are punished by having their meals withheld. In a last-ditch effort, the father runs up the stair and kills two of the children of the family keeping them captive.

As an act of retaliation, the dominant family kills the children of the captive family, but the authorities hear the gunfire and control the situation.

In the next chapters, the killers face judge and juries. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll leave it here. In order to make the story relevant and accessible to modern audiences, I’ll make it topical: The invasive family will be Jewish and the invaded will be Palestinian. It may be too subtle, but I think some readers will catch on.

There’s my pitch. If you are connected to a publisher, please contact me, so we can talk details. Feel free to leave comments below. If you have any ideas about how the jury verdicts might fall, I’d love to see them.

40,000 Words and Counting

November 20, 2023November 20, 2023Posted in Awakening, Book, Hemo Sapiens, Status Update, WritingTagged hemo sapiens, novel, WritingLeave a comment

W00t! I’ve finally reached 40K words in my Hemo Sapiens: Awakening novel. This was a minimum word count, but I’ve still got more ideas to incorporate as well as some fat to trim. For now, it yields me some 164 pages*, a number that works for me.

This is a milestone I’ve been waiting for. I have almost 40K words for my Hemo Sapiens: Origins novel, but I put it on hold, opting to release this in media res before revealing the origin story.

If you’ve been following, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is a compilation of 5 short stories coalesced with new content to bridge and provide continuity. Given the longer story form, I had to give some characters addition depth and a story arc that spanned the longer work. Time will tell if this was successful. I’m having fun.

Anyway, back to the writing mines. Need to excavate some more material.

* 164 pages in an 8″ x 6″ form factor. Vertical spacing for chapters has not yet been accomplished, but I am not interested in how far I can pad it.

Novel Ideas

November 6, 2023Posted in Book, hemo sapiens, Status Update, WritingTagged Book, hemo sapiens, novel, Status Update, WritingLeave a comment

I’ve been conspicuously absent from this blog as I’ve been busy creating a novel. By creating, I mean that I’ve been combining four short stories within the Hemo Sapiens universe into a would be novel.

I’ve finally completed the consolidation, but there remain continuity gaps, which was to be expected. Plus, I need to thread additional plot aspects because more structure is required to create an apt foundation.

As I plan my approach, I notice I have a fifth short story to integrate. Whilst this creates more work, it also relieves other work. As it stands, the novel-in-progress contains just over twenty-thousand words — about half a novel’s worth, so I’ll more quickly transition from a novella-ranged book to a full-fledged novel. Currently, I’ve got about ninety pages of content. My goal is to have over two-hundred pages of non-filler content, which should get me between forty and fifty thousand words. Time will tell.

Whilst I don’t want to abandon this blog, it does compete with my time and attention, so hopefully I’ll still be making contributions along the way. I’m reusing a cover image to save time. Gotta go. Meantime, cheers.

Origins and Aftermath

September 8, 2023Posted in Book, Camille Moss, hemo sapiens, Hemo Sapiens: Origins, Henry Moss, Sci-Fi, WritingTagged characters, hemo sapiens, novel, WritingLeave a comment

I’m allowing Aftermath to marinate before taking another pass reviewing and editing. Meantime, I’ve drafted my initial outline of the Origins story for the Hemo Sapiens universe. As the title suggests, this is an origin story that should be novel-length. It’s looking like 25 chapters unless I feel the need to add some to provide more detail or continuity or remove some for pacing or redundancy.

As it stands, Origins is a character study of two main characters, Professor Henry Moss and his wife Professor Camille Moss, a geneticist and microbiologist, respectively. They have opposing ethical positions on human genetic engineering that becomes more pronounced as Henry’s experiments become real, not just theoretical.

My intent is to show the motivation for their genesis and their maturity until about age ten, when we exit the story with a setup for the enhanced versions.

I’ve got a few more passes of the outline as I add details, and then I’ll take a gander at finalising Aftermath.

Fun times.

More Hemo Sapiens

August 27, 2023Posted in Book, homo sapiens sanguinius, Short Story, Status Update, WritingTagged hemo sapiens, homo sapiens sanguinius, novel, series, Short Story, vampires, Writing1 Comment

Now I’ve really done it. Distracted myself to no end. No wonder I can’t seem to finish anything lately. My recent foray into Hemo sapiens or Homo sapiens sanginius was only supposed to be a quick diversion to clear my mind. Instead, it’s got me thinking about an entire universe from origin to however-so-many scenarios.

Now I am pondering whether to write some loosely connected short stories or assemble a larger work, like a novel or series. Why not all of the above?

The challenge is that I am more curious than passionate about this, and I’ve got only a fleeting interest. Perhaps. I am no stranger to speculative fiction, but world building is not up my street. And urban fantasy, to the extent that this might be urban fantasy, is not a favoured genre. I’m looking at you, Twilight.

I may simply noodle this for now until I suss out something. Meantime, I may be sharing my thoughts and output here. Please stand by…