Completed novel projects…
I’ve just finished three novel-writing marathons. One has the length of most of my novels; the other two are really longer. All three required a lot of digging for background material (research), more so than usual—something like running up “Heartbreak Hill” in Boston (the NYC Marathon run last weekend is flat in comparison).
Let me describe the novels and some of their background material.
The Last Humans. While my Survivors of the Chaos (#1 in The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection) is dystopian sci-fi, I’ve never written a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel before. In this post-apocalyptic thriller, the main character Penny Castro, an ex-USN diver working for the LA County Sheriff’s Department, survives the apocalypse but then has to survive many other dangers as her world goes to hell.
Background material involved studying everything from airborne contagions and extreme weather conditions to comsats and saltwater desalination platforms, along with a lot of California geography from my past and its more recent changes (I’m a native Californian, but I haven’t lived there for years). In other words, in this case, I knew the settings, but I had to refresh my memory.
That was marathon #1. (Black Opal Books will publish this novel in 2019.)
Goin’ the Extra Mile. This novel is #3 in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” Ex-USN Master-at-Arms Mary Jo Melendez fought off U.S. and Russian government agents in the first two books. They were after the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”), super-soldier cyborgs with Top Secret hardware and software improvements created in a U.S. government project. In #3, China wants the MECH tech, and they’re willing to kidnap Mary Jo and her family to get it.
I’ve never been to China. I’ve read about it a lot, and not only in non-fiction—one of Ludlum’s Bourne books takes place there (maybe also #3?), and so does Donna Carrick’s The First Excellence (both great books, by the way). (I think one of Barry Eisler’s thrillers takes place there too.) My lack of personal knowledge about the country made gathering background material more difficult.
That was marathon #1. (Carrick Publishing has just published this novel—it’s available at Amazon and Smashwords and their affiliates.)
Son of Thunder. This sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel can be described as Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden meeting the artist Sandro Botticelli and the disciple St. John the Divine…with no time travel involved! If that sounds too quirky for you, let me describe it as the novel Dan Brown should have written in place of The Da Vinci Code in the sense that there’s no bungled historical references (in Mr. Brown’s defense, most of those came out after he published his book).
All that history created the background problem. While bringing all these characters together challenged my historical sleuthing, the farther I went back in time, the less is known historically. Like most historical fiction, I had to fill in many gaps in the historicaal records. But it’s still a mystery/thriller novel even with all the historical and religious content.
That was marathon #3. (I’ve submitted the manuscript.)
Phew! Readers can understand why I’m now taking a little break by writing short fiction and articles for this blog. Call it the cooling off period after the last marathon. Or a training period of sprints and middle distance runs to prepare for the next marathon?
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Comments are always welcome!
Books on sale. To whet your appetite for Goin’ the Extra Mile, #1 in the Mary Jo trilogy is now on sale for $0.99 at Smashwords for a limited time. Also, for the month of November, the mystery/thriller The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan is 50% off on Smashwords.
In libris libertas!
