Hello sci-fi readers. I hope you’re doing well. Welcome to another blog post where I enumerate and wax on about my adventures as an author. In this posting, I was going to share the progress on my new techno-thriller book and series.
Let’s get to this!
If you’re a subscriber to my newsletter, a few weeks back I shared part of the intro chapter to this new novella. It was entitled Alex Mercer : Flashback. Well, this story started as her backstory. I intended to write it as a novella.
Novella vs. Novel
For those of you familiar with what a novella is, it usually comes down to the length of the book. Most novellas are anywhere from 20-40k words. Depending on genre, any longer than that you’re infringing on it being a full-length novel.
Well, this books is coming up on 60k words! Yikes, right? And I still haven’t finished it yet. I can easily write another 10k words, especially after I write the research notes chapter.
Research Notes? What?
Think of it like the chapter that James Rollins adds to the end of his Sigma Force series. He often follows up the main book with a chapter that talks about the reality (or not) of the topics he covered in the story. They’re a lot of fun to read and are often shocking. Especially when you find out how much research and reality are in every one of his books.
These techno-thriller books are a lot like that to me. They cover real topics on technology that you hear about every day in the news and other corners of the internet. These are topics I know a lot about and really interest me. Topics I think would make a great story. They might even be news items you shrug off as “doesn’t impact me” type stories. I’ll be taking these technical tidbits and shining a new and entertaining light on them. Both to educate and entertain.
Sounds fun, right?
You’re probably wondering what made this book go from 30k to over 60k words. Well, in as few words as possible, “She spoke to me”… Alex that is.
Every time I thought I was done, I wrote more. I got into her head, and the longer I was there, the more fascinating she became. Alex is an American female who was adopted by a couple who moved to the US from South Korea. Before them, she bounced around other adopted families. None ever quite fit. But through it all, computers gave her an outlet to new worlds. To stability of friends and community.
I loved peeling back her layers of motivation and background as I went. The research was the best part, especially when it came to adopted parents from a country I wasn’t very knowledgeable about.
What about the antagonist?
Great question. I’m glad you asked because I also really got into the antagonist chapters as well. It was my second time writing a really bad guy. My first was in Dark Nebula Generations. That third book in the Dark Nebula series was actually a book of short stories, the backstories of five generations of Olivaws. And weaved within each generation was an evil alien POV.
Anyhow, like all evil characters, this antagonist in the new book had to have a reason they’re evil. That reason also has to be compelling, and maybe even make you care about them… maybe. I mean, they are bad, after all.
So we’re talking about one baddie?
Well… no. In this book, I have a few evildoers, but only one gets his own POV. The others are in there, you just never get in their heads.
But in the end, at the forefront of this book is Alex. You dive into her character to understand how she took her interest in computers to another level and how she became a real hacker. We’re still not sure if she’s white hat, black hat, or gray hat, but we’ll get to that.
This book also outlines why she ends up where she does in the later books in the series. But I won’t give that away just yet.
Tell me more about this series…
I’m approaching this new series different from the last ones. Rather than expecting you to start at the beginning of the series like I did with Dark Nebula and the Portalverse, this new series will contain all stand-alone. That’s right, they’ll stand on their own… like alone. 😉
If I’ve done it right, then you’ll be able to read them in any order and not be lost. You might not understand all the nuances of each character’s personal growth reading it that way, but you will totally be fine. The stories will all be self-contained.
What this means for me is that I really need to write a compelling story with a solid beginning, middle, and end… well, maybe some artificial peaks in there, but you get the point. I can’t leave giant questions unanswered at the end.
Is that so hard?
For me, it is. I mean, it sounds simple enough, but it’s harder than you think. At least, it is for me.
You see, I’m always coming up with fun ideas that are difficult to compress down into a single book. Squeezing that diamond of a story is hard.
That’s the fun part, though. In this new series, I get to challenge myself and write an action packed book that drives you through it. Page after page with an end at the… you know, end. My goal is an unputdownable story that keeps you turning the pages from beginning to… you guessed it, end.
When will it be done?
That’s the hard part. It’ll probably take another few weeks of writing to call it done. Then, I need to put it away and let it soak.
Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty to do. The first of which is start and finish the self edits on Dead in the Water. Once that’s done, I have this little Kickstarter thing I need to kick off some time in April/May.
After that, I’ll pull this book off the shelf and self edit it as well. Whether I decide to release it right away or not is TBD. I still haven’t decided on the pen name thing or not. Either way, I’d expect a release later this year while I write that second book in the stand-alone series.
For that book, I’m planning to write the backstory for my second main character. We’ll see whether I do that or not. Maybe I’ll switch to the main book itself and make the backstory book a book three. I’m not sure there yet.
What are your thoughts? Does this book and the series sound interesting to you? I’d love to know your thoughts. Drop me an email, and let me know.
Thanks for reading, and remember, if you’re interested in sci-fi space opera and space fantasy (and soon to be techno-thriller), check out my books.
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