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| Too dark, but still a concept.... |
Unfortunately, all the extra stuff piled on me by life and day job has caused me to fall far behind what I needed to do. I cut back on blogging in September specifically so I could get the ebook version of The Case of the Misplaced Hero ready to upload, and that simply didn't happen.
So right now, as I write this, I'm getting my first (blink, blink) look back at the story I just finished.
I have the whole story copied into a text document on my Kindle, so I can start the read through. The darned thing ended up at about 32,000 words. When I started I had thoughts of expanding it, but as I wrote it I realized that the thing found it's voice. I might expand a touch here and there, we'll see as I get through it.
I'm going to skip the rest of the Tuesday posts for October to help get on top of that. My goal is to have it done by the 15th, but I don't know if that will include a cover and everything - so more likely it will be up and ready on the 21st. It'll be ready when it's ready.
Thoughts on the Story, And The Series
This dang thing -- The Case of the Misplaced Hero -- was supposed to be an "outside the story" prequel. And it's spawning stories of its own. (What's up with that?)
I am in the midst of a terrible conundrum on what to call the series. The two names that stick the best in my head won't do it, I think:
"The Serial" is how I think of it. Even though I'm going to be doing other stories as serials, this one is set in a world inspired by silent movie serials (and fiction of the same period).
"The Perils of Lady Pauline" was a fun title I've been using for parts of it for decades now. And Alex was not supposed to be a main character in that. He was supposed to be a reasonably prominent secondary character -- sometimes a nemesis, sometimes a sidekick, sometimes a pesky tag-along who can't be shaken, sometimes a mystery to be solved. (You know: a love interest.) But he now clearly has some protagonist roles yet to play. And frankly, the whole series is chock full of secondary characters who have extensive stories to tell which have nothing to do with Pauline.
So next thought is to come up with a title that has to do with the place, except that the overall world doesn't have a name. Awarshawa is just one country in it. A lot of this is going to take place in Imperia (though there will usually be some connection). I might get away with calling it somehting like "The Awarshi Casebook" or "Tales of Awarshawa" or something.
When I was going to have Lily Beeton narrate the stories, I considered calling it "Dispatches from Awarshawa."
All I know is this: I like using "The Case of..." as a part of the titles because that will mark them as all belonging together in my list of books. They'll be quick to identify. Furthermore, I will probably use a further pattern for sub-series. Like The Case of the Misplaced Hero seems to have three unresolved stories springing from it:
- The Case of the Misplaced Baroness
- The Case of the Misplaced Bomb (or Coup)
- The Case of the Misplaced Companion
Any two of these might combine to make a single story... but I can easily see three more novella-length stories come out of this.
The killer is that all of these are new stories to the series. Well, maybe the back story about Pauline -- The Misplaced Baroness -- is a part of the other larger arc about her perils. But for the most part, I can see me spending the rest of my life just trying to finish THIS arc of stories, without ever getting to the existing material at all. Because you KNOW that each of these will spawn more.
One thought is to write some ebooks in the series in addition to those being serialized, just so I can get through the dang backlog of story arcs. Another possibility is to start posting three episodes a week (adding a Saturday ep). But for now, that sounds a bit overwhelming.
I was going to talk more about the process and things I've learned, but I got too many stories to write. So for now I'm just going to crash.
See you in the funny papers.
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