dr_phil_physics | Production Delays -- Regularly Scheduled (Reply)

Here's hoping the Plot Bunnies stay quiet for the next ten days. I really don't want to such brilliant inspirations that I feel compelled to write or make tons of notes -- not when I'm supposed to be writing exams, grading papers, etc. as a part of Final Exams and Grade-a-thon. Bad enough that schedules compel me to schedule three doctor's appointments during Finals Week.

Maybe the Plot Bunnies will cut loose in two weeks in time for some Christmas short stories here on the blog. Maybe I'll stick something from my super secret writing project in that queue. NO! Not now. I don't have time to start thinking Christmas SF! Nah-nah-nah... I can't hear you Plot Bunnies.

A couple of nights this week I got no writing done -- not even a blog post -- and I felt guilty about even trying to catch up on Facebook or even reading the funnies in the Tuesday-Thursday newspapers. Still, I managed more writing than I thought. I've broken the 120,000 word barrier on the trilogy -- and somehow managed to almost double the word count on the fourth book of the trilogy, just shy of 10,000 words there.

So, this is good. I guess. I've never sat down and planned out a trilogy before. (Technically, though. There is the British side of my 29th century universe, where I wrote about 1½ million words of story and long notes across an eleven-book cycle back in 1998.) (It's a very raw state past the first two or three books, except for Book Six. Some Day, I shall sit down and start seeing what I can do with all that stuff. I can either distill it down to a couple of books, or go for the massive oeuvre. I mean, I should prove if I can attract real audiences, before I get the idea of making people invest in a decology.) (evil-grin)

Let's see, more straight writing than a lot of research -- and some of the research I did is either on subjects already covered or done without recording them. But researches this week were on: Diaper smuggling in Norway. The Nostrand Avenue stop along the A-train line in Brooklyn. Dunkin' Donuts franchises in Manhattan -- a bust because one was closed because of rats being filmed in the place AND they're not o the streets I want. The .303 caliber British Vickers machine gun. The Eurocopter AS350 helicopter -- a sort of a European version of the Bell Jet Ranger. "Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning." Modern neighborhoods in the East End of London after the Olympics. Also Greenwich. Pending research on Canon EOS supertelephoto lenses.

I was talking to a student today about his paper on The Hunger Games and the attraction of dystopian fiction -- his favorite book in this sub-genre is 1984, though he confessed he'd never read Brave New World. I mentioned that the pitch I'm working on for The Lost Kingdom Project is an ancient secret kingdom on hard times in the modern world, where it is our world that is the dystopia. Then I mentioned having fun messing with my three readers about what the story is about by listing my various research topics here on LJ/DW. His feeling was that just by those odd combinations, he'd read it.

So maybe I'll have a reader. (single-data-point-grin)

The shiny counters have bumped up to:

The Lost Kingdom Project YA Trilogy Version 1.05