MEDUSA: A Tale of Vengeance
Jan. 3rd, 2013 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zzambrosius_02Well, it’s that time of year. It’s been too frozen out to do any work this week, so I’ve earned no money. I think I can put in some hours tomorrow, and get enough $$ to pay the next bill. So that’s good. On The Other Hand, I wrote a bunch this week: 3800 words, not counting a few bits scattered here and there. That is, in the format I publish in (Trade Paperback) about 9.5 pages. So, +/-4 pages went directly into MEDUSA, which is Book Three in my ‘First Century of the Commonwealth’ series. (That’s the Thirteenth Century of the Christian Hypothesis.)
The big question percolating in my mind right now is: since ‘Medusa’ is already 262 pages long, and *must* continue to grow until it’s done, how hard a sell will it be? At 350 or even 400 pages, and at 25 to 30 dollars, who will buy it? Of course, it will be a lot cheaper as a PDF or ePub. Still... presumably anyone who read LEONTARI and VIASMAE will be sucked so deeply into the history of the Commonwealth and the lives of these (I think) compelling people, that they will invest in it and read it. That’s my hope, anyway.
And I don’t really see any way to make the thing shorter. The 2-3 year period that it is coming to cover is chock full (as it turns out) of cool stuff, all of it essential to the tale: Selos’ growing maturity and eventual ‘marriage’, Nikos coming into his full abilities as a military Commander, the liberation of thousands of Hellenic slaves from their bondage in Serbia, (the beginnings of the effects they will have on the Commonwealth), the fate of the Serbian ruling class, the reaction of the Serbian Commons to the dynamic events occurring to and around them...and of course, the main story: Eleni’s reactions, emotional and military, to the Serbian Crown Prince’s mistreatment of her friends.
I can continue to ponder this, of course; but the main thing is to get the first draft written, which always takes longer than it seems like it should. For a book this size, maybe even longer than I think it will. Only then will I be able to see the full arc of the story and take such actions as seem necessary to pound it into shape and then decorate it.
Now the other 5+ pages went into a strange little piece running under the working title of “Mr. Brosius at the Country Fair”. It seems like that is just a chapter title, though, since a bunch of weirder stuff is growing out of that root. Anyway, that is the story of a fictionalized version of me ‘accidentally’ crossing Timelines and apparently answers the 64 terabuck question “Where do you get your ideas?”. Since one of the conceits of the Commonwealth series is that these stories are based on documents retrieved from another Timeline, and translated by Mr. Brosius, it was fair to ask myself how he got them. Then Mr. Chris Watts asked me about the “future history” of the Commonwealth Timeline, and after outlining the little I knew at that moment...away I went.
As I’ve stated previously, this WRITER gig is exceedingly weird at times.
The big question percolating in my mind right now is: since ‘Medusa’ is already 262 pages long, and *must* continue to grow until it’s done, how hard a sell will it be? At 350 or even 400 pages, and at 25 to 30 dollars, who will buy it? Of course, it will be a lot cheaper as a PDF or ePub. Still... presumably anyone who read LEONTARI and VIASMAE will be sucked so deeply into the history of the Commonwealth and the lives of these (I think) compelling people, that they will invest in it and read it. That’s my hope, anyway.
And I don’t really see any way to make the thing shorter. The 2-3 year period that it is coming to cover is chock full (as it turns out) of cool stuff, all of it essential to the tale: Selos’ growing maturity and eventual ‘marriage’, Nikos coming into his full abilities as a military Commander, the liberation of thousands of Hellenic slaves from their bondage in Serbia, (the beginnings of the effects they will have on the Commonwealth), the fate of the Serbian ruling class, the reaction of the Serbian Commons to the dynamic events occurring to and around them...and of course, the main story: Eleni’s reactions, emotional and military, to the Serbian Crown Prince’s mistreatment of her friends.
I can continue to ponder this, of course; but the main thing is to get the first draft written, which always takes longer than it seems like it should. For a book this size, maybe even longer than I think it will. Only then will I be able to see the full arc of the story and take such actions as seem necessary to pound it into shape and then decorate it.
Now the other 5+ pages went into a strange little piece running under the working title of “Mr. Brosius at the Country Fair”. It seems like that is just a chapter title, though, since a bunch of weirder stuff is growing out of that root. Anyway, that is the story of a fictionalized version of me ‘accidentally’ crossing Timelines and apparently answers the 64 terabuck question “Where do you get your ideas?”. Since one of the conceits of the Commonwealth series is that these stories are based on documents retrieved from another Timeline, and translated by Mr. Brosius, it was fair to ask myself how he got them. Then Mr. Chris Watts asked me about the “future history” of the Commonwealth Timeline, and after outlining the little I knew at that moment...away I went.
As I’ve stated previously, this WRITER gig is exceedingly weird at times.
