So with the first book published and picking up five-star reviews and great feedback, I can now settle down and get on with writing the second.
It’s an interesting challenge when you revisit the chapter plan that you slaved over a year ago. Some ideas, that made total sense back then, just don’t fit with where the first book has taken you — especially with a narrative that can rewrite history at any point.
In this next book, I had intended to develop the themes of advancing the past, a particular obsession of the Colonel’s, the idea that by taking knowledge back in time you could change the present dramatically. It was inspired by something I saw once on Arthur C. Clarke’s TV show. He held up a set of old brass gears – half fossilised in rock and explained how, had they not been lost in a storm in 200BC, they would have accelerated technology and led us to have populated the stars by now. He was a bit of a showman, and a dreamer (he correctly predicted the rise of the internet years before it happened), but I liked the idea of using technology and knowledge in order to accelerate the present (remember no one has ever made it into the future).
This takes the book into dystopian territory, alternative versions of reality (think Bladerunner meets Divergent), not something that can be researched as easily as the past — giving me, even more, freedom to play with the character development (and try out some new toys). Unfortunately, it also presents a whole new bunch of challenges, ones that take time to plan out and overcome (I have started using pinterest to create moodboards for inspiration – its great to see how others view the future).
UPDATE: I started this post a while back, now I have finished the first draft (rocking in at 70k words) and as predicted it’s a mess of ideas that are going to need a ton of re-writing and polishing, but its done and the title is pretty much in the bag – MAELSTRÖM – which gives you a pretty good clue as to where the story is going (literally).
Will let you know soon about some of the ideas that came out of it (although if you check some of the previous posts you might get some clues)
Cheers
Andy