From its genesis all the way back last September, through who-knows-how-much brainstorming, as reflected in the profusion of blog posts I’ve written about it, I’ve got quite a sprawling tale for my Great Christmas Blizzard story…one I’m pleased to announce that I’ve gotten to work actually typing out. Yes, there will be another Adamas Nemesis novel coming up, even after the current backlog is released.
Current word count? Up over the 25,000 mark.
And counting up in a fashion I’ve scarcely experienced before when writing a story. I’ve gotten up through the Decoration Day tornado outbreak, and now I’ve completed the first scene for the lead-up into the Fourth of July segment…and that’s it. I’ve still got the “derecho party” on July 3 left to go, not to mention the actual Fourth of July celebration, which will feature Dobrynya giving a speech on his environmental initiatives in person right before the wedding flight of Draža and Mira. I may well be three-quarters of the way to novel length by the time we even see Decca and Georgia experiencing the eclipse together in August, where we get the lead-in for the record-warm water in the Caribbean that will prove to be such a crucial ingredient come December (hint: it fuels the storm).
Then I’ve got the early October dust storm segment, which will feature the introduction of several additional new characters (such as Henrietta and June Bug; well, he’s not a new character but we haven’t seen him since the last novel set sixteen years earlier), followed by the Halloween party segment. Not sure how long that’ll take, but after that I’ll be able to get into the meat of the story: the actual Christmas weather pattern.
Not that I’m in any particular hurry: I’ve actually enjoyed the time I’ve spent with Decca and Georgia so far, not to mention the triplets; they’re really such fun characters, better company than most of the real people I know. 🙂
My biggest concern, and the reason why I’ve gone ahead and am trying to write it now, is to finish it all up before the time comes for me to leave for the total solar eclipse followed almost immediately by my big trip to Europe in April, which might take a couple of months, and then I’ll be uprooting my life not long after that…so it might be a while before I have enough time to just sit and write a novel. So “it’s now or never” is my feeling; fortunately, the concept for the story is so well-developed at this point that I feel like I kinda have to go ahead and get the words out of my head and onto the page regardless.
So I think all told it’s working out nicely, and it may well turn out to be my biggest story yet; certainly even beyond the likely point where it’ll reach novel length and well beyond then when I’ll be finished with the actual Christmas storm segment there’s an awful lot of follow-up to cover, which will stretch it out even further…
We’ll have to see about that. In the meantime, it’s proving to be fun! That’s the important part…to have fun with it…