Projects update for 22 July 2011 – Awakenings and UoC/Epsilon book 1

[progpress title=”Epsilon” goal=”90000″ current=”57410″]

 

You know that you’ve made it with your webfiction, I guess, when the spambots start to leave comments for you along with the real people leaving actual comments for you.  Thank god for Akismet.

Awakenings has gotten surprisingly long already, and I’m sort of shocked at its length!  I’d originally planned to release the whole first year as one ebook, but if I wait and do that, it’s going to be one monster ebook, so I’m starting to reassess my thought process on that one.  To give you an idea of what I’m talking about…Awakenings is already over 60k words, and I’m still in week 2 in story time.  Of course, things will be a little more spread out (no one day is going to take more than two chapters now, I don’t think, unlike Day Zero, which took five and a prologue), but there’s still a lot of time to cover, and a lot of time equals a lot of words.



Epsilon
book 1, in the meantime, clicks along rather well, though the second and third chapters of Part 2 have been giving me some minor issues with pacing and what I want to have happen.  It’s a major rewrite from previous drafts, especially with regards to how a certain narrator regains her memory (again, linked to a major metaplot about a certain other narrator’s father).  This, coupled with the murdering of a few darlings (sorry about the writer’s terminology, if anyone’s unfamiliar–basically, it’s getting rid of story elements that you as an author may have liked but don’t really push the story forwards in effective or beneficial ways) means that it’s a very, very careful rewrite.  I’m feeling really good about the draft, though, in general, and it’s going well.

Book 1 may actually only end up being two parts, the first with Aaron narrating and the second with Caren narrating — time and story flow will tell, though I think it will end up around the 90k word mark.  After I’m done writing this update, I’ll be returning to it to start writing Chapter 15, in which Caren will probably be reacquainting herself with an old friend (or three).

Some other writers at Critique Circle have impressed upon me the need to have a Dramatis Persona, especially considering the number of secret agents with aliases that I’m working with.  Here’s a preview of the work in progress.


 

Dramatis Personae

 Epsilon Alliance SpecOps field officers

Aaron Taylor (Avatar), alias Wil Terrel – Class of 2257
Caren Flannery (Renegade) – Class of 2257
Haley Brink (Star), alias Trey Connelly – Class of 2257
Marc Carter (Avenger) – Class of 2257
Melissa Cordare (Ice), aliasTabitha Lane– Class of 2257
John Kathe (Shiner), alias Harmin Rise – Class of 2257
Omar Krishna (Ash) – Class of 2257
Matthew Lawless (Doom), alias Kyle Rezek – Class of 2257
Michael Reale (Fire) – Class of 2257
Hannah Smoke (Raven) – Class of 2257

Epsilon Alliance SpecOps Command Staff

Jackson Hunter (Longshot), Commander of SpecOps – Class of 2232
Cornelius Traverse (Jaguar) – Class of 2244

ESF Officers

Lieutenant Commander Casey Flannery, fleet operations
Lieutenant Mackenzie Desantis, flight operations
Dr. Benjamin Mowry, Medical Corps
Lieutenant Allyn Cyne, Intelligence division

Civilians

Dr. Lucas Ross, regional lead for the Resistance
Samantha Cooper, member of the Resistance, later regional lead for the Resistance
Jack Mallek, retired Alliance Marine and member of the Resistance

Drilin Imperium personnel

General Adonis Taylor, Special Projects (deceased)
General Daniel Taylor, Special Projects

 


And now it’s back to the writing salt mines before I head off to the actual salt mines for an evening shift followed by tomorrow morning’s open. Joy.

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