It started out as a short story, then turned into a couple of stories. They lived in a drawer for years. Most of my close family and friends thought/think ‘I’m going to be a writer’ is one step below, ‘I’m going to be a rock and roll god’ on the prestige scale. That means two steps below ‘doggie doo de-doo-er’. But I worked on, in secret, mainly at work and in notebooks. And, as I worked on the various stories, they seemed to be linked.
Notes, you ask, of course I have notes. Story fragments, too. And they are all related. My 'story drawer' is like one big incestuous family.
It's the universe, I think. Every time I create characters and put them in a story line, they seem to overlap other characters… or things the other characters had done. I’d write about Bridgetta just to discover she was Jaycinth’s (yes, I know) great granddaughter. I was 20k words into Danaac before he told me he’s Prince Steven’s brother. Daniel is Dafydd’s son. Uke grew up on the restrictive planet of Laurentain which just so happens to have been on the losing end of the revolution of 2793. I have a reference to Betty’s mother baking a pie in book one and people eating the pie in book three.
See where I am going? Great…I don’t. Well, not really.
So as I finished the first book ‘Alien Source’, I was thinking, well, this is a trilogy, maybe a quadrology. But even though my outline connects them, really, they are only in the same time frame. Each book can exist independent of the others. In my outline, there is stuff that happens before ‘Alien Source’, which makes a good short story, but isn’t important except to se the stage for ‘Parallel Course’ (book the two). The players in ‘Alien Source’ and ‘Parallel Course’ are facing the same situation…alien invasion of the part of the Milky Way we all call home…but they are facing it in different ways. They are concerned, but they are taking different paths to assuage that concern. Some of the characters overlap, as I’ve said. MC’s in book one become ‘background characters’ in book two, are mentioned ‘in passing’ in book three and become MC’s again in book 4.
My outline provides enough material for books 5 thru 10, if I so desire. I also have ‘outline-drafts’ of 3 ‘fantasy’ stories that are in the same universe….but separated from the sci-fi by 10,000 years. (And by golly if I haven’t used some of the same family names…)
To me, this seems more of a cycle of stories as opposed to a ‘Trilogy’ or series. Or is a ‘cycle’ a different way to say ‘series’?
What am I doing? Am I sane?
Notes, you ask, of course I have notes. Story fragments, too. And they are all related. My 'story drawer' is like one big incestuous family.
It's the universe, I think. Every time I create characters and put them in a story line, they seem to overlap other characters… or things the other characters had done. I’d write about Bridgetta just to discover she was Jaycinth’s (yes, I know) great granddaughter. I was 20k words into Danaac before he told me he’s Prince Steven’s brother. Daniel is Dafydd’s son. Uke grew up on the restrictive planet of Laurentain which just so happens to have been on the losing end of the revolution of 2793. I have a reference to Betty’s mother baking a pie in book one and people eating the pie in book three.
See where I am going? Great…I don’t. Well, not really.
So as I finished the first book ‘Alien Source’, I was thinking, well, this is a trilogy, maybe a quadrology. But even though my outline connects them, really, they are only in the same time frame. Each book can exist independent of the others. In my outline, there is stuff that happens before ‘Alien Source’, which makes a good short story, but isn’t important except to se the stage for ‘Parallel Course’ (book the two). The players in ‘Alien Source’ and ‘Parallel Course’ are facing the same situation…alien invasion of the part of the Milky Way we all call home…but they are facing it in different ways. They are concerned, but they are taking different paths to assuage that concern. Some of the characters overlap, as I’ve said. MC’s in book one become ‘background characters’ in book two, are mentioned ‘in passing’ in book three and become MC’s again in book 4.
My outline provides enough material for books 5 thru 10, if I so desire. I also have ‘outline-drafts’ of 3 ‘fantasy’ stories that are in the same universe….but separated from the sci-fi by 10,000 years. (And by golly if I haven’t used some of the same family names…)
To me, this seems more of a cycle of stories as opposed to a ‘Trilogy’ or series. Or is a ‘cycle’ a different way to say ‘series’?
What am I doing? Am I sane?
