It's that time again. It was inevitable, I suppose. HOUSE OF FALLING RAIN released earlier this year. The upcoming Odyssium Collection is written and about to sail off to the editor. The next thing to be done is, well, start writing the next book in the meantime. So last week, that's what I did. And it never fails to be a terrifying experience starting a novel from scratch. You get more confident in your abilities, I guess, but it's still as daunting as staring up the side of Mount Everest. Granted, no one ever froze to death while trying to write a book (okay, apart from Jack Torrence in THE SHINING), but you get my meaning.
Anyway, let's catch you all up with where things are right now.
It's early in the process, but here's what I can tell you: like HOUSE OF FALLING RAIN, I'm kind of flying without a net (outline). HOUSE's outline never really made it to the finished stage, so I winged it day by day instead, and that seemed to have worked out well. That's what I'm doing here, even though I'm working with less of an outline than I had with HOUSE. But hey--so far, so good.
I'm two chapters in, about 20 pages or so total. In the week or so leading up to the actual writing phase, I was shuffling around 3 different ways to start the book. I hadn't really committed to any of them until I started typing, and BOOM, that more or less settled things. And so far...things are going well. It's always surprising how things shift and gel into new and different shapes once you start writing. In your head it was going to look *this* way, but as you go, you just start to roll with it. The new reality overshadows the old ideas and you're either happy with them, or you're not.
At this (early) point, I'm digging it. Just like HOUSE was very different from the PARAGON books and just like the 2nd Eyes of Odyssium book, A SONG OF SILENCE is vastly different from HOUSE, this book too forges its own path. It's distinctly an Odyssium book, but one that continues on with the thread that the end of HOUSE lays the breadcrumbs for. So yes, it is indeed the 3rd Eyes of Odyssium book. Salla Saar is back, and we'll see if anyone else familiar springs up as well. I have a title for it, but I'm a ways off from announcing it. I'll probably do so in a few months when the cat will be out of the bag, what with the title being mentioned at the end of the Odyssium Collection: Volume One.
That should do it for now--I have Chapter 3 waiting, and only a couple of hours tonight to get some headway into it. Next blog should be soon--I'll be announcing the details of the aforementioned Odyssium Collection, so stay tuned!
- C.