Brief Update:
I’ve been busy with Nanowrimo. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in November. I just hit 44,000 words on my next book. I’m happy with the way it’s going. After finishing ‘Confederation’, the 3rd installment of the Gaea Ascendant series, I was ready for a change. I’ll probably come back to that universe later. I’ve got at least one or two more stories that are set in it. But, I needed a break.
I’d been toying with either a time-travel story or a story set in pre-history, specifically in the Pleistocene. After corresponding with Dr. Quantum (Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D.) about his ideas on extraordinary time-travel, I made the decision to blend the two stories into one. It’s working well so far. I’ve just reached the point where the story has found its own voice and the characters are now telling me what they are going to do. The plot has fallen into place also.
I’ve got to admit that I’m a seat-of-the-pants author. I write about five to ten pages, telling the story in rough terms in what I think is the right sequence, then I push those notes ahead of me as I flesh out each scene. However, they are only suggested notes. The characters and story are still free to develop as they decide for themselves and they usually change things completely much to my surprise, but to the advantage of the story.
For this latest story, tentatively titled “Heart of Fire, Time of Ice” I did extensive research on the Clovis culture, the Younger Dryas period where global temperatures dropped an average of ten degrees in a year, and Pleistocene mega-fauna. Those topics were fun and pretty easy to encompass. Time-travel, on the other hand was not.
I admit that I’ve read probably more popular treatments of quantum physics in my spiritual and scientific studies than most people, but time-travel? Come’on now! Well, it turns out that quantum physics practically mandates that it must exist in some form or other. Fred Wolf has a unique take on the idea. He says in “The Yoga of Time Travel” that extraordinary time-travel is probably the way to go. By ‘extraordinary’ he means time-travel without wormholes, machines, or FTL travel. He suspects that all that is necessary is to wake up from a lucid dream in another time. Yeah, I know. Shocking ain’t it?
This approach is too easy. After all, we’ve got a long, long history of crazed inventors with weird clockwork machines or portals that they use to jump in time. Despite movies such as “Somewhere in Time”, I had the feeling that readers would have a hard time buying into the premise. This was a frightening prospect. I didn’t want a machine for logistic reasons and I liked the out-of-body aspect, having some experience with that phenomenon. So, I agonized for days over how to deal with the time jump. Finally, it struck me. My main character, a timid and reclusive female physics student, would develop a theory based on her meta-analysis of date from CERN. As she began to fully comprehend her formulas, she would experience instances of deja vu – sort of a precursor of her learning to travel in time. Finally, under extreme stress, she would make the jump.
It’s yet to be seen if most readers will enjoy this, but my preliminary readers have accepted it without a hiccup. Of course, maybe this is because the jump takes second place to her problems with survival and a certain Clovis culture hunter.
I’d like to do a preliminary cover reveal at this point. For this project, I wanted a softer look than my post-apocalyptic stories used and I found an artist who has done the subject justice. The background in this jpeg is in progress.
As an aside, the MCs have developed an attraction for each other and, though I’ve yet to see how it works out, the book is shaping up as science fiction/pre-historical speculation/romance. I’m a little nervous over the genre crossing, but the story seems to be very compelling, so I’m letting it go where it will.
I hope to have it ready by Christmas, 2015. I’m feeling ambitious, since I just wrote almost 50k words in 15 days.
Namaste,
Eric
