It is finished. It is done. The Amortals, the first of four novellas I want to write this year, is in the can.
Mind you, I basically rewrote an earlier novella called Quantonesia, named for the capital of the Compact. But only about half the original story took place in Quantonesia, less than that in the new version. So I decided to focus on three characters who are amortal – That is immortal unless something takes them out like an accident or a virus or violence. One of the characters was not introduced until this story but exists in an unpublished short story. The second is a character who is in No Marigolds in the Promised Land, Broken Skies, and Warped. No one will be surprised to learn he is old enough to remember the Twin Towers falling. A third has appeared in the series, but his true identity is not revealed yet, though I hint at it.
Getting this finished was an important milestone for me. There is the follow up to the crime novel I’m shopping. I’ve been writing it episodically, five or six chapters at a time. I work on it between other projects. Storming Amargosa was written as a screenplay but has yet to be drafted as prose. So neither of these can be called finished. Finishing a first draft of The Amortals helps me feel like I’m making progress.
So after another “episode” of the crime novel and drafting Storming Amargosa, I plan to write about Rosc from Tishla in The Exile. This one I plan to write longhand, something I haven’t done in a very long time (like twenty years.) The beauty of this is I can take my notepad anywhere and just write. I don’t have to worry about sunlight, wireless, or syncing OneDrive. I just need a pen and my notepad.
I have two more I want to write, including one I want to serialize, but for now, It’s good to have one in the can for the year.