mackknopf | Work in Progress: the novels

I've finally decided to take the plunge and start working again on my novel False Gods, with the intention of finally finishing a draft. Committing to a project like this is a major undertaking and will require much discipline, but it's only a few pages a day, right? Those few pages, if done consistently, will add up to a completed manuscript, hopefully. Then I can start revising it, mail it off to a publisher, and start work on another book while I'm waiting. (Or maybe I won't do another book, I'll just have to see.) I've been noodling around with FG, much as one would strum a few chords on the guitar. I've been working on the outline and doing some research reading, but I'm almost done with both of those. I just need to sit down with the outline and decide where Book One ends.

Book One, you say? Well, I'd originally intended to write one complete novel. More and more, I'm thinking it needs to be two or three (a trilogy, even), unless I drastically cut chapters. That's why I'm working on the outline. As projected now, Book One would have a definite ending -- the heroes kill the villainous god Amun -- and then leave them with the even bigger problem of the god Set, who then takes control of Amun's army to overthrow his brother, the Pharaoh Osiris. So there would be a climax, some resolution, and a cliffhanger for Book Two. I'm actually not sure about what would happen in Book Three. I appear to have enough plot to fill only two books, which is an unwieldy number seldom seen or sold in stores. Everyone wants a stand-alone or a trilogy (or quartet, quintet, and in Robert Jordan's case, an almost unlimited number of novels in the series). My goal is to write one book and see how it goes, instead of putting the cart before the horse and worrying too much about future novels. However, I very much want to tell my complete story, so I need to figure out what it will take to do that.

I do have a new idea, if I ever get there, for a future novel set in present day of an alternate future timeline. The two main characters from FG have a daughter (Ma'at, goddess of justice), who joins forces with the surviving Set to oppose a coalition of tyranical gods. If he can't rule the world, no one can! Set and Ma'at may even find unlikely romance together in this world where Egypt is a major power, and the nations are ruled by the gods of each pantheon. Basically, the genetic mutation that gave Egyptian gods their power has either spread through the gene pool or evolved separately. Christianity, led by an immortal, reborn Jesus, struggles as an underground to fight these deities. I'm not sure if I want to do the last part, but the idea is intriguing.

While I was thinking about outlines, I went ahead and took a look at Survival of Species, the book I began researching and dreaming about in graduate school. That was fourteen years ago! What I have so far on it is several hundred pages of background, a well-developed alternate timeline, great main characters, and less than ten pages of story. The low word count is due to 1) my liking the brainstorming more than the writing and 2) not having much of an outline. I knew where the story began and ended, only I'm not even sure if I want to keep those markers. The original plot was hammered out with a friend of mine (Daniel Young) over a decade ago, and I've since radically departed from it in my vision. He proposed a detective and investigation-type story, with the main character being Alex Thompson, government operatiive, who shadowed a private investigator as he tried to find out who was killing military superhumans. The idea was sort of a look into the operations of the Men in Black from the television show the X-Files, as they simultaneously covered up the killings while working to stop them. Eventually, the private investigator would be exposed to the triggering virus and become a superhuman himself.

The story that grew on me in succeeding years instead concerned a special operative and a former nurse turned investigator. She saved his life in Vietnam as a foot soldier, but her memories were blurred by a telepath to protect the government's secret. They run into each other (Literally. It's a car wreck while he's surveilling her apartment) again in Berkeley, CA. This time she remembers, and the secret is out. The military exposed select soldiers to a virus in Vietnam; survivors were crippled or given superhuman powers. This eventually turned the tide of war and led to North Vietnam agreeing to a truce. In the meantime, Alex has grown disillusioned with America, and Grace has joined Robert Oppenheimer's peace movement, seeking to expose rumors of strange biological experiments by the government. They combine forces to find out who is killing off Alex's old Black Ops teammates

The killer is a doctor, the son of one of the original Project Aegis developers, who believes that the existence of the TEN agents threatens the evolution of the human species. The virus is easily communicable, you see, except for "immunizations" given each year to suppress its growth, and the doctor has been a part of this. (TEN is an acronym that stands in part for Temecula, the town in California the virus was discovered). The final confrontation is a fight between the doctor and the surviving superhumans in Monhegan Island in Maine, where an agent has tried to retire, only to find that his daughter has developed powers as well. At the end, Alex goes back to work, and Grace continues to look for the truth.

Unfortunately, there are problems with my ideas as conceived. First, Alex's best friend (the telepath who blurred Grace's memories) could just read people's minds to find the human-only conspiracy. Second, I don't want to write a detective story. I want to write an action-adventure with some romance. Third, I have a very confused notion of what happens in the middle of the novel. Fourth, I don't think Alex and Grace would be just allowed to walk away knowing what they know at the end. These are big issues. I solved problem three last night by having it lead with a cliffhanger into the next book, but problems one through three are going to have to remain until I get back to this project. Maybe I'll come up with something by then. I could always enlarge the human supremacist conspiracy. . .

But that will be something for another day. I'll let my subconscious work on it in the meantime.