Tag: Causal Nexus

He’s Only Gone and Actually Written Something

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment

Yup. Much like Hercules still finding time to stay in shape and have great hair whilst completing his twelve labours, yours truly has found time in his busy schedule of working, sleeping, playing Red Dead Redemption, watching Sherlock, thinking about the Sherlock I just watched, and wishing there were more than three episodes of Sherlock in a season, to actually write some more of my soon-to-be-nearly-upcoming novella – the very science-fictionally titled Causal Nexus.

Entirely gratuitous picture of BC to attract clicks. Hi there, people who were expecting a post about Sherlock!

Chapter six is in the bag, and that’s six of my seven characters introduced. One more chapter will complete the cast, and also act one of the book, which with a gentle, not-quite-literary-but-getting-there pace quite unlike that of the first two books in the series, sets the scene.

Then in act two everything starts going to shit for everybody, which is much more my usual speed. Fun!

If I can get some momentum going I should be able to knock out the rest of the draft in fairly short order. It is, after all, a novella, not a novel, so isn’t likely to run much more than about 50,000 words. I’ve got a third of that done already, so another couple of months at a decent clip should get a draft done. Then it’ll be time to bring in the editor, rustle up a cover, try to remember how to compile ebooks and do paperback layouts, and all that jazz.

Onward! Also: upward!

China on the Moon, Doctor on TV, X-Men at the Movies

On By Dan HarrisIn Reading, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment
Chang’e 3 sticks the landing, and takes home the gold medal in the individual lunar lander parallel bars. That gives China its seventeenth gold in these Olympics.

Wonderful footage from Chang’e 3 as it touches down. This makes China only the third nation in history to land a craft on the Moon, decades after the United Kingdom and Italy both achieved the feat in the 1950s*, their years-long rivalry having driven a technological renaissance that made the European Union the world-leading scientific powerhouse it remains today**.

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On To The Next One

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment

With Venus Rising successfully wrapped up and shipped out, I’ve turned my attention to the next book in The Unity Sequence. It’s actually been outlined for a couple of months, but on hold while I finished the edits to Venus Rising. Today I… I want to say ‘broke ground’ on the first draft, but that only applies to buildings. (Note to self: Coin a phrase for starting first drafts. Spread it around. Become famous…. Profit?) Anyway, I had a few hours free while Mrs. Dan was out, so I banged out the first 2,800 words of what’s eventually going to be Causal Nexus. 

In structure it’s going to be a little bit different to the other two books. Ascension Point and Venus Rising are both made up of chapters four to five thousand words long, each with four to six scenes. This works well for a fast-paced story, with quick POV shifts between scenes and lots of action. But Causal Nexus is going to be a slower-paced, more character driven book, so those 2,800 words are just the first scene… and also the first chapter.

There’s still going to be a lot of action, but the story takes place over just one day, and shows how the lives of seven characters–most of whom don’t know each other–can interact in shocking and dramatic ways. I really want to dig into the characters’ thoughts and feelings, and bring across how different they are and how each of their lives touch the others’.

It’s going to be interesting to write, and a bit of a change in style for me. I really enjoyed writing this first chunk, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.