When you’re working on a series and have started worldbuilding for the next book, there’s always that moment when you realize that this world has come to life. Doesn’t matter that you’ve already written several books and short stories in the series, what’s required is that sudden moment when the work twists in your hands and you realize that it’s gone from Writer Manipulating Characters to Characters taking Agency.
So I’ve been doing the deep dive into worldbuilding for the final installment of the main Goddess’s Honor trilogy, Choices of Honor. Right now what that looks like is noodling around in Scrivener and Word, writing entire installments based on my main viewpoint characters, their motivations, as well as poking around at secondary characters, settings, and etc to the tune of 1000-2000 words a day (and yes, I’m counting those words, just like I’m counting these words. It’s my newest form of writing discipline.
The story for Choices has been coming closer and closer as I’ve been writing around it. And today it suddenly sprung into life–along with the impetus for a successor trilogy set in this world.
It’s not what I would have imagined for this story forty-some years ago, when I had the first concept of the descendants of an exiled ruler, Alicira, struggling to regain their glory. Hoo boy, has that story ever changed from that first concept.
But if Choices plays out the way I hope it does in the writing, it’s going to be kickass.
And I need to revise my long term publishing schedule to accommodate this next trilogy, because I have a feeling that Yitlisk’s dealings with the Divine Confederation aren’t going to politely wait around for me to work on Oregon Country, Federation Cowboy, and some other projects before I write what’s going on there.
Plus Bess and Alex have been telling me that the Netwalk Sequence post-setup of the Nest solar system defense system is not all love and kisses.
Yep, stuff is happening. It’s probably a good thing I’ve forced myself back into a disciplinary word-tracking structure, because otherwise…I don’t know if I’d get to write it all.
