Armor X
So I've finally decided to try something a little different to get myself writing again. I've started a second story. The hope here is that with two to write I will want to jump between them instead of taking long breaks and that I will want each one to kind of cruise along.
The Blade of Time is the original novel, currently sitting at about 43,000 words. This fantasy story is about a young man named Johnathan Lazarus who travels through time with the aid of a mystical dagger. Along the way he meets up with three companions. A Lifegiver boy named Samuel Rent who specializes in the forbidden art of necromancy, a Berserker woman named Sa'ini Seriah who spent most of her days feeding on the thrill of being a mercenary, and a Catborn Prince named Calen Digore who has been exiled from his people for giving in to his feral side and making a deal with a demon. Together, the four will fight threats to the world's balance. Both through action and through diplomacy. This book focuses around two particular threats and introduces a third. The main threats are a massive dragon that is raising an army to destroy a kingdom and a group of locust-like creatures that are out of time and devouring anything they come across.
Armor X (Armor 10) is a futuristic fantasy about the tenth mission in the Armor line of colonization ships. Preceded by a ship called Expedition that was destroyed before properly reaching deep space. This story focuses on the crew of Armor X as they leave for a tenth attempted colony. Twenty years of cryo-sleep will be required to travel from Earth to the new world. During year 12 a hull breach is reported. When the emergency crew is awakened they are unable to find the source, but without good cause for the alarm it is decided that they will investigate further in order to ensure that the 20,000 lives they are responsible for are kept safe. Then strange things start happening. An explosion, failed cryo tubes, unexpected and unexplained deaths. Will they find the cause of these horrible occurrences? Who will survive the flight of Armor X.
Armor X has a larger overall cast, but I intend to keep the Perspective characters still fairly limited. I'm planning 5-6 major recurring Perspective characters total here (vs. 4 in The Blade of Time). The Armor cast includes InterStellar Corp crew members and First Wave civilian members. So far my major Perspectives are from the Atmo pilot and the ship's Medic. I'm trying to decide who gets to fill the remaining Perspective slots and who actually lives and dies. I have some planned out, but I generally don't outline too rigidly as I feel that then locks me out of being able to reflow the story as it evolves. Still, about 1600 words of Armor X tonight and hopefully another big batch like that again tomorrow in one of the two stories.
I'm excited about both universes. TBoT has some mystery, but it's much more clearly focused on goals. Armor X I hope feels much more mystery-filled. The cast is larger, which could be either good or bad - I haven't decided which yet. I expect Armor to go through a few phases before the end. Setup (ch.1-2), Mystery (ch.3-7ish, I think), Horror (7-10), exploration (10-12) and action (12-20). My chapters currently tend toward about 20 pages, so this comes in around 400 pages or 100,000 words.
Of course, I have to figure out how to pace two vastly different stories. Armor has to float between tension and action, while TBoT will primarily be action oriented. The feel of scenes will be vastly different as will character interactions. Armor, I expect, will have more emotional impact than TBoT, but that's because of the cast it's getting. The leads in Armor have a lot of inner conflict as well as the primary outer conflict of the story, whereas TBoT is much more externally focused. Hopefully both come out well and I don't feel like I've failed one story while the other has been stellar (no pun intended :) )
Anyway... Night!
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