Storming Amargosa: Yeah, It’s A First Draft Again

Paper head
CC 2010 Drew Coffman

So I decided to add a few scenes to Storming Amargosa to get it above 63,000 words. I didn’t think a shorter novel would go over too well, and the last three novellas setup the Germanicus-Leitman conflict, as well as leaving Douglas Best kind of hanging. So I added some storylines.

AND IT’S A MESS! A GREAT BIG GLORIOUS MESS!

Yes, I’m going to have to trim and rearrange. But I have more to work with. One thing I did was to tell Germanicus’s backstory. Yes, Germanicus is long-lived, and his early story includes getting fired from Google after giving a TED Talk and a hilarious Silicon Valley moment where he accidentally triggers singularity.

While stoned.

That’s right. Our first words as a species when singularity is achieved are “Huh huh. Huh huh huh huh huh.”

But while this is not the ultimate end of the Compact Universe, it is the end of the Amargosa Trilogy and the novellas built around it. So I not only have to wrap up what’s going on with JT and Davra (and Tishla), I have to wrap up everything that went into this. But I have much more to work with now. There will be cutting, but a lot of the work will be in rearranging. And I leave enough behind to set up future novels.

But for now…

IT’S A MESS! A GREAT BIG GLORIOUS MESS!