BBKristopher.com

The website, especially the blog, hasn't been getting much love lately. A lot of that has to do with what I've been doing the last few months. Between learning more than I really want to know about Quantum Mechanics, Solid State Physics, Leech Brain Cells, and Electricity and Magnetism; Doing an extensive rewrite on Meredith MacKenzie and the Uruk Empire, and my new time sucking addiction to World of Warcraft, I haven't had a lot of free time. I still don't, really, but I'm going to try to make more of an effect to keep up with this blog.

So, on to stuff that's actually interesting.

I have, in fact, been doing a rewrite on Meredith MacKeznie and the Uruk Empire, and I think, for the most part, it's a huge success. I like the book a lot better. I think I've made huge improvements as a writer while working on it, and I think I've polished the chrome to a nice shine. In short, I'm pretty sure this will sell, once I'm finished with final revisions.

That said, there are still things I'm struggling with, and a lot of that has to do with what I see this book becoming. When I started working on Meredith, my idea was to do something similar to what George Lucas did when he created the original Star Wars Trilogy. I wanted to go back to the old pulp era, stuff like Lensman, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, etc. and take the spirit of those stories and tell one with a bit of modern detail work. Meredith is every bit as larger than life as Buck, Flash and Kimball, but she's not nearly so flawless. I like to think she's got a bit more depth to her, that she's a bit less of a poster boy. She makes mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes cost lives. Sometimes, those mistakes lead her to make even bigger mistakes.

Which leads me to an interesting problem.

Part of the way I see Meredith is as a series. In my head, Uruk Empire is the first of seven books. Six of those books are about Meredith, and are from her point of view. The seventh is also, largely, about Meredith, but from another point of view. But in order for the rest of the books to go where I want them to, in order for the series to come together the way I think it should, I have to do things in book one that seem kind of meaningless and pointless, in the context of book one. To borrow a Theater Cliché, I'm putting guns on the stage that don't get fired until act three, (or in this case, towards the beginning of book three).

I don't know. Maybe I'm being to arrogant in designing a book as the opening of a series when I haven't even been published yet, but I love working on this book, I love telling this story, and I want to do as good a job as I'm capable of doing. Which, right now, means parading a small armory across the stage, so that I've got it handy a few books down the road.

I guess I'll have to wait and see what a editor thinks.