December 2020 Update

I could start by talking about what a year 2020 has been, but I don’t think I need to tell anyone that – we’ve all experienced it and most of us would likely prefer to forget that this year ever happened.

Instead, I want to give an update on what I’ve been up to, and in my case, it’s pretty big. I once again completed NaNoWriMo, making it the 6th or 7th year in a row. I wrote two more episodes of Tom Creek, which is now in its second season.

But that’s not all. Just last night I finished my edits on my latest novel. It had a working title of CEO, and that might bear some explanation. I actually started it in 2013. The idea was that I wanted to write about a regular guy who, through hard work, a little bit of luck, and careful planning, becomes the CEO of a large corporation. The point was that it’s my belief that not all CEOs are heartless, backstabbing businessmen who don’t care about anything other than their money. It used technology as a backdrop for the true story. In this case, the technology that I came up with was a unique propulsion system that allows ships (think wingless airplanes) to ‘sail’ in the sky without needing air for lift. I myself have dreamt of this since I was a teenager, so it made sense to use it in my book. Back in 2013, I got about 40,000 words in when I set it aside to start writing the Tom Creek episodes.

Then, about two years ago, I took just that idea of the technology to create a ship that could now fly in space, and that became the ship that was used in my novel Limits. A friend who read a pre-publish version of Limits said that she would like to learn more about the characters in that book. While the ship isn’t a character, I remembered that five years earlier I had started that other book, and realized that what I had written back in 2013 was the beginning of the story for Limits.

Early this year, I went back to that book, still titled CEO, and made a few changes. I changed the narrator perspective, and that meant that quite a few scenes had to be rewritten or removed. Once that was done, I continued where I had left off. In the end, to stick with the theme that I seem to have adapted of one-word titles, I renamed it Rising. And last night, that book became ready to read (although still pre-editing and, for now, unpublished).

Rising tells the story of Mike Newburgh, who together with his college classmate and with the support of his professor Jeff Peters, accidentally discovers the propulsion system. As I said, it’s not about the technology, but instead about Mike as he goes through life and everything that comes with that: elation, love, heartbreak, fear, family, illness and hope. The story starts when he’s 21 and ends some years after he retires from his company at age 67 (I don’t want to give away the ending). If printed in paperback, it would be between 600 and 700 pages, so it’s a pretty good read.

I’m extremely pleased with how it turned out. I hope to get some feedback from family and friends, make whatever changes I agree with, and then…

…continue my search for an agent. I guess that’s something I might have to discuss in a future post, as it’s an arduous task to say the least. Until then, happy reading, and may 2021 bring us Health, Peace and Happiness!