Stories beget stories. That’s a fact I discovered very early in my writing journey.
Once I had created my first character, to be precise. The fact that you’ve created a world and characters to inhabit it produces a myriad of extra possibilities for more stories in the same setting. And, as you find more settings and people, the whole thing multiplies.
It was one of the things I didn’t expect.
Dave Travise had an adventure in the Caves on Qister-Alu in my first ever Sci-fi novel, Freefall. While he was trapped in the caves, he saw a message carved into the rock by the explorer who had discovered the place. And that was centuries before his visit.
It was only intended as a bit of atmospheric filler, but the idea of an explorer in the past of the future stuck with me. If you get what I mean.
I wondered about the people who would build the future, how they might be seen and remembered by those who came later. When the Galaxy was a boring place.
As the dedication in one of my novels said.
One day, the future will be history, taught in schools to bored children.
I had an idea for a story, which ended up being called Survive. It was about Ballantyne Alysom, the explorer who had left the scratched message, and how he came to discover the caves. When I’d finished it, I could see that it would require a series to tell the whole story.
Ballantyne Alysom is the Galaxy’s most famous explorer.
Davis Jansen is the cameraman he takes to record his latest mission.
Alysom is giving nothing away, except that it’s something that’s never been seen before.
When things go wrong, they are marooned on a savage and uncharted planet. The survivors need a leader they can rely on.
Jansen watches and records it all as Alysom’s true character is revealed. He’s not the genial and fearless explorer that everyone sees.
The Far Explorer is a ship riddled with infighting and jealousy, Alysom is controlling and arrogant, nothing like the man that his reputation suggests.
Jansen’s efforts to expose the truth carry just as much risk as surviving on the planet did.
Maybe more
Find out if enough lies can ever bury the truth in Survive, the tale of Ballantyne Alysom.
“I recommend this book, it’s the kind you can’t put down till the end and then you’re disappointed when the end happens.”
Part two is underway, and about half written.
That was my introduction to the side project. As I wrote more, so it continued. Stories would come to mind for side characters or locations. Many of these were at the instigation of the characters themselves.
They would demand that I tell more of their stories, especially if I was killing them off.
What prompted this post was the fact that it’s starting to happen with the short stories I’m currently writing. You might think that it’s all a bit over the top, after all, what could occur in a three-thousand-word tale to prompt a possible series?
The fact is that even if the character doesn’t suggest it, sometimes the narrative will suggest a longer version or a different point of view.
Let me explain.
Kalyn Deere, my bounty hunter and star of a series of short stories, has a shared past with someone called Debs Debreq. They were shipmates in the Navy until Debs suddenly disappeared.
When she came back into Kalyn’s life, naturally, the subject of her sudden absence came up.
While Debs was telling Kalyn what had happened, over a beer or two, I realised that it would be worthy of a novel of its own. It turned out that Debs had been involved in an undercover operation to infiltrate a criminal gang and bring them down. The way it was planned and executed took my breath away, and I was the person writing it.
I could see straight away that the idea was far too long and involved to be told in a single bar-room conversation. It actually needed the space to develop.
The resulting story, currently called Cuckoo in the Nest, joins my list of novel works in progress.
This year, I intended to complete some of the 14 novels I had partially written. I’ve actually done very little towards reducing that total.
Except adding two more to it.
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