Opening Earth is almost complete, and I have one additional story ready for posting.
I am currently in the process of writing three stories, and I have made a start on about four additional stories. My mood determines which of the three stories I work on at any given time. Opening Earth II is one of the three stories, and the other two stories are Ancient Abilities II and The Ark. I will most likely complete Ancient Abilities II first.
The first story I attempted to write as a short story writer is called The Pink Monkey (PM) Chronicles and it is one of the four stories I have on hold. For me PM Chronicles began back in 2005. I had an idea for a story, but at the time, I was not a short story writer; however, I did have around 15 years of technical writing experience. The idea rolled around in my head for many months, until one day, I sat down and started to write it for my personal pleasure; I had no plans to post it. I had a great deal of difficulty with the story's setting and plot, so I set it aside until I decided how to resolve my difficulties. I'm going to take a look at the story once The Ark is ready to post.
The Ark is a story that I would really like to finish and post, but it is going to take a lot of work to rewrite and finish the storyline. I think my readers will find The Ark to be very interesting for two main reasons. First of all, I personally think it is a good story. Secondly, it is what I think of as a Pre Apocalypse story style. This story category does not exist as a SOL story code. In fact, I am not aware of any writer that has ever written a story using this concept (i.e., what the main protagonist does to prepare for surviving a disaster). If anyone is aware of such a story, I would be interested in reading it.
The story occurred to me about three years ago. I was reading Love and Family During the Great Death by Crumbly Writer. I was toying with the idea of writing a Post Apocalypse story; however, my thoughts took a turn in the opposite direction. Namely, if a person became aware of a future disaster that would kill the majority of our world's population and destroy all of its societies, what would that person do if they had the time and ability to take action to save a large group of people and a portion of our culture. That thought was the beginning of The Ark.
Unfortunately, my first attempt at writing The Ark resulted in a story that was extremely difficult to read. So I set it aside until I could figure out what was wrong with my writing style. While writing Chocolateen Part 1, I discovered and corrected the problem with my writing style. I am currently in the process of rewriting and completing The Ark. The story is currently 700KB of predominantly narrative text, and will probably grow to over 1MB. I need to convert the narrative text to dialog, which will make it much easier to read and I need to write the final several chapters. Altogether, I expect the effort to take at least 6 months of work, so don't look for it in the near future.
Of course, that assumes that all goes well in my personal life and that my wife doesn't overload me with honey-dos. Speaking of which, I need to end this blog entry and get back to remodeling our second bathroom.