Today, I received an email from a reader asking about my anticipated posting date for Part 2 of The Ark. I realized that it has been some time since I last updated my blog to provide the status of the stories that I am working on, so I decided to remedy that oversight.
After completing The Ark Part 1, I turned my efforts to Opening Earth Part 2. I also worked on a few other stories when writer's block disrupted my efforts on OE2. I have around 28 OE2 chapters written (i.e. over 250,000 words), and I expect the story to increase to over 35 chapters. OE1 was around 225,000 words.
Early last month, I encountered a delay in OE2's story development. I discovered that I had repeated one scene in two places - bad writer needed his hand slapped for losing control of his development effort. While remedying that error, I also recalled that in Part 1, I left a number of tasks incomplete and unfortunately I lost track of the things my main character said and did about those tasks that would require closure in Part 2 or 3.
Since smacking my hand, I have gone through Part 1 and identified those tasks and activities that require further input to Part 2 and Part 3. I still need to incorporate the incomplete Part 1 threads in appropriate places in Part 2, and some of those items will extend into Part 3. During this review process, I decided to introduce several new factors in Part 2 and need to integrate them into the current chapters of Part 2. Many of these factors will rollover into Part 3, so I need to ensure they are adequately documented to support their inclusion into that part of the story when I finally get around to writing it. All in all, this will probably extend the development of OE2 into the early part of 2017.
Once OE2 is complete and fully edited, I will start posting it and turn my attentions to the completion of Time Scope Part 2. After that I will probably return to the D-Hopping Universe and complete my in-progress Officer Symms and Sam's Hopping stories. Both will be multi-chapter stories, and I currently have no plans for developing sequels for these two stories.
That will probably extend my story development effort into late 2017. I am planning on starting The Ark Part 2 after that. I also have a story, The Pink Monkey Chronicles that I started many years ago. It has been on my backburner for over 15 years and I hope to complete its development sometime in the future.
REP