REP: Blog

I posted the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Opening Earth Part 2 today. Chapter 2 will be posted this coming Tuesday, and the remaining 19 chapters will be posted one chapter a week on Tuesday.

My focus will now be on completing Time Scope Part 2. I will also be working on several other stories when I need a break from TS2 to include Opening Earth Part 3.

I just posted a new story, Not My Fault. It is a short, fictional story about why relationships fail. I see the story as informative, and it is neither happy nor sad.

While the story itself is fictional, relationship failures happen all the time in our society. I don't have data that proves my contention that my single reason for most relationship failures is true, but I do believe what I had my characters say in the story.

Hopefully you will enjoy the story, and constructive feedback is always welcomed.

My editor, Jim7, has finished editing the first half of Opening Earth Part 2. He is now working his way through the last half of the story. Once I have reviewed his edits, I will do a final review/edit of the story; and then I will start posting the Chapters. There are a total of 21 Chapters plus the Introduction.

Yes, before you ask, there will be a Part 3 to the story. A number of the Part 3 chapters were written before I picked a good end point for Part 2. However, as I said earlier, I do have a few partially written stories that I want to complete before focusing on Opening Earth Part 3. Not My Fault was one of them.

Thank you, REP

I received a suggestion from one of my readers in response to the status update I posted yesterday. I am implementing his suggestion of posting shorter Parts. In implementing that suggest, I will be dividing my planned Part 2 into two Parts, which will allow me to start posting Part 2 in about 2-3 months.

I will be following the rest of my projected story development with the exception of a modified decision of working on Opening Earth Part 3 and The Ark Part 2 in parallel after completing Time Scope Part 2 and several shorter stories in the D-Hopping Universe.

REP

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

Just uploaded Version 2.0 of Opening Earth. This version contains numerous edits to correct grammatical errors and minor wording changes to improve readability. Essentially no change to the story itself.