This is number 158 in the blog series, “My Writing Life.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I GET A LOT of miscellaneous garbage in my Facebook feed, supposedly determined by the algorithms that track what I like and respond to—in other words, which click-bait gets the best results. I’ve also noticed that the feed is influenced by what I do on other sites. I order shirts online from Macy’s and Facebook is suddenly filled with ads for shirts.
The same is true of searches I conduct—often in the interest of researching a story or a product for inclusion in a story. For example, I wanted to include a luxury car that a rich CEO with a private driver might have. I looked at Mercedes and that also got me to Maybach, which was a brand I’d often seen in short dramas. You guessed it: Luxury car ads and reviews in my feed, including many for Maybach.
Oh. This was all about a specific show that came into my feed once and I clicked on it because I enjoyed it. Then nearly every ad or reel was suddenly from that show. I have now seen a hundred different memes featuring the same photos of Picard and Riker, usually featuring some horrible pun. And that was what led my mental algorithm to Star Trek the Next Generation and this blog post. Aren’t you glad I’ve given you an insight into my mental algorithm.
Where was I?
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m ‘acting’ in a staged shadow cast production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We opened this weekend. The week included a technical rehearsal, two dress rehearsals, and two performances. Five nights that I was out until ten or later and then was so wound up when I got home (and sometimes hungry) that I seldom got to bed before midnight. Have I mentioned that I’m at that age when I am seldom dressed after six and in bed by nine most nights?
What is cool, though, is that my daughter is directing the production.
Yeah. That’s ‘the next generation.’
I majored in theatre both as an undergrad and graduate student. Although I was primarily a designer, technical director, and playwright, I was also called upon to direct some shows. Kismet. Anything Goes. Christ in the Concrete City. Well, not all were especially big-name shows. But watching my daughter direct and choreograph is so different than when I directed.
She has a better sense of humor than I had, without losing any of the intensity. As a choreographer, she actually knows what she’s doing, unlike my choreographing a dance in Anything Goes. (De-Lovely) It’s not just that she knows her stuff, but she’s more in tune with her actors and tech crew than I ever was.
The Next Generation.
I find myself dealing with this often in writing novels. In fact, there are even words for some of them that I thought I made up but proved to be actual terms. In my longest and highest rated serial, Living Next Door to Heaven, I published the original (Book 1) and eight sequels starting in 2014. Each picked up literally from the moment the previous one ended. Then, at the urging of a friend, I wrote a tenth volume in 2018 that ran before, after, and during the first nine, but from a completely different viewpoint. The characters in the original series were incidental to the action, told from their parents’ perspective.
The term is ‘paraquel.’ I thought I made that up, but it is actually a defined term for a story that takes place in parallel with another. Of course, I could also have called it a ‘circumquel,’ because it has events preceding and events following the main series.
The thing is, I frequently received requests to continue the story with some of the intriguing children from the original series. Oh, yes. That would be a ‘next generation’ story and really have nothing to do with Living Next Door to Heaven. The most frequently requested is that I continue the story of Brian’s daughter, Xan, the child that didn’t speak, but used sign language. When she finally spoke, people listened.
I think such a story would be at least as much work as the original series was in the first place, even if it proved to be shorter. The very thought of launching that project makes my fingers hurt.
The entire 10-volume Living Next Door to Heaven series is available together or individually as eBooks at ZBookStore or for free online reading at SOL or my own website. On SOL, it was published as three serials, the first containing five 'books' and the second containing the next four books.