Heavy Stuff

2012 was a crazy year. Crazy is the wrong word. Wild is the wrong word. Lots of momentous change. Since almost none of it was about writing (beyond the fact that everything has a way of showing up in the writing), I won't create a list here. The world continues to turn and let's just leave it at that.

Comet Jack #2 is chugging along steadily. More than that, as the story emerges so does the story of the full trilogy. (There may be books beyond #3, but these first three will definitely be a set.) My challenge as I'm writing is to make sure #2 is a complete story on its own, even while setting the stage for an even bigger payoff with #3. I'm really digging the big picture, and with luck I'll pull this all off.

I'm juggling a lot of things here, but it feels more right to keep many balls in the air rather than dumb it down with an easier story: Jack's getting older, facing new challenges for which there are no easy answers, and the plot and themes are getting more complex too. Here are just a few things that are sneaking into the story: slavery and freedom and grayer variations thereof, the control of information and how that relates to the control of people, when you should keep a secret (if ever), what to do when you don't know what the right thing to do is, when (if ever) is it okay to decide what is right for someone else. Heavy stuff.

There's also dating. And any 12-year-old (or 13-year-old or 14-year-old or 11-year-old or 20-year-old) can tell you, that is heavy stuff too.

Stay tuned.