I finally have a working outline for the next book. I’ve been doing a fair amount of research and believe I have a plot concept that will work within the series. Of course, it will require more research as I flesh the details, but I have a start.
The premise is that the terrans are trained and sent on a mission to another suspect planet. However, this Earth-like planet is mostly dead with only small pockets that aren’t completely barren. There have been several anomalies detected requiring a force on the ground to investigate. Many scout ships are launched, but the book will follow only three of them as they seek to uncover the mysteries of what happened to the planet.
The goal is to weave in various landmarks that exist today and how they might appear after a society-ending cataclysm. I don’t want to mention which landmarks because that would be spoilers since the arriving teams don’t know what they are looking for or looking at. I hope a reader would enjoy each team’s bewilderment as they try to decode the clues before the clues become deadly.
Also, the prelude is the departure of the new unit, and the epilogue will be the conclusion of the investigation’s findings and resulting path to next steps, aka, a cliffhanger for another book if I write it. I’ve got to write this one first.
My goal is to try and take a little time each day to fill in the outline. It will be clunky at first, but at some point, as it tends to do, the characters will be established enough that they will just starting writing it for me. The key is to mold each one with specific views and motivations. It generally takes off from there. The challenge is getting there with three separate teams, three separate stories, all toward a unified conclusion.
Not like I have fans, but if anyone reads it, they might not get all the references. Some of the ideas I have will require deep cuts from myth and lore that are not well know outside of specific circles interested in such topics. Even I didn’t know about all of them, so the research will continue for me to even come close to doing such stories justice.
But when you’re dealing with obscure European folk tails maybe a bit of literary flexibility is okay. Just a little.