Info on my next book            My first book was a collection of poetry, and while I have enough poems to put out another four or five books, I've decided to work on an idea for a novel of fiction that I've been kicking around for a few years.    I wrote the basic nugget for this story 21 years ago and I promptly forgot about it.  Over the past two and a half years I've been rethinking this story and it's been slowly building inside me to the point where I've had no choice but to start writing out of fear that I'd start forgetting all the cool ideas that were springing up right and left.    I once told a friend that I wrote poetry because I didn't even have the attention span to write short stories, so writing a 300 to 400 page novel is going to be a major achievement for me.  I'm still working on the rough outline of the story, doing research, and slowing filling in more details as they pop up.  The research part is taking the longest as I want it to be as factually correct as possible (too bad I suck at science).  I'm guessing it'll take a few years to complete since I'm writing it in what little spare time I have.  The cool thing is I'm really excited about the whole concept of it, so when I do work on it, it should progress quickly.    Check back once in a while for more updates.     Update!    January 2, 2008 - You think I've given up on the book due to the lack of updates.  Nope nope.  The living part of life has gotten mostly in the way, but in the meantime I've written a bunch on the book.  I have made a commitment to myself to write every dern day on it until it's done.  It's gonna be so cool that they'll have have to create a new book award to attempt to describe the stunning awesomeness that is 2492.  Totally.      June 12, 2007 - You might think I've been slacking on the book because I haven't written a little update thingy on here in three months.  You might be mostly right.  I did kinda sorta plan and participate in my own wedding, which was a big part of it.  That doesn't mean that I haven't been thinking, planning, visualizing, jotting, re-working, and re-writing the book...because I totally have.  I was going all nilly-willy writing chapters all over the place, but now I've found my niche and I've started from the beginning, writing and beefing up the crude infrastructure that I had in place.  I've also been blessed with a wonderful spark of inspiration on the background, present, and future of a couple of semi-major characters that I needed in the book, but previously I just didn't know what to do with.  And hey, knowing is half the battle.             March 3, 2007 - I've done a little bit here and there pruning some chapters, adding to others.  I've probably got about 60 pages done, with another 50 pages of raw notes, concepts, and ideas written as well.  Around Christmas, my future father-in-law asked me if I was basing any of my characters off of real people I know (I think he was hoping for one based on him).  The funny thing is this never even occurred to me as an option before, but now I'm giving it a lot more thought.  (Disclaimer:  The characters, events, and situations in my books are works of fiction, and solely the product of my own imagination.  Any resemblance to persons, situations, and events [whether real or imaginary] are purely coincidental.)     January 12, 2007 - Up until New Years, I was writing like a man possessed, and once 2007 hit...nothin'.  I've been busy with other stuff, such as getting our Etsy store up and painting cupcake pictures like I was a bakery or something.  So, in a strange way to make up for not writing over the past two weeks, I've decided to announce the title...2492.  It's not like a revelation or anything since I've known the title for twenty years now (when I first came up with the idea for the book), but it helps to make it more concrete.  I've set a goal to finish the rough draft by July, and then finish the editing by the end of the year.  Feel free to bug the shit out of me to find out if I'm still on track.  (BTW, the picture above doesn't correlate to anything I'm planning for the book.  It was just a cool picture I took last year and thought it was appropriate)       December 18, 2006 - I'm writing a solid four pages a day and it's coming along very well.  I'm quite pleased.  I think it helps to have a job where I don't have any stress, so I can come home and freely concentrate on the book.  Also a kickin' soundtrack helps.      November 19, 2006 - The words and ideas are flowing like a deluged river, and it's hard to keep up, but wow, I'm trying.  Being back in the Berkshires has really gotten my creativity flowing freely again.      September 24, 2006 - ...man that chapter six is a toughie to get past.  I've gone a few weeks without thinking much about the book, which has cleared my mind a bit and given me a renewed focus on things.  I've gone back and added some more stuff to the first few chapters that sets up lots of wonderful and exciting stuff later in the book.      August 14, 2006 - ...and I'm still up to chapter six.  Yes, I've been busy and haven't had much time to devote to it as I'd like, but I'm still throwing things in, sprucing stuff up, and generally overall bettering the book here and there.  I've also regressed slightly and spent more time than I meant into doing more science-related research.  I also got sidetracked slightly and wrote a several page outline of the sequel.  It's hard to say no to the creative process when I'm churning stuff out.        July 9, 2006 - I'm now up to chapter six, but I've started going back and adding more dialogue (and more action - woo ha!) in previous chapters.  It seems like every day more and more cool new ideas come to me.  I'm very happy with how it's coming along so far.      June 7, 2006 - The first three chapters are done.  When I say "done" I really mean, they're still really rough and need to be finessed, but the basic nuts & bolts are there.  It's kind of neat because while writing, I came up with a whole new tangent/story line that I had never thought about before.  Do I know where I'm going with it?  Nope.  But then again, that's the fun of it.     May 2, 2006 - I've decided to lay off on the hardcore science research that I've been doing the past couple of months and instead focus on the story.  Lately I've had a good amount of time to do nothing but focus on the book, which has been really nice.  The timeline of the book is coming along nicely and, depending on how long-winded I am, this one big book could become two or three smaller books, depending on how it all fits together.      February 9, 2006 - No, I still haven't written much on it, and the book's completion is still years away, but I finally registered some web domains and plan to have a temporary site up sometime marginally soon (eh, a few weeks to a month or two).  I also have a weekend coming up where I plan to barricade myself in my home office and organize the dozens of pages of notes and story ideas I've written that are spread out over five different Word documents.  Hopefully the project will start to have some cohesiveness after then.                                                             © 1987-2007 Eric Nixon.  All rights reserved.