What happens with tthhee oddiissee now?

About a week ago, I posted the last chapter of tthhee oddiissee. It took over a year of my life to complete the whole story, but it’s done, finally. I’m not going to tell you that what I created was a perfect story and that it’s inherently great and waiting for just the right person to realize that and shower money and accolades upon us. I think it’s a fine story, but very uneven.

By the end, I was pretty confident I found a groove that the story needed to be in, but it took a whole lot to find that groove. The first dozen or so chapters are pretty rough in my estimation. Hell, there’s an entire chapter that has been excised and I think the chapters on either end of the missing chapter need to be heavily reworked to fit into the story better than they do now.

I’m going to give you a look behind the curtain. I had the idea for the first chapter of this, in some form or another, germinating in my head for years now. The only question I had was “What happens after he leaves the room?” It was an idea that came wriggling back while I was working on the now unpublished novel Caretakers.

(Side note: It’s never a good sign when you start thinking about how interesting and fun it will be to write another story while working on a different one. I may revisit Caretakers, but not any time soon.)

The entire story for tthhee oddiissee hit me all at once, despite how crazy that may sound. It all just sort of fell into place one night and I became eager to see it happen. This time around, I didn’t bother planning things out. I had a rough idea in my head, but I didn’t make an outline. I didn’t write anything down, make any sketches, or do anything to prepare to write the story. It was a liberating experience, but it brought about some problems and strange parts. There were a lot of elements of the story that I thought would be much more important throughout the rest of the book, but rarely ever came up again and, at the exact opposite end, there were one-off ideas and characters that started to become more and more important to the plot as it continued to develop. This isn’t uncommon. Sometimes you just gotta let the characters tell you who they are and how they need to develop. That may sound cliché, but it’s true.

The biggest example I can think of is The Magician. When I first introduced the Magician, I didn’t expect him to appear ever again outside of Ro’s dream. When I needed a character to show up again, I picked him. I thought I could keep him as a persistent, malicious presence in Ro’s life, but the more I kept having the Magician show up, the softer his edges became. There’s some serious lapses in characterization across the board, and he’s the principle one.


So, what’s the point of all this? Well, starting tomorrow, I’m going to be working on revising the whole novel so that I can submit it to various publishers. I’m not going to delete the work I’ve already published. I was ashamed of what I wrote in Caretakers, but I think tthhee oddiissee has a lot to be proud of, despite its often rough edges and in congruent styles and themes. I think a revised and more consistent version is going to be something really special.

And, despite my online moniker, I’m not crazy. I don’t think that every publisher that gets their hands on the manuscript is going to be fighting over the right to publish, nor do I think that it will be flying off the shelves as “the book we need now!” There’s an audience for it, but nottt a big one.

That all being said, the revised edition will not be free. Look, I’m one of those people who have been on the internet for long enough that I truly believe in the idea that “information deserves to be free.” I still do believe that, but dammit, I need money. Look, I don’t like talking about this all the time, but things have been rough lately and I’ve had very little in the way of revenue coming my way. I need a job. I’ll make the manuscript available for a price, but until I can get it published, it’s staying a paywall. Patrons will get it for free and if I know you in real life, you’ll receive a copy, but that’s about it. I’m sorry to have to do this, but this is how it is

I’m saying all this so that when you see so much radio silence, you won’t be alarmed. From what I’ve gleamed from Patreon’s wordcount, tthhee oddiissee is over 100,000 words long. It is about 1.7 Neuromancers in length. This is going to take time now matter how much I cut out (or how much I expand on, God help me).

Please be patient with me. If you want to cancel your patreon, I understand. There’s not going to be much coming for a while. In addition to that, I’m working on some other projects, so please try to be understanding.
Thanks for being with me for so long, I look forward to giving updates when I can. I hope I can get this out in a timely fashion.

 

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