Tuesday, 24 October 2017

Here We Go Again...



Yep, it’s October. That means that, unless something goes badly wrong, it will be November next month, and we all know what that means. National Novel Writing Month! I will once again be endeavouring to pump out 50,000 words of original fiction between the 1st and 30th of November, along with tens of thousands of others around the globe.

This year sees me return to Edmund Zenith of the Royal Air Fleet, protagonist of 2015’s successful NaNo attempt ‘Squadron’s Zenith. I posted before about the fact that I apparently started the series with the second book, and that I would need to go back and cover Zenith’s lieutenancy, prior to the promotion that put him in command of the HMA Hippolyta.

This year, I will be working on what should be (probably) the first book in the series, Ship’s Zenith. I will confess straightaway that according to the NaNo rules, I will be cheating slightly. I say this because I have actually already started work on Ship’s Zenith; although I’ve only produced 7,000 words or so. I will be producing 50,000 more words, but nonetheless, strictly speaking it’s supposed to be a completely new novel.

I do wonder whether I couldn’t start even further back in the timeline, with my main character as a very young midshipman, and call the book ‘Wardroom’s Zenith’. However, it’s already been established that Zenith was a Lieutenant on-board the Pendragon. If I do go further back and write Wardroom’s Zenith, it will have to be a totally new story again. Currently, I have no ideas for it, but we’ll see.

For now, here’s the blurb for Ship’s Zenith as it currently appears on the NaNoWriMo website:

“It’s 1876, and Edmund Zenith, a young lieutenant in the Royal Air Fleet, is posted to the Pendragon, a magnificent airship of the line. However, between a tyrannical captain, pirates, irritable Frenchmen, deserts, sandstorms and a nosy newspaperman, what should be a dream posting may prove far more than the inexperienced young officer can handle!”

That’s the plan at least. I’ll let you know how I get on.

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