I wrote my first novel, Discovery, Book One of the Darkside Trilogy, in 2001. I started in February and finished in November. By the time I was done I had written a 330,000 word (750 page) book. Fortunately I had two editors who helped get it down to a more manageable 500 pages.
The book tells the story of what happens in America when the country discovers that African Americans had been secretly living on the backside of the moon since the mid 1960s, and what inevitably transpires once the discovery is made.
Discovery is the first volume of a trilogy, but the entire universe I've created will span two trilogies and a seventh volume that winds the epic up. Currently I'm in the middle of writing the second volume which I had originally wanted to complete by the end of 2011; my schedule has slipped quite a bit.
When I began Discovery I had thought I was writing a single book, but as I got further and further into the story I realized that the book's events were going to need more than a single volume to complete the story. Two considerations made that decision for me. The first was a realization that no publisher would publish what was essentially something a bit longer than War and Peace by an unknown author. I also realized that only those who regularly visited a gym and worked out concentrating on their upper body strength would be willing (or able) to hold a book of that size up for the long slog to read the damn thing.
Here's the link to Discovery on Amazon.com:
And a link to an excerpt from Discovery:
https://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/book_excerpt.aspx?bookid=56846
The second volume is Conception (currently in production), and it tells the forty-year story of the Black student who makes the discovery of the principles of physics that allows travel to the moon and to establish a colony there in secret.
We're introduced to the various characters that make up this unique community and the factions within the community that form their unique sociological underpinnings. The story tells of the groups conception, their decision to leave earth behind, and the methods they use to secretly recruit new members for their all-Black collective.
Discovery and Conception end on the same scene, Discovery from the perspective of those on earth and Conception from the lunar colonists' perspective.
The third volume, Confrontation, picks up the story tens years after the final scene in Discovery and Conception, and tells of the inevitable confrontation between the people of earth and the lunar colonists.
Comments