SCIENCE FICTION EPIC FINISHED!
Posted on November 21, 2019
With a Side of Universal Destruction is now finished, the first draft that is. It clocks in at 77,745 words. I was a little worried about finding my ending as the direction of the climax shifted a little, but I let the new plot pathways percolate and the ending came to me. It's one of my favorites. I also greatly enjoyed the very tight and juicy epilogue at the end.
I'll put the book away for a few weeks and come back to it in December. it will then go to my beta readers at the end of January and should be ready for a Spring 2020 release in March or April.
Here is the Author's Note running at the end of With a Side of Universal Destruction:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Good Omens are two of my favorite books. With a Side of Universal Destruction was inspired by the first one. It was also concocted when I realized I had yet to write a story set in outer space. Me, a child of the seventies that was monumentally influenced by Star Wars and the science fiction of the day, didn't have a single novel exploring alien worlds.
I set forth to rectify this cosmic injustice. All sorts of sci-fi tropes vied for their time in the narrative spotlight. While I didn't write a wild space bar scene, an invasion, a planetary shipwreck, a space prison, an asteroid belt, and space gods got to put in appearances. Along for the ride is Will Strooter, a quiet man keen on observing more than participating. Gee, I wonder who that could possibly be based on. I tend to mine the timid hero who finds his courage an awful lot. Of course, what's the fun in following a protagonist with bravery to spare from the get-go?
Before I started this project, I bought the Douglas Adams series for my teenage son to devour, knowing I'd want to read it again as an adult. I was in my teens myself when last I had immersed myself in Arthur Dent's exploits. I toyed with reading it before writing but feared it would tie me down too much and I'd produce a story too slavishly inspired by it. Instead, I summoned the foggy impression of what I could recall from the series to steer my hand and I think it's for the better. Now I can reread the series without worrying if it will weaken my own creative efforts.
So I've written my space epic. Guess that means I've got a modern-day, end-of-the-world tale staring agents of Heaven and Hell to put to paper. I suppose I should hold off on reading Good Omens until that's done, right?
And here is the revised summary:
Bad luck happens to Will Strooter when he's away from his goldfish. And today looks like it could bring a whirlwind of trouble as he awakens to find his fish belly up. When his most recent manager accuses him of being a dark cloud of misfortune and the cause of a confounding workplace glitch and bizarre happenstance, Will is certain he'll need to look for other gainful employment. Will's parade of bad luck continues when he barely evades an alien hit squad in a grocery store parking lot and is whisked off into space by a take-charge alien warrior more concerned with the cosmic artifact embedded within his rather lacking mortal frame. In fact, several alien races are convinced the earthling has an ancient anomaly tucked away in his psyche that, if extracted, could either bring unlimited power and sway or end all of lemony-fresh time and space. Strooter does what any hunted human alone in the wild and woolly galactic empire would do to survive – he surrounds himself with a ragtag band of misfits and hopes for the best. Along the way, he may or may not destroy a prison planet, race into the open arms of a death cult, and anger a powerful god whose disciples are sentient asteroids. Oh, and save all of reality. That goes without saying, of course.