I am working on my next novel which I have tentatively entitled Children of Clay. Like Table of the Lord, it is sci fi. The difference this time is that this story is less inherently religious and I took the leap into time travel.

Time travel stories are always such a mess and there isn't much new to do with time travel. In this case, though, I focus less on the time traveling and more on the characters.

Right now I am at 53,000 + words. 50,000 is generally considered book length. What I do is struggle at first to complete the story and then I begin to rework it extensively. I stopped pressuring myself to come up with all the goods and explanations and mystery on the first run, I simply struggled through the first draft and then now I can research the book more comprehensively. One funny thing, for me anyway, was that a major idea I had for the book, I simply forgot to put into the story. So now I have a major story line that I still need to work into the story.


In addition to tackling time travel, I'm also touching on Mars colonization. But there again, the story is less about Mars and more about people. I completed the first draft in the spring and now I'm sitting around letting the characters percolate and in re-writing, interesting stuff is coming out about the characters. I tend to feel that stories improve the more they age. They seem to take on a life of their own internally and then when you go through the manuscript, there's so much that you feel you need to add.