a novel idea

Just when I began feeling that I wasn't busy enough, I just got a commission to write a novel under my byline. In the funny way that serendipity works in real life, the genre of the novel is speculative fiction - a merge of fantasy and science fiction with lots of characterization and action and magic and tech - which, incredibly, dovetails into my own agenda of producing more spec fic.

It's too early to get into the details, but yet again I am grateful for my previous year's NaNoWriMo experience, because I may have to produce 55,000+ words in 4-6 weeks (my first novel, "Salamanca" was completed under one month last November, so I know I can do it).

So it's really cool. I get to write a speculative fiction novel the way I want to write it, with my sensibilities (haha, let's see how I do scifi in Magic Realist mode), setting it in a particular milieu - and I get paid and published. If all works out, I could potentially be writing more than a few, which is quite interesting to think of.

When is this going to happen? I'm working out the details, but for timing's sake I hope it leans more towards early next year rather than (-choke-) next month. And if my work and business schedules prohibit utter devotion (I cannot take a month's break just to write), I will co-write it Nikki, whose flair for character and dialogue is incredible.

We'll see.