Turning a page

There is a principal in business called the “principal of sunk costs.” What this means is that if you’ve spent the money, it is gone, and the only important costs are those yet to occur. Basically, an investment in resources is worth it if you are only going to spend $100 more to make $1,000, even if you’ve already spent $10,000. Similarly, if you’ve already spent a year-and-a-half working on a book, if you don’t think it is going to work, regardless of how little work it would take to finish it, maybe you shouldn’t finish it.

I think that might be where I’m at on Nights of the Purple Sky. Not because the book doesn’t work per se, but because of its marketability in a set of books. Book 1 of this series might sit in an entirely different genre than the other five that are planned. I started this journey as a Fantasy Fiction Author and the theme of the first work was “How did we get there.” I’ve read many books that sit in a future Earth where magic now exists. Where there are societies and rules based on the proper use of magic and there are bizarre monsters and true good and evil wizards, battling it out for the right to rule. I asked myself how did that happen? Wouldn’t it be cool if I wrote that.

A couple of summers ago, I set out on that “Unexpected Journey,” and built that world. I think the world works, and it works well. But much like there is advice to writers that says sometimes you write a book and throw away the first two chapters, I might be in that same boat. I wrote a book about all the stuff I need to know as the author, but maybe you don’t need to know as the reader? Yet.

Can I use that backstory to craft and even better experience for the reader? Can only dribbling out that backstory throughout the rest of the series set up mysteries that are more fun to be discovered in dribbles than they are to be lived in their entirety? Regardless of this, do I want to be known as a fantasy fiction writer or a writer of apocalyptic novels?

I also have a problem editing the book at this stage in my career. There is another principle that I’ve learned over time and that is the principle of ‘anchoring.’ Where you put an idea in your mind and it is nearly impossible to not use that as your basis or starting point. Most of Nights of the Purple Sky was written when I was less practiced as an author. So, when I pull up a chapter, even though I go into it with the mindset I’ll rewrite the chapter, I am anchored into leaving more than I should. This includes simple bad grammar to complex problems that are hard to shove away and thus the product isn’t as good as it could be.

Does this mean that the Nights of the Purple Sky will never see the light of day? No, I don’t think it means that at all. It may be pulled out of the trunk and redone if the rest of the series takes off and there is a significant following of the world that they want to read the story. A person in one of my critique groups called it Lewis’s Magician’s Nephew, the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia. A book not loved by many except the true fans of Narnia. A book about the beginning of C. S. Lewis’s beloved world. Though that book is in the style of the rest of the Chronicles, it does kind of standalone from the rest of the story.

So, for now, the pending end of modern times in a world much like ours is pushed off to perhaps be dusted off at a later date and I’ll begin working on the first book of the story based on the outcomes of NotPS.

Book 2 (now book 1) is yet to be titled, but it does take place five years after the events of Nights. It follows Kanyin Robinson, a former NFL football player turned thaumaturgist trying to fight the good fight in a world that has recently ended.  He and his comrades are starting a society based on magic and Kanyin is a bit of an outsider, he doesn’t enjoy the ‘government or political’ side of the society as much as he enjoys adventuring and righting wrongs. The first scene starts when he is out and about, and runs across a family migrating west from Philadelphia and one of the ‘members’ of that family is a teenage girl…