Way back in 2015, my good friend Rami Z Cohen came to me with an idea for a story. He had written two or three scenes about a group of asteroid hunters who stumbled upon something bizarre. The idea of mining asteroids was news at the time (and still is, although probably too expensive right now and not a worthwhile investment until we actually get some people in space who need metals without relying on NASA/ESA/JAXA/ISRO/etc).
I was more interested in philosophical aspects of finding that we are all (as the late great Carl Sagan loved to put it) “star stuff” (he meant carbon being created by supernovas, but we also know that asteroids are the way we got amino acids to rain down on ancient Earth).
So Rami and I began to email ideas back and forth for a few weeks, then we started to flesh out his characters and plot. I wrote a synopsis and outline and we hashed out the background.
At some point in 2017 or 2018 (I think), Rami was working on an album of rock music (check out “Balancing on the Event Horizon,” very apropos!) and passed on the entire story to me. But something just wasn’t working. I found it difficult to work on what he had already written, because I wanted to respect the original. But the characters and story idea were sound. I just needed to get from Point Alpha to Point Zedra. I added a “Prologue” to explain how the main character entered the story, and then joined an online writer’s workshop for advice.
Trash it, they said. It’s too slow. There’s too much exposition and not enough action. More conflict. Things exploding. Sex.
Well, OK, they didn’t say sex, but they definitely wanted it to seem much more like The Expanse (which, since I live in Japan, I had never heard of…).
And I have to say, I agreed that there was too much backstory in the beginning. The writer should know the background; the reader should see the character interaction. So I removed a lot of description and completely rewrote (finally) the opening chapter. And added a “leap-frogging” narrative structure.
And did a lot of research. I mean, a lot of research. I am not a quantum physicist, a molecular biologist, or a chemical engineer. But I wanted the science to be as accurate as possible — up to a point.
Now, finally, over 8 years after we started, I have finished the first draft. It’s about 300 printed pages, around 90,000 words. It’s the longest fiction I have ever written. (My doctoral dissertation was over 430 pages but this story is much more interesting…)
Now I just have to avoid distracting myself with yet another WIP about dragons in Japan…
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