Progress Report: Stormchildren
Last time looked at: 9/21/17
Last actual wordage added: 9/21/17
Pages added, 9/21/17: 3
Current page count: 4
Estimated final page count: I have no idea. I don’t even know whether it’s a novella, a novel, or a series.
Deadline: None. Purely speculative.
Word count: 757
Comments: If you support my Patreon or read my Facebook page (the personal one, not the professional one), you’ll have seen me talking about this project. Julie and I took a sixteen-day Hawaiian vacation to celebrate our fortieth anniversary, and on the plane on the way home I saw part of “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” with the sound off while half asleep, and found myself coming up with a new story.
As if I needed one.
It does not involve pirates, or the Caribbean, or zombie sharks, or anything else from the movie; the actual inspiration was wondering why none of the characters have siblings.
I wrote the first page earlier this week, and today I added to that. The title of this first story may change; “Stormchildren” may be the series title, instead, if it becomes a series.
It’s got an odd feel to it — maybe not for readers, but for me. Maybe because it’s about family, which isn’t usually a major theme for me. It’s set in the Quandish Archipelago, in the same world as A Young Man Without Magic and Above His Proper Station and “Sorcery of the Heart” and a zillion unfinished projects, but in a very different part of that world. All the completed/published works are set in and around the Walasian Empire, the heart of the Bound Lands, while this one is set way outside the Bounds, where the laws of nature are more like suggestions.
It’s about an extended family — a group of siblings and one or more of their cousins. At the start of their story the major characters are all in their teens, ranging from sixteen to thirteen, so maybe it’ll turn out to be YA. Or maybe it won’t; I dunno yet.
So far I’ve introduced Rell Stormchild, his sister Lesma Stormchild, and their cousin Darris Fearnone, and in today’s installment Darris gets his first hints that his cousins may have inherited magical abilities from their enchanted father.
I’m enjoying it, but it would make more sense to work on Charming Sharra or Tom Derringer and the Steam-Powered Saurians or even Elfshot.