This is The End. A Beginning

Two NanoWrimo ago, I worked on a novella of 40k words (not to be mistaken for a 40k Novella), and since I needed more than 40k words, I worked on some other things. Like chapter one of another novella I called Epilogue. I will write out the blurb in a moment for you to read, but the plan was to write two novella series, one for epic fantasy and one for space opera-science fiction. I did not and do not have a series name for it, but the first novella was to be named Epilogue and the last (of five) was to be named Prologue. Clever, eh?

Epilogue itself is heavily influenced by China Mieville's The City & The City. At least in terms of being a dreary European-style city noir police procedural. It won't stay that way of course, there is big science fiction buried in there. But The City & The City had big spec fiction buried inside of it. I sometimes think I stick to genre convention too much, and reading Mieville reminds me that I can tell any fucking story I want.

And the story that begins in Epilogue is destined for weird.

I decided to start my next 8 in 8 by writing Epilogue in 8 weeks. Well, I might not need 8 weeks, but I am going to do it in 8 parts. Each Friday I will write what I can and then finish up that section before the next Friday. So, no more than 5k per week to a max of 40k words. These will be self published works so that I do not have to worry about fitting it into a word count or spend time trying to sell them. I can use these as examples of my work and it will be good practice for later efforts. Though I may write the first two novellas... that might be a good idea. For marketing purposes. Hrmm okay now I have to come up with the name of the second novella.

While I do that, here is a blurb for Epilogue.

Murder is common in Otranta, but not among the Fishers who live near the sewers. When one of these enigmatic folk is found dead, authorities are summoned. But what those authorities discover is no random killing, but a crime of passion decades in the making.

Enjoy! P.S. I think book 2 will be called Three Acts.