Very Near the End

Today was another good day for writing. It’s another record for my productivity. I first finished up chapter sixteen and thought of an interesting way to link one of Meghin’s fellow security officers to Riley. I have all this stuff that is still lingering in the distant background that I want to bring to the forefront. That’ll be draft two… or a sequel. That’s right, I am thinking of a sequel. I had all these ideas that Deep Dark would be a little fledgling democracy in against all the rule-by-corporation stuff. That set up Riley and his right hand man Rook (an android) to be at odds with the devoted company types like Meghin and Pyotr and the higher ups who eventually track them there. Well, a lot of that didn’t make it into this draft. I don’t actually spend a lot of time with Riley. Rook, as a secondary to Riley, hardly gets any time at all. That’s why I need another novel to focus on Rook and his efforts for the democracy on Deep Dark and for his own greater rights as an android (artificial person). Anyway…

I finished seventeen and eighteen too. Seventeen contains some of the most important stuff about the aliens that I’ve yet written. In a way that stuff that happens there with the alien queen is why I wrote the story. The whole theft of the artifact and such is all a device to get a few humans into a position where they can find out a little more about the history and nature of the xenomorph species. That being said, I am quite happy with the resulting chapter. It has just the right tone to it. Flowing that the reactions of both Pyotr and Meghin to what they have learned are compared and contrasted. It’s not great yet, but I think there is real potential in it.

So. I have only3,000 more words before I reach the required total. That’s much better than I hoped I could be by this point. I have a lot to do tomorrow to be ready for our after-Thanksgiving trip, but surely I can find the time to write 3,000 words. Surely. The only problem is that I have four more chapters left to write. None of the stories are done yet. I couldn’t bring them to a close in just 750 words each! My dilemma is deciding if I should write short versions of each remaining chapter to be done with the story or just continue as I have and turn in a 50,0000 word novel that’s missing the last two chapters. Decisions, decisions…

For fun, here’s another excerpt. It describes Meghin first seeing the queen alien. (I claim all rights to my original characters and words. Other names, concepts and characters are the property of 20th Century Fox. Do not re-post this excerpt without consent.)

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It was a tower of a creature. Meghin panned the light up from the thick spear point tail to the powerful legs in above that its torso looked like a broken mountain range of knotted insect shell. Two long arms ending in claws as long as Meghin’s own hand, rested almost leisurely on the knotted knees. The head was immense, like a demon spaceship pointing into the Earth. It flared out from a maw of needles into a dozen upward curving points. Combining the absolute worst of a spider, a snake and a rhinoceros, it was a queen. A Queen of Xibalba made real, if ever there had been such a thing.
*******

By now I should have 43,342 words.
My current count is 47,206 words.