Halting work on "The Janus Rule" to work on a different novel, working title "Resistance," has proven to be a tonic for my writing lethargy. Of course, I already have a fully-developed manuscript to start with, but a great deal of it must be changed in order to move it into the future. This creates an interesting challenge and a whole new spin in anachronisms.
Example. Characters in the original ms used modern cell phones frequently, which I had previously updated to incorporate web surfing and such as that became available in "real life." But now that the action takes place a few decades beyond today, I thought I should step that up. The idea behind this newer version is to extrapolate on current culture and trends and speculate on what the future looks like. Now, instead of cell phones, characters use Personal Palm Computers, or P.P.C.s, that do everything from make calls to surfing the Internet. In another place, the old story had a man reading a newspaper on the bus that another character noticed a story on. Newspapers don't seem to fit in my future worldview, so that required a change. I'm sure I'll run across more but I also want to retain enough of the familiar real world of today to not overwhelm the reader with explanations of what new things are.
Along with technological advances, though, there are cultural changes as well, and those lead into the central plot action. My POV character is just an ordinary citizen who discovers a crime scene, but it's no ordinary crime scene and opens the door to a new understanding of how the world really works. That's as much as I can divulge at this juncture, although I may let some hints slip out in future posts.
At this rate, I should have a completely revised manuscript rather quickly, and perhaps, finally, this story will finally find a publishing home.
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