Danab Cycle

Recently I have been having one breakthrough after another with Collider, which is part of what here I’ve been calling the Space Corps books, but perhaps will be known as the Danab Cycle, so I’m transitioning that label with this post.

This is a story, Collider specifically and Danab Cycle in general, that I have been working on for a quarter century. I was a kid spitballing a version of Star Trek when it began, but over the years the idea has grown in sophistication and nowhere was it more necessary than in fleshing out what exactly Collider itself is supposed to be. There was no coherent story originally, but funny enough there was a broad arc that needed to be supported, and as I saw that more and more clearly, I better understood what the book itself should look like.

Writing is a bit like excavation, or even the old anecdote of Michelangelo freeing an existing statue from stone. It’s not always clear what the story is. Sometimes it comes to you in little thunderstrikes. You realize this is exactly what it is. Hopefully on the other end, to the reader, this is how it feels, that this was the best way to do it. (As a reader, too, this is how I approach it, and certainly, there will always be interpretations and opinions, although some are better than others, just as in the storytelling itself.)

So these are the kinds of ideas I’ve had recently; “Why didn’t I see that before???” Characters, sometimes minor ones, sometimes the most important ones, finally hitting their marks. 

And I think it’s getting closer to being ready to be written.