You may be aware that the subtitle of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is “The Children’s Crusade,” and you may also know that during the Crusades there was an actual children’s crusade, which is the point at which people tend to agree they officially went off the rails.
My version is a little different. I first conceived of and sketched it out last year after finishing In the Leviathan, flush in the accomplishment and wanting something similarly meaningful (but for different reasons) to tackle next. Then I sat on it for the rest of the year.
Today I revisited the outline and revised it with a few key tweaks (including a timeline), so that the multiple character arcs play out in context to each other. This will be a tapestry of a story, tackling themes of responsibility, faith, and existential crisis, a commentary on the modern age that looks backward and still looks hopefully into the future.
I figure I will probably begin writing the thing soon.
