One million words coming up

I got to meet with Ris today about a cowriting project we've worked on for quite some time.  We've had our moments of brilliance and insanity, sometimes at the same time.  I think at last we'll make some forward progress on it so that we can start the critiquing process and get it finished up.

On sober reconsideration I realize that this cowriting process is a lot like the process I went through with my very first novel.  If anything it's taken longer to get this story put together than it did Mayhem, but to be fair I didn't have as long periods of time between drafts, though I had some very long rest periods.  The time and distance has done nothing but good.  We've gotten back to the heart of the story, and I'm excited about what's going to happen next.  It may be that, before we're done, that we'll have put a million words into various cowriting projects, which means we might be past the crappy writing phase.  Or in this case, crappy cowriting phase.

Onward to writing!

Steampunk? Steampunk!

Just when I think a particular project is out there all alone, I learn from a chance email that a setting that Ris and I have been working with falls on the outer fringe of an entire subgenre.  Rather than our technology rotating around steam power and difference engines, we toy with an age on a world that is definitely not Earth that might have resulted if the many inventions that a Tesla-like person may (or may not have) created had become the general tech upon which all technology rests.  

I think it's not accidental that we end up with nods to the Island of Dr. Moreau and a world of fine dresses and fancy hats with a monarchial/noble society being pressed by new ideas about the needs and rights of the common man.  

We're not quite steampunk, but were not *not* steampunk either.

This is kewl.  Nothing new under the sun ...