As I write my current work in progress this time, I’ve found myself deviating more and more from the outline I had. One of the supporting characters turned out to be more important to the story than I first thought. With my new workload in my day job, I’ve slowed down how quickly I write, and this seems to help me develop the story even more fully than the last one I wrote.
One of the things I love about writing is how my writing seems to mirror my attitudes in life. I’ve written some short stories that will never see the light of day because they are just too dark and heavy. I’m okay with strong conflicts in stories, but not just for conflict’s sake. Stories that force characters to evaluate their circumstances and lives are good. But they are even better when the character grows and learns through it.
After all, when we take time to see where we are and what we have come through, we realize we are stronger, smarter, wiser, or better adapted to the challenges ahead than we might have thought. I like comparing pieces of life to books, even though books are like life, but embellished to remove the boring bits.
My latest book, Collected Lives, is now available on Amazon Kindle and as a paperback. Check it out. This story takes place near the end of the twenty-second century, with vacations and tourism to Earth by off-worlders controlled by major corporations. The largest corporation, Collected Lives, has several enemies. The story follows the events as four people from different portions of Collected Lives’ process are thrown into the middle of a larger problem.
My fantasy, A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, is set in a world with limited technology, but where sacrifice is a necessary element to magical power. The greater the pain and suffering, the greater the magical power generated. The few mages in power use voluntary sacrifice of the citizens to generate power they use to protect and defend the empire. But their rule may be coming to a close.
Malignance, my third book in my time travel series that began with Resonance and Dissonance, is on Amazon as a kindle and a paperback. That was a fun series to write, and for now, it is completed. I have also placed all three books from that series into one volume titled The Machina of Time.
If you’re looking for a science fiction story, try my book The Promise of Dust, which takes place in a cloud city floating in the atmosphere of Venus. Or Progenitor’s Legacy: Deceit, which takes place many years in the future on a tidally locked world that orbits a red dwarf and has been reached by humanity in their search for the alien progenitors who seeded the galaxy with nano machines.
If a young adult science fiction is more to your liking, check out my series This New Earth, that starts with Demons of a Dead World and Secrets of a Dead World.
If you are looking for a young adult fantasy, check out my book The Threads Unbound.
DANIEL R. BURKHARD 