So I’ve finished my novel – what now?
Quite simply – I’m working on the next one.

Starting this weekend, I am working on a collaboration with a young writer, a kid of twenty five that has a 40.000 words science fiction novel first draft needing some doctoring.
The idea is to go through the manuscript, see what’s good and what’s not, and develop a full novel – say 50.000 words worth of it.

There’s a catch: the young guy I’m collaborating with is… me.
I did a first draft of A Loneliness That No One Knows* in the autumn and winter of 1991, and I finished it just before I left for London, where I was to spend one year.

I found the original file, on a lost hard disk about two years ago, and I was able to salvage it.

During the weekend I imported it in Scrivener, and split the single file into chapters and scenes. And then started working on it like I would on a collaboration, following the Pratt & Sprague De Camp method… the authors discuss the plot, then one author writes the first draft, the other writes the final.
Younger me did the first draft, now I must finalize it.
About time, I’d say.

What can I say about my older self?
Well, he was certainly fond of long sentences and unusual words.
And apart from the main characters – that are pretty solid – the secondary characters are rubbish.
But the dialog is pretty good, and there’s a few ideas that are worth expanding and following up.
Much of the science is old – but what the heck, it’s a story written when there was no Internet, no International Space Station, no ebooks…
Revising and updating the science will be fun, I think.
Also, I find the same pleasure for in-jokes and oblique references I still slip in my stories today.
Granted, the story might benefit from a nice clean-up and a little something in the last third.
What I still find very strong is the idea of using a cozy mystery structure to explore an alien society. After all, mysteries are “social” narratives, and what better tool, to delve in depth into the ins and outs of a different culture?

Will it take long?
I don’t think. I did the first two chapters in about one hour.
True, the beginning is pretty strong – the ending will require more work.
But let’s say that taking some time off in the evenings, this baby might hit Amazon in about two weeks.
It will be published in Italian – and we’ll see how it stands.

This is sort of a vacation project.
Apart from that… oh, but we’ll talk about the other projects in due time.

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* Yes, that’s the first line in Toyah‘s song, “Brave New World”