novel research Archives - GoatKeepers Press

Writing a rough draft for a novel is fairly straight forward for me. I start at the beginning and write through to the end ignoring all the little annoying details like facts as I write.

In “The Carduan Chronicles” Ship Eighteen drops out of the worm tunnel somewhere over the solar system. To reach Cardua (Earth), the ship must go toward and over the sun and on out the ecliptic. The time frame is fifteen weeks, their time or ninety days.

Over April the former drafts came together into one piece. The journey of the Arkosans soon to become Carduans after landing, is almost complete. All that remains is to merge the last week into the tale of Ship Nineteen.

This ship dropped out of the worm tunnel into a February ice storm and landed in an Ozark ravine. These nine Carduans have spent the fifteen weeks learning to live on this strange, new world.

Going the Distance

One of those annoying details for Ship Eighteen happens to concern their voyage. How long does it take to get to the sun? Or over the sun? Or on to Cardua?

This meant I needed to know how far apart the planets are from the sun and each other, how big the sun is and the revolution times for the planets. Writing the draft, I guessed.

Thanks to some library books I have more accurate figures now. What I do know for sure is that this is one speedy little ship. It travels a lot faster than any ship we’ve developed so far.

That’s one of the joys of writing science fiction, being able to make some things up. Even so, the ship’s journey must be consistent so those annoying details are important.

Another Draft

Once I have the voyage mapped out timewise, I get to write yet another draft for Ship Eighteen. One advantage is having much of the draft already written, only needing adjustment to the new times.

Ship Nineteen offers a new set of annoying details. I do tend to try to accomplish more in a day than time allows. Unfortunately for the Carduans and my draft, I tend to do the same for them.

The other consideration is the height of the Carduans: four inches. It is a real challenge to see an Ozark ravine from that height.

cover for "Capri Capers" by Karen GoatKeeper — Those annoying details came close to sinking this book. Harriet’s place abuts a national forest. Some of the action takes place on the forest roads. I finally had to devise a map of her place and the forest roads, then rewrite scenes so everything happened where it was supposed to.

Living in the Ozark hills can be challenging. The last couple of days have been a reality check for my novel.

Storms, especially big ones, can knock out the electricity in the rural areas. A derecho went by one year soaking the ground, snapping off trees and power poles. The power was off for almost a week. Intercounty Electric moved the lines up from the creek bed then so we’ve had little trouble with outages since.

Until yesterday.

Four inches of wet snow fell overnight. That’s not much. It did sit on wires, branches, everywhere. And the electric power went off about 8 a.m.

In the novel Mindy loses her electricity. I’d dredged through my memory to fill in details like having no water, a quiet house etc.

Another result is loss of the refrigerator. Here I’d goofed. I’d thought things inside would gather condensation as they began to warm. My surprise reality check showed they don’t. Instead, everything gradually goes from cold to cool to room temperature. I didn’t get into the freezers as I had a lot of frozen food and preferred it to stay frozen as long as possible.

The snow doesn’t look like much. Its weight on branches brought down trees and downing electric lines, my novel come to life. The green patch is watercress which stays green year round, even under ice.

Waiting

The day moved on. It’s a bit unsettling how dependent we’ve gotten on having electricity as we didn’t up north. No computer so no writing. No fans so no furnace letting the house slowly cool off.

We did have some heat. Living in the country with wooded property, we have a wood stove. A fan normally blows the heat out into the house, but convection air currents do that too, although more slowly.

As evening moved in, there were no lights and no movie. Cooking by candlelight is challenging. Evening time was spent reading by candlelight.

The electricity came back on a little before six the next morning. My reality check ended with the roar of furnace fans and refrigerator hum.