Project Report: Gods Tomorrow

Last October, during a brief chat with D--, I came up with the idea for Gods Tomorrow, a near-future sci-fi murder mystery that I ended up writing as my NaNoWriMo project. It takes place in a world where we as a culture have traded our privacy for the convenience of a mega-database that tracks everything we do, and offers services based on the near-omnipotence that data provides.

Specifically, it's the story of a girl who joins an FBI task force dedicated to tracking down criminals who are able to exist off the grid, outside the database.

Since I finished it, five people have read it, and a couple more are currently in the process. Of those five, I've only heard positive reviews overall. (Naturally there has been some constructive criticism, but the general reception of the book has been overwhelmingly positive.) Based partly on the constructive criticism, and partly on my own opinions as the book evolved over time, I've gone back and done three small revisions, mostly adding conversations early in the book to lay sufficient groundwork for developments later.

There are two major changes I'm still considering making, which would change the...I don't know, feel of the book, without fundamentally changing the plot. They would also take a pretty significant investment (of time, as well as mental and emotional energy), and even though I'm confident that both of them would be improvements, I'm not yet sure that the benefit will offset the cost. So...meh, I dunno. I may do a big fancy rewrite, or I may leave it as-is.

That's Gods Tomorrow.

As I got into the project, though, I found myself thinking more and more that it felt like the pilot for a TV series, more even than the first novel in a series. For a while I seriously considered doing the research and trying to figure out how to pitch a TV series (and I still haven't wholly given up on that), but for now I'm actually just aiming to write a series of books that feels like a "Law & Order: Future Crimes" spinoff.

So, in that vein, I'm currently working on two sequels to Gods Tomorrow. The FBI task force I mentioned earlier is called "Ghost Targets" (because "ghosts" is the nickname for people who are invisible to the database, for reasons demonstrated in the book), so for now I'm toying with the idea of using that as the series name. Ghost Targets: Expectations will be the second book in the series, wherein the Ghost Targets team learns of a murder at the clinic where the miraculous anti-aging drug is under development (and where, for reasons of international competitiveness, the database is not allowed to record). Drama ensues.

That one I'm excited about. I've got a full plot synopsis (three to five pages) including all the key plot developments, the main characters, and their various motivations. In other words, I've got the groundwork for a whole novel there.

The third in the series, Ghost Targets: Momentum, is just a rough sketch by comparison. It's about football in the future. What more can I say? I have a page and a half done -- the opening scene -- and no prewriting. I don't really even have names for the characters. I've come up with a couple suspects and an actual killer, without even having a clear idea who the victim is. The writing process is a weird little beast.

I've also started kicking around ideas for one about video games, probably Ghost Targets: Diversions, but I haven't even gotten as far as the actual crime, let alone the players and plot of it. I know the mechanic by which the killer will be a ghost, though....

That's the tricky bit. I've established a world where there's virtually no way to get away with a crime, and then set up my series to follow the detective who investigate people who do get away with crimes. So I have to, at the same time, impress my readers with how cool and effective the system is, and find loopholes in it for my occasional thieves and murderers to slip through. Once I get to season two, it'll be a little easier because of the larger plot arc that drives season two, but the first five books are going to be kind of gimmicky. And I'm accepting that, but I'll have to find some way to keep them from feeling gimmicky to the reader.

It is my intention, in the next week, to get my promotional material for the first novel completed and mailed off to my agent, so that she can get started trying to sell the series while I get involved in the nitty-gritty of trying to sort out sequels.

That's the current state of things, when it comes to Gods Tomorrow and the various Ghost Targets books. I'll keep you posted as things develop.