Making Progress on The Freelan Journals

The past four years has been a brain explosion as what started out as a romance novel turned into a story of true heroism and then two more novels, and then a whole series I call The Freelan Journals, each one covering a year of the new Nation of Freelan. As my writing furor settled down a little, I began going back and rereading what I had done in the series. One thing became immediately apparent: a revamp was needed.

Why? Call it instinct. Or maybe it was just getting a different perspective on things now that so much of that world exists in my mind. Or maybe it was that I wasn’t getting that “Oomph!” feeling I wanted when reading.

The solution has been to split things up and do some rather major rearranging.

Progress lineup so far:

The Ceres Stratagem — Original takes place in years 6 and 7 of Freelan. Split into two novels:

·    The Ceres Stratagem —focused on that stratagem

·    Builders of Freelan — focused on those who are trying to build up the nation, literally and figuratively even as that stratagem progressed

Journals covering Years 8 through 19 of Freelan split into these so far:

·    Freelan & the Arts — artists of various kinds as well as a publisher deal with life in a truly free society

·    Seven Stories of Freelan — a small town incident, a controversial talk show host, a war for oil, a widow turning to an old love for help, a family of horse breeders, a former super model, and an adventure in Ireland – all dealing with their issues as truly free individuals

·    The Battle for Guatemala — the newest part of the Nation of Freelan is in danger of being pulled back away by the elitist group called World4All that is set on global domination

·    The Derbyshire Solution — the monetary system of Freelan is the target of a World4All plot

·    A Matter of Records — World4All is set to take advantage of a long-buried secret unearthed in one of many boxes of old records

·    Mining & Space — a gold miner and his dead brother’s widow are worlds apart when it comes to the welfare of her son as Freelanian entrepreneurs begin reaching out into space

Three more are in the works:

·    Thorny Issues

·    Cities & Countryside

·    Plots & Plans

And there is about 200k remaining from the original manuscripts that I have yet to rework into separate novels. Phew! It’s been keeping me busy.

See more info on each on my works in progress (WIPs) page. And thanks for reading.

I am also now posting longer articles about writing on Substack and Medium and hope you will check them out. They are free.

Time for some tea and perhaps a cookie!

(Make that a stack of cookies – brain fuel!)