Next book after Becca

I'm thinking ahead about what to write once I finish the Becca book, which is a long way from being even anywhere near thinking about being done, but I like to enjoy the planning process as long as possible.

Like there's this trio:

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Emma Burns, Castle Full of Trees

Okay, the last one doesn't exist yet, except in my own mind. But it's so vivid and clear and I have such a good outline (I never outline) that I feel like it's a book that needs to happen. Even though it's sort of mythological fantasy. So everything I don't do. Fun!

All I have to do is develop the characters of the gods in such a way that they make sense and are memorable to me. Then we're golden.

I've never seen the gods in the Battlestar Galactica characters, though they're the only ones with those names I can really put names to. Apollo is not Apollo. But I can't picture them. Doing that makes them human and earthly. So what are they in a story, if you have the gods there? Like in The Iliad and The Odyssey, Athena is always there. How do we see her? Thetis, Zeus, Hera, Hermes, all of them. I have to be able to visualize people or I can't write about them. 

What did you do today? Tried to visualize immanence. NBD. 

This will sound funny but it's an oddly religious thing to do, imagining gods, even like Athena and Apollo and Artemis and Hestia and the local gods of the place. I mean, they're characters in the book. But imagining them is like finding another floor to your house that you didn't know was there, or forgot about.

So they have specialized areas of excellence but generalized awesomeness. Power far beyond the human, but not infinite. What do they think of humans? They're interested but not always invested. Curious in a passing way. They can stop and take a minute to do this thing. Why not? They're eternal. 

ANYWAY.

Other possibilities:

Tuuli and Stijn, the chapters chopped out of Summerlands, their whole story, even though we know how it ends. 

I'm totally tempted to write Millicent and Rosalie at like 26, ten years after the events of Summerlands, engaged in some huge perilous venture. If you had this giant house, what would you do with it? Well, they'd get Stijn and his band to come play there, obviously. Hilarious idea, to have a festival on the grounds. There's a huge stone-paved terrace that would be a perfect stage. Why not combine that lost material with the future story? Though alternating chapters kind of exhaust me. One's a filmmaker and one writes musicals so there's potential for all of that. 

Hard to let go of the world of this book after all this time. Also I want to see who they become. The baby will be eleven. The oldest cousin fifteen. Imagine Millicent with a houseful of teens and tweens. 

SORELY tempted to have them connect with the Thrushcross people since they're in the same universe. You have Millicent, a filmmaker, just down the road from the Thrushcross Studios? Or whatever it's called? She's going to go over there and work with Finn. And we know I adore Finn. But that also means Harriet is there and needs a story. My head hurts.

WHAT ELSE?

Now that I've succeeded at overcoming one of my longest-running draft disasters, I'm tempted to tackle another one, maybe Perfect Monster, but sheesh it has some really big basic premise issues. I wrote half of this book maybe five times? It always ran aground on the premise. So I could change the premise and see if that engine runs.

OR???

There are all these variously terrible scifi novels I wrote or started years back. I don't know that the world needs that. There's a series with one complete, one far along, one started, one just an idea, one a tangential story line.

ALTERNATIVELY

There's a near future one with a space station run by a megalomaniac oligarch, but don't worry, he dies in the first scene. But DO worry because his death was an assassination that both locks down and blows up the station, so everyone is in Immediate Peril and has to work together to solve all his I'm The Only One Who Can Be In Charge Of Everything terrible control issue management systems. 

I mean, I love it? And current politics mean I would have constant driving rage to use to fuel it. Maybe it just needs further development. Got lots of notes. Sort of tempting. Love Boat Poseidon Adventure Anti-Oligarch story. 

ON THE EIGHTH HAND

There's the lightning book, which is about two people with paralyzing phobias trying to get unstuck in their lives on a road trip in some kind of RV or school bus thing.

PERSONALLY

I'm in love with the St. Sparrow book, but it's a giant undertaking and there's nothing so far, just a few notes and an extremely cool idea. 

Playing with ideas is very fun and I still don't know what to do next, but there's plenty of time because OMG the Becca book is eating my entire brain.