Caged!

The new YA book I’m working on is finally into Act II.

This is the one where I realized I had way too much stuff happening before the story actually took off and didn’t need any of it. Yesterday, I went back and added the parts into the story to make it work and wrote another 5,000 words, bringing everything up to the end of Act I.

It still doesn’t hit Act II until the 12,000 word mark, but I’ll be able to shave some wordage off of that in second draft and, besides, there’s quite a bit of plot going on that’s essential to the story even though we’re not in the “story proper”. It’s not just set up. At least I hope it’s not. Maybe I’m just being self-delusional.

The story is called Caged and is about three kids who get taken aboard a spacecraft against their will and have to find a way to escape. The ship has species from all over the galaxy stowed away in captivity, so it’s sort of like a slave vessel or maybe some sort of research vessel. The kids don’t know. For all they know, they might end up in some cosmic zoo somewhere.

The characters are pretty strong and all bring something different to the table that I can draw on to solve the puzzles that I’ll be throwing at them. My main protagonist, Parker, for reasons he will discover later, is super smart with incredible reflexes. Like better-than-Mensa smart.

His best friend, Braylon, is athletic. Parker is not. Parker can’t even throw a football.

Then there’s Braylon’s girlfriend, Gabriela, who I originally made good at history and geography (which she still is) but all through my writing session yesterday, she kept demanding to be a drama student with an incredible memory for lines from Shakespeare. So I’m not sure when that is going to come in handy, but fate has told me that it will.

I’ve slated the book to come out next summer, probably under DangerBoy Books unless my agent has different ideas for it. The cover is actually already done and looks pretty good. Being almost 13,000 words into it, I’m probably a good fifth or sixth of the way to completion, so I should have no problem getting it ready for a summer release. Especially if I’m doing it Indie style. The first draft will probably be finished before New Years.

That’s it for me. I’m just sitting here in the rain, thinking about aliens.

Michael out.