Where Are our Children part 2?

More about this first draft.

I wrote the entire first draft in 2009. You guys remember 2009 don't you? You remember the Great Recession? You remember all of the people laid off?

Well, I was one of them. Between the winter of 2008 and the Spring of 2012 I probably was out of work for five different stints or 16 months total.

By the way I'm back and I believe that the layoffs for me have now ended totally.

Anyway, back to 2009....

Man I was scared. For the first time in my adult life I really felt this job was over and my prospects of recovering my income and the life I'd built for my family were coming to an end. Listen, I don't want to disrespect what ANY of you may have experienced during the same time period. Some never recovered. I'm blessed. I know it. That's why I take care of my JOB when I'm on it.

Well while I waited for us to start back up, I wrote the first draft of Children in about six months, Once again, I'd played around with this storyline in my head for years, but finally I got it down and saved on my hard drive.

Real quick: I used the Snowflake Method for construction of the novel. Google it. I advice anyone who wants to write a novel to use it. It works. On the character side I leaned on a book by Orson Scottt Card called Character and Viewpoint. It's well worth the investment in terms of writing (hopefully) well rounded characters.

Anyway, writing Children helped me fight a depression I felt about myself and where my future was heading. I cried a lot writing that first draft. I was scared. I was moody. I was distant. But those scenes and those characters gave me something to focus a ton of bottled up anxiety I was feeling at that time.

It's a dark story. Really dark.

I incororporated a much bleaker economic endgame than the one we truly came through.

But people don't believe me when I say it's NOT about race.

It IS about people, and how terrible our individual decisions can affect others.

More later...

Where are our Children?

I also have a second draft of my novel to consider.

Here's the gist of it if I haven't spoke about it here before.

In the early 1980's there was a terrible string of abductions and killings of young black men the Atlanta area the media began calling The Atlanta Child Murders.

Wayne Williams was ultimately captured, charged, and convicted with enough of those hideous crimes that he is serving time today.

Where are our children is a fictional account that there were parallel kidnappings going on at the same time of these by Wayne Williams and what happens when those abductions begin again, now, in our time. (Actually in 2011 when the first draft of this novel was written.)

I consider it a character driven novel. Here are some of the key players:

Christopher Prince:  He was the only child to escape the clutches of a mad men all of those years ago. This haunts him. He is now a FBI Special Agent leading the investigation when Atlanta's children of color go missing again.

Xavier Prince: Chris' half brother who leads a brotherhood I've chosen to call A House in Chains. They are America's equivalent of Hamas. Some feel they are terrorist. Others feel they are freedom fighters. All know they are a ruthless, efficient organization bent on retrieving the children by any means necessary.

Serena Tennyson: The leader of Pandora. They consider themselves patriots who don't want to see the hierarchy in America disturbed by their sworn enemies in the House of Chains.

Angel Hicks Dupree: A childhood friend of Chris, who is now a Clinical Physcologist working with the FBI. Yet, she is carrying a dark secret that could destroy everyone around her.

Thomas Pepper: An award winning journalist who is tabbed by the House of Chains to find out the truth of what is going on and more importantly...the disaster that is still to come.

Roxanne Sanchez: A private investigator who is running from one truth in her past while trying to find out another that will effect Christopher Prince.

Seth Dupree: A highly respected surgeon and the husband of Angel. Unbeknown to her, he follows her to Atlanta and witnesses atrocities that will test his will to survive.

Hugh Keaton: He has been and now is a instrument used by Serena to carry out these abductions. And yet, his final tale is something that no one involved sees coming.

Sorry to be so long winded, but I had to get it out about a tale that meant so much to me when I was writing it. More later...

Looking at my options

I want to stick to one series or the other. I see the long term gains of a reader recognizing my work simply by cover art or a title.

One of my issues with 12 worlds is where would a reader be comfortable entering this series. Both of my other ideas allows the reader to come in at anytime, leave, and come again without missing a beat.

Again, looking at all of my options...