Slow weeks of writing, January 2020

My third novel is going slowly. It could almost be a trilogy all in one. It gets delayed because I haven't fleshed out all the pieces and remembered where I was so far long ago when I started it. I've managed to get lists of scenes for the two major sections I need to write. I'm considering subplots and whether to bring back previous characters or build some new ones. The problem of new characters is they are hard to develop as fully-fleshed out characters when you introduce them late in the story. 

The fun part of this book will be using a narrator to control the sections and build it into a more coherent whole. It is uniquely challenging for me to do this. I used a narrator in my memoir, but that was me, not a character. The narrator also has to answer the question of cultural appropriation in the book.However, like my other novels, I think this will have a balanced set of villains versus the heroic team, an will have a multicultural cast, but I am thinking to bring on aliens and maybe make it part of the multiverse, an alternate history of our world.

The reason science fiction often features alternate worlds and alternate universes is to avoid politics and keep the reader focused on the story and science. There is no doubt in my mind though that there will be political overtones, I seem to be drawn in that fashion in all of my science fiction books.