Mood board for the next story, currently with the placeholder title The Reserve. As you might guess, this is easily the closest this book gets to hard SF - there are holographic AI constructs, giant supercomputers, and a man seriously out of his depth. All of the preceding five protagonists feature in this story to varying extents, but for a few key reasons this whole story acts more as a prologue to the rest of the book, shedding light on the greater world.

This comes with a few areas of intimidation. While I have a timeline, and a bucketful of detail to lavish across all 6-7,000 words of this one, I’m still a little hazy as far as plot goes - as I’m writing this, there is no catharsis, and it still might not be there by the time I start writing it. There’s also the risk that I lose the character in this one - I have a certain attitude in mind, but it needs development.

There’s also the fact that the end of this story is also the end of the book, and I recognise that the last few sentences of a book can often skew how the whole thing’s perceived. It’s a tough one, because I want to end this in a fairly muted way - the thing I want to take away from the whole exercise is that total joy is often found in unpredictability, but executing that in a real-world context is a tough one to plan out.

So.

Taking a week or so off. Between Saints Row and work, I don’t see myself having much time for a little while - that’s why I was determined to finish The Journalist today (and I did). But I’m going to chip away at this in the background, adding ideas when I think of them. When I start in early September, I want to know what’s coming.