Help! My Short Story Morphed Into a Novel

Wow, that story got away from me! This week I’d like to go into a little bit of the background of that story along with talk about what might be up next for the blog and my writing life in general. There are some Spoilers below so if you haven’t finished Farren go catch up.

I’ve created a table of contents for Farren’s Journey so you can find where you left off and navigate the story easier, you can find that on the Farren’s Journey page of the site. If you enjoyed the story and wanted to share this is a page you can link to.

Where Farren’s Journey Came From And Where It’s Going

I knew that Farren’s Journey would be a long one, but I never expected it to be tens of thousands of words. I’d planned for it to be eight parts, maybe nine if I went into some detail. Each environment in the world but they’d only be a thousand words, maybe two thousand. The different characters he met along the way, and the adventures he embarked on with them were an unexpected outcome of the story.

If I had known it was going to be a 60,000 word multi-month undertaking I wouldn’t have agreed to sit down and write it in the first place. Now that I think about it if Farren knew getting tied to the biggest rock in the world would be the adventure it was he wouldn’t have done it either. It’s paid off for both of us and we’re both glad I finished the story!

I very distinctly remember that I got the inspiration for Farren while reading 12 Rules for Life, although I don’t know which rule inspired me. I vaguely remember the author describing a scenario of having a boulder holding your foot back while climbing a mountain but I could have connected dots and ideas that weren’t actually on the page there. Either way while reading that book I came up with the idea that inspired me to write. Farren’s Journey. I always enjoy parables and Aesop fables and I feel like a lot of my writing on the blog is up the same alley with a sci-fi or fantasy twist. That being said one of my biggest regrets of Farren’s Journey is that it doesn’t clearly fit into the category of science fiction or fantasy. It’s just a weird story about a post death world that is (hopefully) entertaining. 

Long term I will polish it and hopefully by the end of this year you’ll be able to order a hard copy of it on Amazon. It still needs some editing and proof reading work and if you have any input on the story line I’m open to the feedback. I appreciate everyone who read any of it and doubly so the people who read all of it. I hope that in a few years we can all look back at the past six months and remember it as that time we put up with Nicholas releasing a super long story at a painfully slow pace and you’ll get to say you read it when it originally came out. 

Where Step Into The Road and I Are Headed

I have some exciting news. In addition to completing Farren’s Joureny I was recently accepted into a 6 mentorship program and I’m working with a best selling author on the process of drafting a novel. This will be a true blue science fiction book full of fighting, advanced technology, and moon bases. I’ll have more information coming about it soon but I really need to dedicate the majority of my writing time to that project. That means I won’t be able to have a brand new short story out for you every week like I was doing in the past. 

I’m dying for some input from all of you on what you would like to see from me and these emails? If you love the short stories, let me know and I’ll find the time and keep doing them. Otherwise, if you want something a little less often but more polished, I’m considering doing that. I want to share more insight into my process if that’s something that would interest any/all of you. I’ll probably be experimenting with a few different formats of emails over the next few weeks so let me know what you like and what you dislike.

I appreciate everyone who has been keeping up with me, my writing, and these emails. All of you are amazing and it inspires me to show up every week and share something on this blog knowing that there are people out there waiting to read it. I hope that everything is going well for you and yours.

Find Peace in Progress,
Nicholas Licalsi 
June 2019 
Plano, TX