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The novel- Purchas- has been running a week.

I started off with a single idea. I wanted to explore the life of an Immortal. I decided that my hero(ine) would be a child who swallows the elixir of life by accident.

And that's all I knew when I started to write.

I set myself the task of posting it in daily installments on LJ. The first week's worth are on display now at [livejournal.com profile] purchas. I'm afraid the format dictates that one has to read from the bottom up. Sorry about that. It's rather jerky, but there you go....

The novel is part fantasy, part history. The year is 1482 and all the details are, so far as I can make them (thank you, thank you, Google!) historically accurate.

I know what happens next. Just about. At present I have two or three installments in hand. What happens further on is very, very cloudy. But I trust my characters. They will tell me how their story is meant to go. I have the feeling that the entire saga already exists, in some form, somewhere, and that it's being unveiled to me bit by bit.

I don't know how long I'll keep it up. I envisage the present novel running for 60,000+ words and after that there'll still be 500 years to go. But whether I write the sequels is hardly up to me. If Purchas wants to tell me about her post-medieval adventures she will, and if she doesn't she won't. But I've let her know that I'm very, very eager to learn about her meetings with Cagliostro and the Count de St Germain in Paris in the 1770s...

Date: 2006-01-09 06:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] manfalling.livejournal.com
hey dad- been reading purchas and digging it so far- this whole daily updates thing is pretty cool. stephen king has done similar things. i know with the green mile- that got released as like 6 chapbooks originally. and i think neil gaiman was doing some of it too.

as to creative process- yeah i feel the same way. like michelangelo's david. it's in there somewhere, you know it, it just has to be found.

and about presenting the whole- you could at regular intervals (say- once a week, weeks end) lump everything up to date together in the correct order, then stick it behind a labeled LJ cut. kind of like eastenders does an omnibus show on sundays that brings you up to date with the past week...

Date: 2006-01-10 02:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com
I'm glad you like it.

Michelangelo's David- exactly.

P.S. I love the Christmas card. With the moving Xmas sushi bar. Brilliant!

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