A title for book 2, plus publishing status

The last month (early-April through early-May) was highly productive. One just can’t overestimate the effect of experience on any process. When I was writing Synchronicity, I set a default scene target length of 1,500 words and hoped to write 1-2,000 words per day. If I finished a session/day in that range, it was an accomplishment, a good day. When I wrote Demergence shortly thereafter, the process was not faster but it felt better. There existed a familiarity with the craft, though maybe not a practiced familiarity yet.

It wasn’t until after the 27k word beginning hook of Book 2, maybe 1/3 of the way through the middle build, that something clicked. My writing sessions, instead of being 1-2,000 words, were suddenly 2-3,000 words and then 3,000+ words. The scenes flowed from the fingertips. Writing became easy. Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t tapped into some magical vein of writing perfection. When I completed the first run of the manuscript and did a full edit, I discovered issues that arose from putting so many words down in a short time. But they weren’t horrendous issues. Relatively minor, really. The editing took longer than normal to produce a clean manuscript, but maybe only an extra 2-3 days. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a better-than-fair trade.

Current status: manuscript draft 1 is COMPLETE.

Draft 1 is in week 2 of 5 “on the shelf,” so to speak, in order to give my mind some much-needed distance. The length is 90k words, which was my goal. Contacts with both editor and cover designer were made. The cover should be done by the end of June, I expect, after a redesign of the other covers in the series – more on that later. The editor is scheduled to receive a copy of the manuscript draft 2 during the first two weeks of July. If everything goes as planned, I will publish book 2 in late-September or early-October.

A Title for Book 2

This appears to be a fresh decision, but the working title established when typing the first words in the manuscript remains the title. There really wasn’t much choice in the matter. Book 1 was titled Synchronicity because that was the theme, the effects of meaningful coincidences in our lives in a somewhat “soft” science fiction story. Demergence was so-titled as a play on the philosophy concept of emergence. Since the main character was rapidly descending into mental illness before a major life event, it was a kind of retrograde emergence … hence, demergence.

The title of book 2 is Alchemy (or, more officially, “Alchemy: a novel”). C.G. Jung was quite attracted to alchemy as an example of psychological symbolism. Alchemy itself was a pseudo-science of transformation from which a line can be drawn to modern chemistry. It is often simplified when described as a quest to transform base metals (e.g., lead) into precious metals (e.g., gold), but that misses much of its depth. In Jung’s life, alchemy brought forward a relationship with Marie-Louise von Franz and made less prominent his relationship with Toni Wolff, a longtime collaborator and lover. Alchemy transformed Jung’s life, and Alchemy leads to a series and variety of transformations for the characters from Synchronicity (and others) as their world changes around them.

Authors probably aren’t supposed to say this, but while Synchronicity was a labor of love and will always be my sentimental favorite, Alchemy may be a better book. This isn’t unusual in trilogies. Many of us feel that way about Empire Strikes Back over A New Hope, for example. Like in Star Wars, both of the first two installments belong in the trilogy, both need to be watched, but we start to gain serious momentum with the second installment before the third installment takes us home.