Some Updates
On the outlining of my upcoming novels.
I hope everyone is having a good start to 2024. I’d like to think that I am. In the last two weeks or so, I have been working on outlining my next novels. In fact, it’s my main priority right now, which is why I don’t have a story or article to publish for Germanicus Publishing this Thursday. And yes, you read that right. I said novels.
If you’ve been on Substack Notes, you may run across this note I wrote a few days ago:
What I neglected to say was that I’m planning to write and publish two novels this year. Yup, count ‘em - two. Currently, I’m done with the outlining of Book 1 and now I’m working on Book 2’s outline. I’m planning for this project to be a two-part series in which both books will be released simultaneously.
Some may say I’m taking on too much, but I’m not. The two novels combined should be about the length of Inquisitor’s Promise, the novel I wrote and published last year. At least that’s the plan.
Speaking of Inquisitor’s Promise, feel free to take a look (and get a copy) by clicking the links below:
Back to my ongoing project, I’m planning to have the story take place about twenty years after the events of my first novel. But I don’t want to make this a sequel per se. I want to write something that people can get into without needing to worry about homework. My working title for the series as a whole is Inquisitor’s Task Force.
Since this is very much still a work-in-progress, I don’t want to give away too much. But I do want to have a little fun with this post so I have been playing around with Midjourney to visualize some of my characters.
The first is the protagonist and the hero of the story: Ascanius ‘Kai’ Aquilanus. If you’ve read Inquisitor’s Promise, the last name might sound familiar. Anyways, I can’t say that I’m particularly in love with what I’ve gotten but these are the closest to how I’m imagining the character to look like.
The next one is the deuteragonist and the love interest: Catherine ‘Cate’ de Boer. Again, the surname might sound familiar if you’ve read Inquisitor’s Promise. The images that I got is more on point to how I’ve imagined her, though I had to go anime style to do so.
Of course, I must stress that these are concept images on how the characters may look like. I’m seriously considering getting an artist for the book cover(s) this time around. While Midjourney had served me well, I’m starting to notice the limits of the program (and “AI Art” in general).
In any case, I’ll continue on writing, not just my novels but also stories and articles. And I’m hoping to continue building up my Substack while also getting published elsewhere. Here’s to a good 2024.
-Michael P. Marpaung