A friend pointed out to me that it’s been a good long while since I posted a writing update on my blog. He wasn’t wrong, and seeing as how the whole point of this blog started out as a way for me to talk about my writing . . . yeah. I need to do a better job with that. So here I am, trying.
I am still writing every day, though at the moment I’m firmly in editing mode. The project I’ve been working on for the past year is another historical thriller, though this time, I’m trying to (gasp!) use something where no one is going around killing people left and right. (Actually, the death count in this book at the moment is exactly 1! That might be a record for me.)
Historical books are fun for me to write. I enjoy the research that goes into them, and I also really enjoy figuring out how I can take the facts of the history and turn them into a narrative that tries to get as many of the facts right while also being an interesting, fun story to read. The first four historical thrillers I wrote were all serial killer books. (The fourth comes out in August! Death in the Dark. More on that soon.) But I’ll be honest: I’m not sure how many YA historical serial killer books I can write with my current approach. There’s only so many ways I can have a teen be hunted by a serial killer (in one way or another) and somehow successfully come out on top. It’s not infinite, let’s just put it at that.
In addition, I know of a lot of my friends and readers who are really leery of reading scary books. Now, I tend to think this is more of a mental block than anything else, because being scared in a book generally means you’re invested in the characters and want to find out what happens to them. Isn’t that what we all usually want out of a book? I suppose the big difference is they don’t want to read about a character who might die at any moment, but even then, there are plenty of characters who die in all sorts of genres.
What I think they really mean is they don’t want too much gore or creepiness. Honestly, I don’t think my books are all that high on the gore or creepiness charts, though I know that’s a relative thing. I’ve certainly read reviews by readers who thought they were needlessly icky, and I respect the right of everyone to have their own opinion.
However, all of that is really just a prelude to me saying I wanted to start to branch out into books where readers might not have preconceived notions about whether or not they’d be too scared of my book. I want more people reading these, after all, and perhaps if someone could read a non-serial killer Bryce book and realize they had a lot of fun with it, then they might begin to eye some of those other historical thriller books I’ve written and begin to wonder if it wouldn’t be worth their while to give some of them a chance.
Of course, this only works if I actually publish this book, and I don’t have a contract for it yet, alas. Still, if I sat around waiting to write only when I had a contract, I never would have written anything in the first place. I write to have fun. I write because I enjoy it. And this book has been a lot of fun to write. It’s based on the true story of a couple of friends who decided to escape from East Germany by hot air balloon, despite the fact that they knew absolutely nothing about hot air balloons. To me, it’s kind of a mix between The Martian and Escape from Alcatraz, with a historical YA twist (naturally).
At the moment, it’s around 75,000 words long. I’ve written it in diary form (the same as most of The Martian), and that’s proven a bit of a tricky style for me, mainly because it’s so new. I’m halfway through the second draft right now and plugging forward at about 2,000 words per day.
Once that’s done . . . I don’t know what I’ll write. I’ve got some ideas for different projects, so we’ll just have to see what strikes me at the moment. But I’m definitely still plowing forward, and I hope you all get to read the balloon book one day.