The Kursas

So if you know me, you know that the fourth Fempiror book took forever. While I wasn't writing that, I was procrastinating as only an author can: by writing a completely different book. Not just a different book, in this case, but I conceived of an entirely different series (that my wife prefers over Fempiror). This series is The Maze.

What is the Maze? Well, imagine if you actually got to the point of following through on suicide. I mean, that's as bad as it gets. For the record, I never have, so I can't say I know, but I have a vivid imagination. Well, there are people out there who have "almost" committed suicide, but they turned it around at the last minute.

In The Maze, these people followed through and instead of dying, they were transported into another location where they are tasked with going to different worlds in different times to complete some unknown task. When they've finished what they've come to do, they are eventually allowed to go home with a better perspective on life, starting back where they left off.

The first Maze book introduced us to this concept as well as showing us that they get around time and space in an elevator that opens a portal to another world, and they get randomly picked up when they're "done," whenever that is. Thus far, no one in the Maze story is actually controlling where they go, not even the one who is designated as the "Guide." The Guide is some kind of sentient consciousness that hangs out in the head of one of the Maze inhabitants, storing the knowledge they pick up as they go along.

Book one took us to a city on a planet in the distant future where some experiment had set everyone "out of phase." After the quest took them to the brink of losing everything, they were able to go back to the Maze hub, for lack of a better term, to wait for the next adventure. It also teased stories to come since time travel in The Maze universe is a series of fixed points meaning that they've already done what they're going to do, so they discovered they're part of a past event that they haven't experienced yet.

Book two takes our travelers to another planet in another time that has some unwanted visitors. A race of people resembling lizards, or dragons, has besieged a planet looking for a device that was in the cargo bay of one of their own ships that crashed decades earlier. These lizard people are called Kursas, and we find their interstellar military are some mean people. So it's up to Blake, Michelle, and Perry to sort out what this device is and get the Kursas off the planet without wiping out the local populace.

When do I want to finish this one? Well, it's the most precarious of the three. The Fempiror one is based on an existing teleplay, so it's outlined to the end already. The other one is also based on an existing screenplay, so I know where it is going. I am now about 35,000 words into this Maze book, so I should have a ways to go. I'll give myself till September 1 to finish writing it, revise it, and put it out there. Hopefully, I don't regret that. I actually wanted them to be a little quicker than that, so here's hoping.