Story ideas keep coming. They keep nagging me, too, in the back of my head. Like a prequel to the Our Cyber World series showing how things got started for Martin Spencer and Sasha Javan. Since a couple of recently completed first drafts need some simmer time, I went ahead and mocked up a cover. Since I’m a visual thinker, a cover, even if it falls by the wayside in the end, gives me something tangible to motivate me.

This time, though, I’ve gone a little farther. Doing something I’ve disdained in the past, I decided to do an outline. Since I knew the ending in rough terms (I have to, since it builds up to DEAD BEEF). I came up with a pretty detailed one, and it wasn’t terribly hard to do. Who knows? I may try this for future stories–because old dogs actually can learn new tricks.

I ended up with an outline that should lead to a long’ish novella, somewhere between forty to fifty thousand words. We’ll see. I’m sure I’ll still discover a lot along the way that will lead me to deviate or adapt the outline. I already have, in fact. As I wrote the first couple of chapters, an element I had not considered manifested itself. That means that pre-planing and outlining don’t altogether eliminate the need to discover a self-emergent story, and I like that.

Oh, what is this story about? I don’t have a blurb, but let’s just say it involves a hack of financial markets that brings Martin Spencer and Sasha Javan together. Will they be partners or opponents? That’s the fun the story will uncover.

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