Many of you have been asking what projects I’ve been focused on. Well, after touring for Inheritance in 2011 and 2012, I started working on a couple of short stories. With the final book in the cycle complete, I needed to play around as a writer and try different things, not because I was unhappy with my writing, but because I had spent thirteen years writing in a very specific style, which had restricted my thinking in some ways. I had things arranged in a very certain way with the Inheritance Cycle. I wouldn’t use words of modern extraction where I could avoid it. Instead I used a lot of archaic words and structured my sentences in very complicated ways. I just needed to clear that out of my head and prepare for my next work.
So I did three short stories, one not so short story, and a screenplay—which unsurprisingly turned out to be a lot harder than I expected.
My current project is science fiction, as I’ve said elsewhere. I’ve spent about ten months doing research for it over the past year, talking to various professors and other people I thought might have some interesting information to help me build my new world. It’s a story that I’ve had in my mind for quite a while and it’s allowing me to try some new things that I haven’t done before as a writer, as well as tell a story that I think is very exciting.
As with every new project, it’s incredibly scary. And incredibly thrilling. As I get closer to finishing it and publication, I’ll be able to share more with you and give out some teasers. But when a book is this close to the beginning, saying anything more than, “Oh, I’m working on it,” can be counterproductive, because so much can change between now and when I reach the end of the story. That said, it’s going well—relatively quickly—and it’s really fun to be working on a new book. My main hope is that people will enjoy it at least as much as the Inheritance Cycle and, if I do my job well, hopefully more.
Christopher
P.S. If you would like to read a bit more about this topic, be sure to check out the article I wrote for Barnes and Noble here.
