Project: Radium Town, the Steampunk Weird West adventure set in my hometown of Claremore, Oklahoma at the dawn of statehood and starring Will Rogers.
Writing stage: Research
What I learned: Nothing new, really. Last fall I’d picked up an old Oklahoma University state history textbook and a biography on Will Rogers at Gardner’s, and I finally started reading those. I brushed up on state history from the establishment of Indian Territory and the Trail of Tears up through statehood (an aside: I wonder why we never hear about all of the black slaves who were forced to march the Trail of Tears along with their Cherokee owners, and how they ended up being some of the first non-native settlers in this region). Then I started reading Will Rogers: The Cherokee Kid and learned some facts about his family and childhood that will surely help to shape his character for my book.
At this point my main goal is to figure out my timeline and at what point my alternate history branches off. Right now my thinking is that there was some sort of cataclysmic event in Europe in the late Victorian era that had a ripple effect throughout the rest of the world and didn’t really affect the US until the turn of the century. But it’s going to take more research and thought to iron out the details and how, exactly, it altered the lives of my characters.
C25K/UFYH: Eh, we overslept again. But I’m going to do my best to make time this afternoon to get outside and get some form of exercise.
Later: Client stuff, mostly. I might need to run an errand across town later today, but that depends on a few things. I’m stoked because another author signed off on my estimate for doing a website for her book series, which shores up the rest of the month for us as far as work and bills go.