My writing has focused since March on two books.  Obviously, my hope is to get them published, but for now they remain insubstantial in that regard until I am at least able to get one on bookstore shelves.

The primary text I’ve been working on is the first installment of what I hope to be a series of three or four novels (although I’m guessing at the number based on how the epic has thus far unfolded in my head).  It is a science fiction work encompassing a great many topics stemming from a single overall concept.  While I already know the title of the series, I do not yet know the title of each book.  I do know the idea behind each of them, yet there are dangling subjects that may force me to expand the series by yet another installment.  The focus of this work in toto is the realization of our smallness and inconsequence in comparison to all that is beyond our immediate world.

The second piece is a single novel that is as much science fiction as is it philosophy.  It focuses on a single remarkable event and how its implications and truths challenge all that we think we are and think we know.  Ultimately, it will include a great tragedy perpetrated by our own species as a measure of control that was never ours.

But I’m presently setting all of this aside.

Last night I watched United 93 for the first time.  I was not entirely impressed or touched.  I had seen the made-for-cable movie Flight 93 some months ago.  As I told Rick this morning, perhaps seeing that film before the cinema version of the story somehow diminished the latter’s impact.  Irrespective of cause, I did cry while watching the film.  At the same time, I did not cry with the same force as I did while viewing the cable version.  And in comparison to that, my weeping at footage from 9/11 has been and remains the most strenuous and wrenching outpouring of my soul in response to that day (with only the real September 11 morning reigning supreme on the jason’s-a-big-bawling-baby scale).

It was during the movie last night that a new book idea finally took shape and hit me with forces the likes of which I had never considered.  I was both elated and overwhelmed by its magnitude.  I can’t say what it is as the notion is, I believe, quite unique in the realm of fiction.  It can not even be described as any one genre other than fiction, for it will encompass a great deal more than just make-believe.  If I’m able to develop it as it currently exists in my head, my hope is to create what may well be a disturbingly dark compilation of tales expressed from different points of views regarding…  Well, let’s just say there is a single theme that will run through each narrative.  Some will be long; some will be short; all will be told by completely unrelated characters who exist in worlds disparate from all the others.

As I began jotting down notes last night, a flood of despair encompassed me as the magnitude of this idea became clear.  And yet I can neither deny nor confirm it will be a single book.  The more I develop it, the larger it becomes.

At present, it’s simply an idea I believe to have resounding implications on so many levels.  Consider it a study of the hopeless depths of humanity, a book (or books) with parables and lessons to challenge your preconceived notions with ambiguities that should — I so very much hope they will — call you to question basic assumptions and beliefs.  It will not be encouraged that you read it in one sitting, or even attempt to read it in a limited number of sittings.  If I am at all successful, it will take much more time than that, and a majority of that temporal space will be self-imposed so that readers can more easily digest and consider the impact of each story.

I already know the title and tag line of this work.  That is, of course, assuming it is a single novel, and that assuming it even gets published.

Of all the ideas I’ve had, this is the most important in my mind.  How I hope it develops and eventually reaches an audience.

In the meantime, I am temporarily suspending activity on the other items mentioned above, and that in addition to several other bits of content I’ve tinkered with, so I might better target my efforts on this new fictional anthology.