The Necropolis Legacy

I don't know who cares about this, but I renamed the third Necropolis book again today. 

For those keeping score, we started with the working title Surf Girl Keeva, then tried The Centurion Murders, and now we're onto The Necropolis Legacy. Aside from the fact that I don't think a book called Surf Girl Keeva can follow a book called Gun Girl Gracie, I've also gotten to the point where I've now written enough to have a sense for the new book's themes. The Necropolis Legacy fits those themes way better than The Centurion Murders ever did, and here we are. 

I'm also not sure how much surfing this book is gonna have after Act One. It would probably make sense if Keeva's surfing somehow becomes the key to foiling the bad guys, but I'm telling you right now, if that's the way it turns out, it'll be because I figured out how to do it late in the writing process. As I write this, the kids are in the car on their way to Mount Kisco, which is nowhere near the beach. From there, they've got a long and winding road ahead of them.

Since we're talking about the new book, I also added a new prologue this morning and have decided to combine the previous prologue with the first chapter. I listened back to it this morning using Speechify, and I think that'll work. Regardless, the new prologue improves the book dramatically, so the original prologue definitely has to go somewhere else.

It's occured to me recently that the new book might actually work better as the first in the series, too, but for better or worse, that's almost certainly not the way it's gonna go. This one, I think, will come across like a weird head-trip in the current order -- I hope! -- but if we reverse the order, we'll start with a seemingly innocuous YA-Sci Fi-Heroes Journey and then dive headlong into the mud and smut that is The Return of Dr. Necropolis. That might actually be problematic for a certain set of readers.

Or maybe we'll wind up with a torrid sex scene in the new book, too, and it won't actually matter. Lol.

But that's not the current plan.

I really want to share the new Prologue, but it *might* have some minor spoilers for The Return of Dr. Necropolis. So I guess it's got to wait. I'm excited about it, though. I've been worried that the new story wasn't gonna come together, but now I feel like it probably will. 

I guess we'll see. It may yet turn into an impenetrable labyrinth of multilayered plotting. We'll see how much I personally enjoy it, and that'll decide how complicated it gets.