Hi friends,
Our work is best served with more care once it begins to take shape. We cannot relegate it to scraps and scattered musings. I feel this way about a series of stories I’ve written.
For those just joining, my biggest work thus far is “Ithaka1”, a seven-part serial telling the story of a detective who unintentionally sparks interplanetary conflict during a murder investigation. Our hero unravels a mystery that begins centuries before, but what was possible in between interested me. The action takes place on Minos, a goldilocks planet far from Earth, inhabited by a culturally advanced society that prioritizes communities of care. How they got there could be the subject of lifetimes. I could make legends and folklore, form constellations in the sky2.
I build stories in layers. Perhaps one idea forms some gossamer thin film, but as I go along, more is added thread by thread. “Ithaka” first came from observing ostentatious shows of wealth. The billionaires of the world owned anything imaginable but it was never enough. SpaceX was a flutter in my periphery and a headline caught my eye. My thought: “What’s to stop rich people from owning a planet?”
Why not?
Pieces fell one by one into the bits of the original composition which included the planet Minos, three orbiting moons, and the main character, Anaella Bahn, marching through a field of tall grass to find a mud-caked body in a clearing.
All stories and essays in that universe will now be under its own tab: Project Nexus.
The tab will include a composite of fiction stories from different times and places on Minos along with distant history on Earth and the path between the two planets. While I may stray from the Project, I am never far away and there will be more insights, artwork, and fiction to enjoy. See you there.
What’s next?
A tribute
Audio serial
Always nice to organize things. I also like the idea "what if rich people owned a planet?" There's so much you can do with that.
Your writing is lovely. I look forward to reading the first two chapters of Nexus as soon as I get the time.