The 20th Anniversary Edition of Treasure Hunt has been finished and is now online for reading. I realize that this does not fall within the sci-fi sub-genre of anthropomorphic fiction that I have been writing for the past 18 years, but it was myfirst novel-length story and has a special place in my memory. Despite the neverending edits and rewrites of the past two decades, it is now presented on my website for anyone who may happen to read it. I will likely make printed copy and ebook versions available later, though whether or not anyone buys them will not be an issue with me. It was my own private project and I'm pleased to finally call it "finished". Despite the constant thumb/wrist issues of late, I managed to accomplish something yesterday that's been twenty years in the making: I have finally finished Treasure Hunt, the first novel-length story I ever wrote. "A stranger comes to a strange land to escape his past only to find a more desperate landscape. Three travelers find their destinies intertwined in a journey across time and space and their voyage will take them from the comfort of the Midwest to the games of a fabled lost civilization on the other side of the galaxy." The story was originally written in 1992, just before I was introduced to anthropomorphic fiction. However, each time I would pick it up and read back through it, I would find typographical errors that I had missed before, plus I would find areas to change or add material. Although the story was technically finished, I couldn't seem to stop making corrections and edits, so after time it became affectionately known as the Neverending Edit. After a decade, I began to look at the opening setup chapters with a more critical eye and realized just how much I'd never really liked them. Over the next few years, I decided to completely scrap the opening chapters and rewrite them from the ground up. It would not be a retelling of the same events, but would show totally new events that would lead up to the primary plot of the story. Unfortunately, I was often focused on other writing projects, so the efforts on this one was often forgotten. Now twenty years later in 2012, I have finally finished all the rewrites I had planned and I'm now putting a last little bit of spit and polish on it before I format the manuscript for Lulu and Kindle releases. Since Treasure Hunt does not feature the anthro themes I'm now known for writing, there may not be anyone interested in a tale I'd written so long ago before my storytelling skills improved, but I still plan to make it available regardless. The Neverending Edit may finally be ending soon... Once upon a time... the first novel-length story I wrote was a space opera called "Treasure Hunt" (also sometimes called 'Flight of the Zephyr'). It had no anthropomorphic characters, instead having an esper and a telepath who take a trip across the stars on a ship with a mutinous crew. This has long been tagged as The Neverending Edit, since I can't seem to stop changing things every time I read back through it (yeah, kinda like George Lucas and Star Wars). You may or may not have read the original story when it used to be posted on Dennier.com, but I've never really been satisfied with the opening of the story and have long wanted to completely rewrite those first chapters. No, I don't mean to go back and edit them, I mean to totally dump the original chapters and write them from scratch with different scenes, reactions and attitudes. Over the years, I have rewritten the first two of those chapters, but the other three have sat dormant for ages -- until now. Before I sit down with Sunset for my big read through, I have resumed work on Treasure Hunt once again. However, once that's finally finished, I am hesitant about posting the story here on this site. As mentioned, it has no anthropomorphic characters, so it really doesn't match the rest of the tales I have archived here on this site, so I may make the finished tale available only via another Lulu Press paperback. Once TH is finally finished, my plans are to resume work on Sunset and then I have another Blue Horizon story I've started that will need to be completed before I try my pen at something else altogether. |
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