Wanted to take a moment to talk about one… my very first project. It has had a few different names over the years, and it has morphed from a simple idea to a whole series of books, some already written and some only in my head.
I started the idea back in college (2008) and one of the big goals was to see if I could actually apply myself to my hobby (Writing) and finish a book. 124k words later I proved to myself that in fact I could write an entire book. That being said It was my first time ever writing anything longer than a kids book, or an essay. I won’t say it sucked because there are some true literary jewels buried in those pages. I learned some of the tricks of the tradecraft that I am still using to make my work unique and interesting today. It is however a far cry from the standard of writing I expect from myself now days. It was slower paced, longer chapters with a ton of world building. All good things, but I had not yet learned the great lesson, ‘don’t say in 6000 words what you can say in 600’.
So what is The 7th Age?
To start with it’s the idea that there is/could be a 7th age of mankind, and the event that might trigger it would be contact with another form of life. This is certainly no new story to be told, but The 7th Age took it a different way. That contact event didn’t go as expected. The language barrier between species was never crossed and with no explanation the alien life forms suddenly unexplainably died. Their ships plummeted to Earth, and wrecked devastation across the globe.
The story really isn’t about that though… The story is about the family/company that tried to put the world back together. A tech company that was beginning to understand a little of the alien tech. They hold the fragile world together and do their best to build a better world from the devastation. That family however is flawed, subject to making mistakes, and hiding a huge secret of their own.
Ultimately it becomes a classic story of the gulf between those who believe in progress at the expense of freedom, and those that believe religion and freedom are the opposite of progress. It becomes a human story about a few people who are trying to hold the world together on their shoulders, and at the same time to really discover who they themselves are.
Will The 7th Age ever actually come out?
I hope so. I have five books planned… I have two and a half written, and the two need to be revised/rewritten with 10 years more experienced me finding a better way to tell the story. I want them to be read one day though. They have been a labor of love, and there is more of myself poured into those novels than any of my other projects.
One day the 7th Age will dawn.
-kurt
