My Latest Project: Working on Parapenda.

For those of you who do not know, it is my ultimate dream to become a published author. For years, I have had this idea of writing a novel about a perfect society known as Parapenda. Every denizen of this civilization has so much love that all flaws—the flaws that “make people human”—have been stripped away.

However, a few months ago, it was brought to my attention that any story without a villain is not one that will make the bestseller list. So, the Parahata virus was born. This disease infects people’s minds, and since reality is subjective, this does incredible damage to Parapenda. In fact, shortly after the Parahata virus arrives via asteroid, the entire perfect society of Parapenda is destroyed.

There is a prophecy that, one day, there will be a person born without the Parahata virus. By falling in love, this person alone has the ability to bring Parapenda back to the earth. This person is my hero; and this person’s name is Caron Meyer.

Caron searches for years for romantic love, until he finally meets Dorian. However, the Parahata virus is aware of this love, and risks everything to try to destroy it. Can Caron and Dorian defeat this evil infection, thereby consecrating their love, and in the process, can they also save the perfect society of Parapenda?

 I hope that this brief synopsis intrigues you. Over the past few weeks, I have been working toward making Parapenda a reality; harder than I have ever worked on it before. I have been receiving some sage advice from a colleague of mine about the processes of outlining and publishing a full-length novel. This would be my first time writing a piece this long. I am shooting for a fairly voluminous book, by the way.

I have created templates for outlining potential chapters. I plan to fill out a one-page outline per chapter. Additionally, I have made a pre-formatted document which can be filled out—by me—as a way of detailing the unique strengths and flaws that make each character tick. I want us to feel like we know the characters. I want to be familiar with their backgrounds, their personalities, and even their favorites.

This process has been incredibly rewarding for me so far—ten times more rewarding than I originally would have pictured. It is one thing to imagine publishing a novel, and another to actually begin working on it. These early plans make me very confident that Parapenda has the potential to become a real novel one day. All of this outlining so far has reminded me that anything is possible, if only one is willing to put in the work to achieve it.