Andi's First Draft

Andi's draft is somehow complete, currently around 86,000 words, probably to top out around 90,000. Now I'm going through the tedious part, reading it and re-reading it, until I'm sick of looking at it, tying up loose ends, fixing wording, smoothing the flow. It's basically in three parts:

• In Part One the long lost lovers are reunited. The multiverse is an idea that's discussed, but neither party really believes in it.
• In Part Two the honeymooners realize that multiverses are real, and that Andi has the talent for traveling between them.
• In Part Three Andi knows how it's done and and the newlyweds do it. 

When I started out on it, the parallel universe thing was kind of a throw-away. Then the more I wrote, the more central to the resolution of Andi's problem it became. Funny how that works.

I didn't set out to write a science fiction novel; I set out to write a novel about human trafficking, using the Rotherham scandal as my model. There is lots of material available on Rotherham, and on human trafficking in general, MS-13 and similar gangs in particular. It's really pretty seedy subject matter. I've tried to explore the effects of going through an ordeal like that on an intelligent young woman.

I did have a lot of fun discussing parallel universes and time travel. Does the entire universe clone itself whenever there's a decision point anywhere? If a tree falls in the forest and no one notices, does a new universe still spin off? Will the luck of a fisherman on the Caspian Sea effect the world of a Manhattan socialite? How about something happening in the Lesser Magellanic clouds? In some galaxy that's so far away we can't see it? A single ovum getting fertilized presents millions of alternate chances, one for each spermatozoon, and there are a lot of critters breeding every day, including flies and rabbits.

Then there's the question of a law of conservation of matter, akin to the law of conservation of energy.

What would a person do if he seriously had to travel in time? How would he do it? Where does the money come from? Andi and Elliott only go back a dozen years, but the currency's changed within that time. How do you buy a car? How do you identify yourself to rent an apartment?

Details, details. I've addressed all of them I could think of, and I'll address more as I proof and rewrite, but I'm sure there will be some of them unaddressed when I'm done. The more I think on the problem, the more I'll notice.