Reading the news and seeing the pictures from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is surreal. Having lived there and being familiar with neighborhoods and landmarks makes it feel much more immediate than when disasters hit places I don't have much knowledge about. I can't imagine how the city will recover. It'll be like starting over for so many people.

Again I've let a lot of time pass, over a week, since I last blogged. To all my fans, I apologize. Heh... I'm not so sure "fans" should be plural.

I did get back to my novel over the weekend, at least a little. I'm having trouble ironing out some structural details.

Here's the deal:

Part One This is in the first person, from Greg's POV, and traces the period from March to June of 1995. It starts when Greg, a PhD candidate in Biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, meets Jason, the piano technician for the University. Part One traces the genesis of their relationship and Greg's resistance to commitment. We also meet Jason's grandmother, whose house he lives in (in the upstairs apartment), and whose husband was a legendary member of the Biology faculty at the University. She does her part to encourage the deepening of the relationship. We meet Alice, Greg's closest friend, who serves as his sounding board and makes him acknowledge those parts of himself that he suppresses. And we learn that Jason has a twelve-year-0ld son, Max, from a brief high-school fling. Max's mother ran away and was later found dead of a drug overdose, and Max lives in California with her parents. Jason has always planned to have full custody of Max by the time he is 30, which he will be at his next birthday.

At the end of Part One, Greg goes to Seattle, where he will embark on a post-doctoral fellowship, to find a place to live. While he's there he gets a phonecall from Jason, who tells him that his grandmother has had a heart attack and is dead.

Part Two I'm just getting going with Part Two, which is in third-person-limited from Max's POV. It covers the same months as Part One. We learn about Max's long-distance relationship with his father, and about his relationship with his grandparents. We meet Max's two closest friends, kids with too little discipline in their lives who could potentially drag Max down a bad path. Max meets a girl whose fathers are a gay couple, and they bond over their similar circumstances.

Now here's where I am unsure of where to head. There are a few possibilities:

1. The grandparents are unsupportive of Jason's plans to take full custody, and they fight him.
2. The grandparents are supportive of Jason's plans, but Max has issues.
3. Max has this huge crush on the girl and doesn't want to leave California to go live with his father. Possibly they have a big falling out (he sees her kissing his friend), and he has a change of heart and can't wait to leave.

In any case, it ends when Max's great-grandmother dies and he goes to Boulder for the funeral and meets Greg, who comes back early from Seattle.

Part Three Greg moves to Seattle. Jason wants to come, but he has to settle his grandmother's estate, and he has to decide how to transition Max to come live with him. Ultimately, Jason and Max move to Seattle to be with Greg, but Max resents Greg, in part because the grandmother left him her husband's microscope, which Max wanted. I have to figure out how to get them to decide to be together in Seattle. Maybe I'll tell this part in first person from Jason's POV. Not sure yet. Maybe there'll be a custody battle in this part. A lot is yet to be decided.

Part Four Greg, Jason, and Max are all living together in Seattle, and Max is angry about Greg's intrusion in his father's life. Greg doesn't have a clue how to have a relationship with Max, and makes a lot of mistakes. Then Jason is killed -- not sure how yet -- and the grandparents decide to come back for custody. Only then do Greg and Max find a way to be father and son, and discover that they need each other.

So there are a lot of plot complications to handle and a lot of characters to flesh out. I need to do more with Alice. And there are other characters in Seattle that will factor in. I'm not sure how to keep a handle on it all without it getting unwieldy.

It's fun to write a novel!