Current Writing Project

Greetings friends!

Many of you have been asking what projects I’ve been focused on. Well, after touring for Inheritance in 2011 and 2012, I started working on a couple of short stories. With the final book in the cycle complete, I needed to play around as a writer and try different things, not because I was unhappy with my writing, but because I had spent thirteen years writing in a very specific style, which had restricted my thinking in some ways. I had things arranged in a very certain way with the Inheritance Cycle. I wouldn’t use words of modern extraction where I could avoid it. Instead I used a lot of archaic words and structured my sentences in very complicated ways. I just needed to clear that out of my head and prepare for my next work.

So I did three short stories, one not so short story, and a screenplay—which unsurprisingly turned out to be a lot harder than I expected.

My current project is science fiction, as I’ve said elsewhere. I’ve spent about ten months doing research for it over the past year, talking to various professors and other people I thought might have some interesting information to help me build my new world. It’s a story that I’ve had in my mind for quite a while and it’s allowing me to try some new things that I haven’t done before as a writer, as well as tell a story that I think is very exciting.

As with every new project, it’s incredibly scary. And incredibly thrilling. As I get closer to finishing it and publication, I’ll be able to share more with you and give out some teasers. But when a book is this close to the beginning, saying anything more than, “Oh, I’m working on it,” can be counterproductive, because so much can change between now and when I reach the end of the story. That said, it’s going well—relatively quickly—and it’s really fun to be working on a new book. My main hope is that people will enjoy it at least as much as the Inheritance Cycle and, if I do my job well, hopefully more.

Christopher

P.S. If you would like to read a bit more about this topic, be sure to check out the article I wrote for Barnes and Noble here.

Christopher Paolini

Christopher Paolini is the author of the international bestsellers Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance, as well as The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm. Murtagh is now available and marks the highly anticipated return to the World of Eragon. His debut science fiction novel, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, came out in September 2020 and its prequel, Fractal Noise, was released in May 2023. He resides in Paradise Valley, Montana, USA.

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