The New An Iron Sea

I'm thinking of 'rewriting' An Iron Sea.

But when I say 'rewriting' it in this context, I do not mean completely scrapping the draft that I have and starting over. That draft still stands and I think of it as almost a separate story now.

What I am considering is writing a similar story of sorts. Whereas the first story called An Iron Sea is about Dr. Linus Claireborne, a doctor at the research station in McMurdo Sound, this next story would about Dr. Linus Claireborne, ship's doctor aboard the whaling ship Dragonfly. It would be a new story, but with similar characters, and the same setting, the bleak desolation of Antarctica. The Dragonfly would have been driven down to Antarctica by an unnatural storm, and all of it's crew would be dead save for Dr. Claireborne and a boy named Jericho that would have been picked up adrift in warmer waters. Dr. Claireborne would be haunted by spirits, some of dead people he knew, some of living people who left him, and others of supernatural forces that are beyond his comprehension.

I know that it would be fairly easy to change up the names and stuff so that it would be a completely new story. But, this is Dr. Linus Claireborne too. He's not some ancestor of the one from the first An Iron Sea, or that first one thrown back in time or something. He's Dr. Linus Claireborne, only in a different time and situation than the first time we saw him. He's different, yet the same, if that makes any sense. He's still a learned man with only his logic and knowledge to help him in the face of forces that he does not understand. Other characters from the first An Iron Sea are sure to pop up as well. I don't know quite how yet, but I do know that they will be there. It's a different play, but with the same actors playing similar parts to the first one.

I'll probably get to work on this right after my NaNo. It's fresh in my mind, but not so fresh as to be fully formed and demanding to be written, and I think that by the time Mercy of the Void is done I'll be very ready to write it.