In celebration of having three new members join Authors Answer this month, the entire month is dedicated to what we do and how we write. We getting down to the basics here. This week, we introduce you to our writing.
Question 31: What is your current work in progress? What’s it about?
In Dec of 2013, I started a story while I was stuck in a Honda dealership for seven hours. I’ve long struggled with plotting, so it began as an exercise in structuring a story. I would be lying if I told you I knew exactly where I was going when it started, but I did want to keep it simple. This is what it became after three months of writing: A wagon train in the old West bogs down and becomes stuck. They are running out of food and under constant attack by the Indians. The protagonist is the daughter of the community’s leader, and though she is fiercely loyal to her father, she is beginning to see his failings as half of the members set out on their own. Her father has a different idea of how find help, and takes the rest of the able riders with him in a desperate gamble. He leaves his daughter and her fiancé in charge of the old, young and weak. As the evidence mounts that her father and his team were killed, and with mounting losses of her own team, there is little hope as the girl becomes a ferocious fighter though also and increasingly fatalistic and isolated leader. But salvation does arrive, though not the salvation they expected.
It is not the salvation they expected because it is not a western at all. It is science fiction.
The wagon train is an isolated and dying colony, and the Indians are really aliens. Their salvation? It comes from the darkness of space, and is not what they were hoping for…
This novel is Lonely Hunter. It has been through one review cycle at CritiqueCircle to generally positive reviews, though there are some structural and organizational issues I’m addressing. You can see an excerpt here.
When I completed it, in addition to several other beta readers, I gave it to my wife and twin 15-year-old daughters. They enjoyed it and asked me what happened next. Vicious Harvest is what happened next, and it will soon go through a review cycle at CC as well. I’ll soon post an excerpt of that one, too.
As I finished Vicious Harvest, more threads came rushing to me, and it has turned into a 400k word story that is broken into five novels. The third is also nearing completion, called The Finer Points of Time, and the fourth and fifth are collections of disconnected chapters at the moment.
That is what I’m working on…
While I currently don’t have anything in the works, I do have many ideas. My time thus far has been divided between keeping two boys from pounding one another and my blog. I co-wrote a children’s book written in poetic form that has been turned down by numerous publishers. However, we will be recreating/repackaging it sometime in the future. My latest idea was inspired by the library in Mafra National Palace in Portugal. It was saved by bats. I love bats anyway, but any bat that saves a library is a good bat in my book!
Right now I’m working on a science fiction/fantasy space opera called Greyspace. It’s a concept that really originated as a joke in a writer’s workshop class – what if science could never solve the problem of faster-than-light travel, but sorcery could? What if every engine room of every starship required not just a Chief Engineer, but a Wizard? Thus, the concept was born, and has evolved into something that’s hopefully just different enough from the standards of both genres to be a little fresh.
A little teaser synopsis and even some basic concept art is available here. I really hope to have a Kickstarter up and running this summer to kick it off.
And, of course, I’m working on the sequel to In Siege of Daylight. Hope to have that out in 2016!
I am editing book 2, as well as a Christmas novella, in my cozy series. The series surrounds a young woman in the bayous of Lower Alabama. She owns the local cafe, and gets into plenty of trouble with her best friend. Together they solve murders and mysteries. I’m currently looking for an agent for book 1, Dead in the Water.
A young adult science fiction novel called Project Quintessence: Hearts of Fire, which I have been writing for about three years now.
The arrival of a visitor from another world has changed the laws of physics, and her new girlfriend’s whole family join her at the center of a conflict of magic and mecha.
The page for it is here.
Right now I’m working on Jasper’s Legacy, the sequel to my recently released novel Jasper. While Jasper focuses more on hopelessness and things falling apart, Legacy will focus more on trying to put them back together. I have no link to Legacy yet, but here is a link to Jasper.
My current Work In Progress is the rough draft of Book 4 of my series, The War of Memory. I’ve only just recently published the third book, The Living Throne, so I’m not too far into the fourth yet. Naturally Book 4 picks up in the aftermath of the previous, which involved a great deal of fighting and explosions, so the material at the moment is the characters recovering from their conflicts in a brief downtime before I start throwing more trouble at them. It’s all epic fantasy with a touch of horror, specifically supernatural- and body-horror. I should probably write a few short stories to bridge the 3-to-4 gap, but I’m not ready for them yet.
The problem with having too may projects going at once… I’m working on edits for A Broken Race, which is due out this fall.
In a hard future where most of humanity are slaves to a select few, a simple man sees the ugly truth behind the smiles of his masters and stops being a cog to take hold of the wheel.
As well as various shorts and finishing up the final draft of another novel, Sahmara. Alone and far from home, an escaped slave prays to a goddess for help, only to learn that even the gods charge for their services… and they don’t take coin.
I have four works in progress – five if you count the novel I wrote on paper and lost, but I will get back to that one if I ever find it. I have set my focus on one however, to cut down on my own confusion. The Great Dagmaru is an epic paranormal romance novel about Stephen Dagmar, a cambion (the descendant of an incubus), who works as a stage magician. Upon meeting the woman of his dreams, Herman Anderson, the battle against an old family curse begins; what he doesn’t realize is that it may even cost Herman her life.
I’m currently polishing the manuscript and hope to start the search for agents and/or publishers within the next few months. So far all I have in regards to a link is the novel’s Twitter account, here.
Current work in progress? Well, I’m taking a break from writing, since my most recent book, The Madness Engine, just came out in May. I’m also off this month excavating a Paleoindian site in Texas, so I’m kind of busy anyway. That said, I have started my next novel, which is a contemporary military techno-thriller that is nonetheless connected to my other books. I don’t really want to say much more about it yet.
My current work in progress is a short, four-part, young adult/fantasy series, and could I make that sound anymore complicated? Basically, this is a story that I’ve been working with on and off for literally a decade. I started writing it back in college, but I would get a few chapters in and restart because I wanted to change something…then I’d do that again and again and again. Eventually the story that I was writing only shared a few key concepts with the story that I had started writing, and it was around the time that I realized this that I decided the whole story would probably work better as a short series.
What is the story about? Well, without revealing too much, it’s about a teenage girl who has been having one hell of a rough time, who is suddenly ripped from her reality and dropped into a parallel universe in which the Earth progressed in a much slower and, shall we say, magical fashion. Because of a special power in her blood, she is set with the task of saving this alternate world from a dark evil that has overrun it.
I am currently in the progress of revising and editing the first book of the series, while writing the second one. I’m hoping to have the first one ready for publication by Christmas, but I’d like to approach traditional publishers before self-publishing again, so you probably won’t see this one available for purchase for a while yet.
While I haven’t actively *worked on* anything for a few weeks, but the last thing I published was my second novel and sequel to my queer dark fantasy debut, Procession of Eternity. Then I began re-working a contemporary called In the Defense of Texas that you can read more about here.
My current work in progress is something I’ve talked about a lot on here. I’m currently writing a lead-up to my main science fiction novels set on the fictional world of Ariadne. You can read some of Journey to Ariadne here. After that, I have a trilogy planned that will take place during the early days of the colony.
I also have another project in planning stages that will consist of nine short stories. It will be a series based on the final wishes of a dying man to tour the Solar System. I’m excited about this, and hope to have the first stories published sometime next year.
How about you?
Are you an author? What are you currently writing? Share your projects with us in the comments below. Links are welcome!
I Read Encyclopedias for Fun 
Reblogged this on On the Edge of Enlightenment and commented:
“What’s it about?” I’m never particularly good at answering this.
I can’t give one-sentence descriptions of any books I read, so I don’t feel TOO bad about not being able to do that for ones I’ve been involved in the creation of.
Nothing at the moment, really. I’ve been playing around with short story that’s a tie-in to my clone’s current WiP, expanding what was originally only a fragment written for fun. After the mad scramble to get The Madness Engine ready for publication (new cover art for all 3 books — woot!), I’m glad to have some time off… although who knows how long that will last? Apparently, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be editing something called Greyspace sometime in the not-distant future. 🙂
Yes, let’s hope you’ll be editing that soon! 🙂
Busy or time off, which do you prefer? 🙂
Reblogged this on North of Andover.
Reblogged this on The War of Memory Project and commented:
The usual gang and some new folks talking about our current Works In Progress.
Reblogged this on All In A Dad's Work and commented:
What is your current work in progress? What’s it about? Find out what these authors are working on, you might find a new favorite.
Reblogged this on Tiffany Writing Marketing Selling and commented:
I’ve had the opportunity to join “Authors Answer”. It is an impressive collection of up and coming authors that provide responses to questions weekly. Pursue their work. Some cool stuff published or on the way…
Reblogged this on Elizabeth Rhodes and commented:
The newest Authors Answer. We’re talking about our current works in progress here. I just finished Jasper, but what am I doing now?
Reblogged this on C.K.Rich and commented:
What is your current project? That’s the question answered in this week’s Authors Answer. Funny thing, most of us have more than one project going on at once.
Reblogged this on No Page Left Blank and commented:
There’s nothing like getting deep into a project. In Authors Answer #31 the authors and I talk about our current writing projects.
Wow I literally don’t think I even answered the question hahaha. It’s okay though – so many cool things to check out from everyone else!
Yes, it’s interesting to see what everyone’s writing, and also add some books to the to-read list.