Authors Answer 107 – Our Works in Progress

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a bit more than half over, so it’s a good time to talk about what we’re writing. Some of us are participating in NaNoWriMo, but many of us have our hands full with other works in progress. This week, we talk about what we’re working on.

Question 107: What are you working on now? Any works in progress?

Beth Aman

I’m working on getting my high fantasy published, (I’m in the pits of query letters) and I’m about to start writing a contemporary about an extraordinary bookstore, which is for NaNoWriMo.

Jean Davis

We are just over halfway through NaNoWriMo and I have so many works in progress. I’m currently attempting to focus on finishing a YA sci-fi novel, along with book four of The Narvan, a couple short stories, and rewriting a silly fantasy novel from years ago that is in desperate need of a middle.

Tracey Lynn Tobin

I have several things going on at once right now because I have little-to-no focus. I’m editing Book One of “The Other World“, while writing the first draft of Book Two. I’m also writing a companion novel to “Nowhere to Hide” tentatively titled “Nowhere to Run“. Also I’m still working on my erotic shorts – under a pen name – and I had this idea for a compilation book that I’m keeping secret for now.

H. Anthe Davis

Currently I’m waiting on final beta feedback, final review and cover art for my 4th book, The Bloodied Army.  By the time you read this, I should also be busy writing the rough draft of the 5th book, which I think will be titled The Drowning Dark — but don’t take that as permanent, I’m still considering my options.

Eric Wood

While I don’t really have a work in progress, I do have several ideas on paper waiting for me to get to them. Fortunately, they’re waiting patiently. I think the story I have “in the works” that I like best though is one about a group of bats who lose their home to deforestation and find refuge in a library.

D. T. Nova

Still working on the one I’ve mentioned before. (Progress has slowed due to outside sources of stress and anxiety making “write every day” no longer remotely practical. At least one of the worst sources of that will be over by the time this answer is posted.)

Project Quintessence, when I finally get satisfied enough with it to publish, will be a young adult science fantasy novel. In a world much like ours, the laws of physics change when a young woman from a fantasy world arrives; and the first people she meets join her in creating and piloting a series of aether-powered mecha, in an attempt to have some influence over what else changes because of her presence.

Paul B. Spence

I actually have three works in progress: a sequel in my series, a split-off series, and a new book only sort of related.

C E Aylett

I’ve just started revising a project that started over a decade ago. I wrote out a messy first draft during several Nanowrimos but never went back to it for fear of not —as a novice writer — doing it justice. It’s a story set in London amid the rise of rave and ecstasy culture in club land:

Sixteen year old Stella needs a job and a place to live. She walked out of her parents’ house after a row with her dad. She’d rather starve than grovel and go back to that snidy twit and her alcoholic mother. Her friends’ parents think she’s a troublemaker and the only person who can help her is dreadlocked pot dealer Malo, who she is smitten with, but he’ll only let her stay at his squat if she agrees to pedal his wares.

Determined to find herself a decent job, quit the dealing and prove to her father he’s got her all wrong, Stella finds herself caught between a world whose opportunities for the young depend on what side of the tracks you roll along — preferably gold plated ones — and a dangerous criminal underworld that doesn’t want to relinquish its grip.

In a bid to save Malo from having his legs broken, she claims responsibility for his drug debts but flees to London to escape the dealers and possibility of imprisonment. Despite her best efforts to get her head down and on with her work, the capital is already flooded with MDMA and little pills of pleasure are literally a licence to print money. They even have dollar signs stamped on some of them!

In the midst of one of the biggest youth music movements of the twentieth century, Stella has one tough choice to make: stay on the straight and narrow with a job she hates, scratching around for pennies to pay off her debts, or cash in, ride the rave wave, doing what she loves best — partying — and maybe find true love along the way.

Now that my writing and editing skills are up to measure, I’m determined to tackle it and make it into the story I’ve always envisioned it to be. It still won’t leave me alone, so I know I have to see it through to the end. But it’s now become three books instead of one (the above is a rough synopsis of the whole three projects), which makes it a little easier to get my head around. Each will work as a standalone story but still with an overarching plot running through all three. There’s a lot of research to do, which is daunting. The story starts right at the end of the 1980s, before the internet really existed. It’s hard to find stuff online, especially when it comes to laws from back then. I’ve got a lot of criminal activity going on — obviously — and it needs to sound authentic and gritty, not caricature. But hey-ho, such is the writing life, eh?

Aside from my own novels, I’m also still working on my online classes at Skillshare. But that’s something I expect will be ongoing for many years. I love editing and teaching workshops as much as I enjoy writing my own stuff.

Linda G. Hill

There’s a loaded question. First, I started a NaNoWriMo project at the beginning of this month. With any luck it will be in the Literary genre when it’s finished. Second, I’m working on editing the first two books and writing the third of my, up to now, three part series, “The Great Dagmaru,” a Gothic paranormal romance, about a stage magician who is an incubus. Third, I’m working on a Gothic horror novel with a working title, “Gargoyle.” Fourth, I’m putting together a memoir about parenting my Deaf son as a hearing parent. The title of that will be, “Don’t Talk with your Hands Full.” Back to work!!

Gregory S. Close

This is depressing, because my works in progress haven’t changed in about 2 years.  I’m still trying to get my science fiction/fantasy novel GREYSPACE finished/launched (near miss with a publisher, huge miss with Kickstarter) and making slow progress on the sequel to IN SIEGE OF DAYLIGHT (the cheerily titled END OF DREAMS).

Cyrus Keith

My current work is tentatively titled “Hush Little Baby,” a contemporary adult urban fantasy about Otherkin and skin-walkers. My lead character is a psychotic homeless woman. It’s requiring more research, of course. Less particle physics, and more neurophysiology. When I take a bite, it’s a big one. 😉

Elizabeth Rhodes

I’m honestly having a hard time working on any one project right now. Jasper’s sequel is on the backburner, but I’m working on a few short stories at a few-paragraphs-at-a-time pace. I’m also waiting for responses from magazines about other stories I sent out.

Jay Dee Archer

NaNoWriMo gave me a great excuse to continue working on Journey to Ariadne, which is a web serial, not a novel. However, life got in the way (that is, work got busy) and I haven’t done much at all. The next two weeks are a lot freer for me, so I hope to at least salvage a 40% complete for NaNoWriMo. But we’ll see.

Journey to Ariadne is a prequel to my debut novel, which is tentatively titled Knights of Ariadne. In the prequel, a mission to send colonists to the planet Ariadne in the Beta Comae Berenices system has a few difficulties to get off the ground. Of course, they are successful, as the novel takes place on that world. In Knights of Ariadne, we explore the new world, following a group of children who were among the first born on the planet. The environment has had an unusual effect on their development, though. This science fiction novel has an element of fantasy, and is set to be the first installment of an entire series of novels.

I have a second work in progress about a terminally ill man who’s aiming to complete a simple bucket list: visit every planet in the Solar System before he dies. It’s a mix of hard sci-fi and thriller, and will be available as a series of novellas.

How about you?

If you’re an author, what are you working on? Let us know in the comments below. If you have further information, links would be welcome!

Authors Answer 74 – What We Are Working On Now

Are you curious about what we’re writing? We’re all writing something, whether they’re novels or children’s books. We have some great things planned for you to read. I hope you really enjoy what we’re going to be publishing in the near future.

Question 74 – Can you tell us about a future book that you’re working on?

S. R. Carrillo

I’m excited to be working on a futuristic, feminist, freaky, queer western set in the clouds where worlds are ruled by demons and horses are fueled by fire.

Elizabeth Rhodes

With my recent blending of crime and science fiction, I want to try more genre blending. How about sci-fi/romance? Bodice rippers in space? Sounds like fun. Stay tuned.

H. Anthe Davis

In the War of Memory Cycle, the protagonists have faced off against malevolent necromancers, fanatical armies, and even the direct focus of a wicked god!  But can they handle….high school?!  Coming next, Cob and his companions find themselves trapped on the idyllic campus of Firebird High, where the landscaper has claws and the chemistry teacher breathes acid!  Can they juggle study-hall, sleepovers, soccer championships and senior prom, all while hunting for a way home?  And what is that groaning that filters up from the school basement at night?  Does it have anything to do with the recent grave-robbings, and the dirt that Principal Enkhaelen tracks into the halls every morning?  Find out in…the War of Algebra!

Eric Wood

I just finished the manuscript for my next picture book. It’s about how a donkey and a giraffe become best friends. I don’t want to give too much away, but there is ninja training, a raccoon playing a ukulele, and a duck who thinks he’s a chameleon.

Tracey Lynn Tobin

Well, I’ve been thinking about taking a break from writing stuff like horror and fantasy, and maybe trying my hand at something a little more relatable. So I’m working on this romance novel… It’s a bit of a Romeo and Juliet plot in which an extremist feminist and a Men’s Rights activist fall in love when they meet at a protest. They’re totally willing to abandon their ideals for love, but their respective “families” are determined to keep them apart. I think it’s going to be a huge hit.

Jean Davis

Well I was skimming through the spam in my inbox a while back and I got this great idea to combine all the subject lines into a plot. So here goes: Billy the endangered elephant needs an enlargement to satisfy the females so he can save his kind but he needs cash. He has enslave the monkeys in the rainforest to pick all the acai berries to sell to the humans so they’ll do the surgery. Unfortunately, the prince of Nigeria takes all his hard earned money and sends it to an elderly woman in Minnesota to keep the elephants from voting in the next election. The only way Billy can get his money back is to convince the woman not to email the prince with her bank information. But can finish his online college language and typing classes in time to save the elephants from extinction and defeat the prince?

D. T. Nova

A team of trained apes engage in asymmetric warfare against a totalitarian government. The title is Gorilla Guerrilla.

Linda G. Hill

I’m working on a non-fiction book about how I’ve traveled the world to take each and every one of my WordPress followers out for coffee to convince them to follow me. The resulting restraining orders are in the hundreds, and yet real life being stranger than fiction, even some of those people are following me! The title of the book will be, I’ll Follow You ‘Til You Follow Me. It’s sure to be a best seller!!

Gregory S. Close

I’m currently putting the finishing touches on a new epic called The Dread Squirrel Prince Trilogy. Most epic fantasy has been told from the perspective of humans, or humanoids, with elves, dwarves and similar races.  I think that’s been played out.  Instead, I’ve tried to touch on themes and characters that are both different and immediately identifiable and relatable – the struggle of oppressed and downtrodden dogs against the Great Squirrel Empire.

The series will follow the rise of a Lab-mix named Sundance.  A pup with a good heart, he sometimes rushes in without thinking things through.  His mentor, an old wolfhound named Big Blue, is a drifter and a charlatan that once sniffed the butts of nobles and kings before falling into disfavor, and landing in exile in Sundance’s out of the way village, Barknuwwn.

Sundance and Big Blue will have to confront the truth of their destiny – hidden lineage, secret powers, a dark power rising again to threaten the last hope of peace for all dog kind, and the great evil behind it all… The Dread Squirrel Prince!

Paul B. Spence

I am currently working on a novel where a conservative millionaire with hateful rhetoric is running for president. An investigative journalist discovers that he is actually a reptilian alien in disguise and planning to plunge the most powerful nation in the world into chaos and civil strife to ease the way for an invasion by his people. The race is on: can the journalist get the information out there in time, or will life as we know it soon be over?

Too much like life?

Jay Dee Archer

I’ve kept this story under wraps for a while, but I thought this is a good time to unveil it.

In a post-apocalyptic world, humans have been reduced to animals, while others have moved on up in the order of intelligence. Birds have become the newest masters of the world, and with their superior intellect, have genetically engineered a super race of birds: the return of the dinosaurs. However, they are still quite small, and have developed robotic suits of armour the size of humans. The purpose? An evil mastermind, one of the rare humans who have retained their intellect, has plotted a second apocalypse against the Dinobirds, and a major battle is coming to determine the future of the world. This sci-fi action thriller has it all, suspense, drama, and a little romance. Look for it soon!

How about you?

If you’re an author, what are you working on? And which story looks interesting to you? Let us know in the comments below.

Authors Answer 31 – Our Projects

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?

Allen Tiffany

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…

Eric Wood

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!

Gregory S. Close

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!

Caren Rich

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.

D. T. Nova

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.

Elizabeth Rhodes

 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.

H. Anthe Davis

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.

Jean Davis

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.

Linda G. Hill

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.

Paul B. Spence

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.

Tracey Lynn Tobin

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.

S. R. Carrillo

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.

Jay Dee Archer

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!

Current and Future Projects

First of all, this is post number 700! It seems I’ve written a lot, and I’m directing that writing energy to my fictional projects.

I made an update on my official page about Journey to Ariadne, but I’d like to reiterate what I said there.  I am currently finishing up Part 4, which is a rather short part of the story.  However, Part 5 should be very interesting.  I’m quite excited to write it.  Although the parts of Journey to Ariadne may seem fairly short, they are only puzzle pieces in a much larger narrative.  I’ll be putting them all together into a novel, which will give a much more complete picture of the story.  What I am not writing in the serial form of Journey is the point of view from Earth.  In the novel, you’ll get to see the other side of the story.

In addition to Journey to Ariadne, I have two books with the collective working title Ariadne: Origins that will show the early days of the colony.  There will be a trilogy that takes place around 300 years later, as well.  And that’s what’s currently planned.  I don’t think I’ll be finished with Ariadne after that.

I have also started two fantasy series.  One I started with NaNoWriMo a couple years ago, but found myself too busy to continue with it.  It will eventually be written.  It doesn’t have a title, though.  The second fantasy series will be a four book series with the working title Fractured.  Neither of these series will be worked on soon, however.

There’s another series I’ll be writing relatively soon, though.  It’s a science fiction series of nine short stories that will be released through Kindle and also available on Kindle Unlimited.  This is my experiment with KU.  It’s a story about a terminally ill man who decides to take the adventure of a lifetime and travel the solar system.  I think it’ll be fun, despite the fact that he has a terminal disease.

I sometimes think I have too many ideas.  But maybe this is a good thing.  At least this way I won’t run out of any ideas.

What are you looking forward to?

Works in Progress

I’ve added a new page to keep track of my works in progress.  I only briefly mention what’s going on with each WIP, but I’d like to expand it a bit in this post.

With Journey to Ariadne, I am doing a web serial to begin with.  All 26 parts will be published on my official website once I’ve gone through a round of editing of each part.  This is not meant to be a novel, but more of a promotion for my full-length novels, which I will begin work on soon.  Eventually, I will completely rewrite Journey to Ariadne after several rounds of editing to publish as a novella at the cheapest possible price.  What you’ll get out of reading this serial is some background, including characters and how they got to Ariadne.

The first full-length novel, which is currently untitled, will take place a few years after colonisation of Ariadne.  It may appeal to young adults, though it’ll be meant to be more serious and darker in tone.  The second novel, which will be a direct sequel of the first, will continue the Origins theme started in the first book.  It’ll be a beginning.

Finally, I’m working on Fractured, a short story which I started for Camp NaNoWriMo, and didn’t write very much.  It is a story I want to complete, though, as it’s an introduction to a bigger fantasy novel series I have planned.

Anything interest you?