Well hello, lovelies. Since we are in the new year, I thought I should give you all a progress report for all my current Works in Progress. This will be an interesting exercise in humility for myself, I am sure, and I think you can benefit from my transparency. I’m going to do this by project, because that seems the simplest to me. So let’s dive in.
First, let me say that I am not working on anything less than a full-length novel. I have loads of ideas that are in exactly no shape towards becoming novels, and tons of pieces that have been scrapped because I’d never publish them. When you stare at a page that says “Doppelganger Story” and nothing else is on it, you pretty well know that you aren’t going to write that piece.
Oblivion Duet: Utopian Melody and Nether Harmony. The Oblivion Duet is the main body of work that I have been striving to publish for the last ten years. As such, it is the furthest along toward being in publishing shape. These are both Urban Fantasy Novels and are planned to be about 80,000 to 120,000 words long when they are finished. Utopian Melody has been through two major edits, one round of critique, and is currently about 30,000 words away from finishing its third draft. Nether Harmony went through a first draft, but with some changes being made to character arcs in Utopian Melody, another draft will have to be completed soon. I am trying to push out the third draft of Utopian Melody, and the second draft of Nether Harmony this year.
Multiverse Story: Part I, Part II, and Part III. Currently using a working title is my three book Children’s Science Fiction series, Multiverse Story. Each part is told from the perspective of three different children who go on an adventure in a different style of multiverse. Each part of this series currently has a first draft written, but because I went heavily into character exploration with each novel, the actual plot of this story is a nightmare and needs to be reworked. These drafts are currently sitting at 30,000-40,000 words each, for a total of about 100,000 words. As they are each meant to be their own novels, they will need to see a draft of each of them increase to about 60,000 words. I am going to get out a second draft of Part I this year as well.
The Dragon Pact: Book of Fire, Book of Water, Book of Air, Book of Earth, Book of Aether. A series planned in part by myself and a friend of mine, Carol Beagle, this series of Adult High Fantasy novels are in their infancy stages of planning. Each book will need to be 120,000 to 180,000 words long, and unless I somehow become a billionaire in the next few months so I can stay at home and work on books, this will probably take me all of next year to complete a draft of. And let me be clear. This means I will have taken a year to draft ONE book in this series. Well, I’m not famous like GRRM so I suppose that’s okay, but I will have to focus pretty intensely on this one project to be able to make it happen.
Supes of the World: Written in Blood. Okay, I either have a title for a book right away, or I never do. Written in Blood came to me wholesale and complete, but since I consider myself to be a vampire expert, the first draft I wrote of this thing was pure garbage. I mean, total rubbish. Like, I think we spent three entire chapters changing clothes and complaining about why the Main Character couldn’t wear jeans to the vampire ball. Yes, there was a vampire ball with awesome/gross food. No, she doesn’t like wearing black velvet dresses. Okay, so now that that’s out of the way, I was so disappointed with this draft that I need to go back to the drawing board. Some of the edits I made to the first draft early on helped to clarify her purpose, but I was still really unsure about presentation. The first draft of about 60,000 words wrote itself like a teenage love triangle drama. It’s supposed to be an Adult Urban Fantasy at 80,000 to 120,000 words. So back to the drawing board it goes. It’s simmering on the back burner for the moment.
In total, I have 11 full-length novels which I plan to finish. I think I have about 30 other story ideas, and of them, only a handful of single novels that might be made into something more.
Check in with me. What does your writing progress look like at the start of 2019? Let me know in the comments!