My last posting noted there wasn’t much going on because, uh . . . well, there wasn’t much going on. But now the summer slow down is past and things are starting to move again. I just got the word that a long awaited story is about to be published. I can’t announce any titles yet, because I am bound by contract not to announce anything until the official announcement is made. Still, I can say that a fun little adventure story that I wrote will be published very soon. Art work is finished and final checks are progressing. Hopefully I will announce the title within a couple of weeks. Been waiting on this one for a while and am very pleased.
Last time I talked about two larger projects that have occupied my writing time this summer. There is my new mystery novella, hopefully intended for a future anthology to be published by Airship 27. The second is also a novella length story. It is an occult mystery.
This one has been in the works for a while. I got the initial idea almost three years ago. At the time I was too busy with other projects to do anything but write a brief few hundred word synopsis while the idea was fresh in my mind, before diving back into some hot projects that need a lot of work. This happens to me quite often. I get a neat idea; if I don’t drop everything and get it down on paper the idea soon fades leaving me with only vague idea what it was. Story ideas have to be jumped on when they happen. Usually this is a fun distraction. I love outlining future projects. There is no pressure or details to work out. Just throw out a brief outline filled with neat ideas; they can always be revised later.
Anyway, I got his idea but just didn’t have time to do anything with it. I was up to my nose in writing Not That Kind of Girl and Master of Blackness, what would become my Purple Scar novel at the time. (Aside: Has anyone out there read it? I was hoping to get some feedback but haven’t head anything even though it has sold a respectable amount of copies) I finally got time to flesh out my occult mystery outline this winter and actually started writing it after I got back from Windy City Pulp Con. Like the mystery novella, I quickly found it was going to be too involved for a long short story so I had to revise my outline and it became a full novella. I have been working hard on it this summer and it will soon be finished. It’s fun with a little of everything; a crooked medium, murder, nosy cops and of course nightmares. I hope to be finished with it very soon. Then I can jump back to my other mystery novella.
Unusual for me, I have been working on both stories simultaneously; jumping back and forth as inspiration struck. Normally I don’t do this but with two longer stories that I wanted to get finished, inevitable slow downs would occur as I worked out plot problems so jumping form one work to the other work gave me a break from banging my head against an awkward conversation or tricky plot points while keeping both projects moving. My occult mystery went generally faster and as I say, will be finished within days. Then I will attack the other mystery and have it done by October.
What will I do with them? The mystery has a tentative home in an anthology for Airship 27. But as it is a classic, hard boiled detective story that can be set anywhere in the ’30s, ’40s or ’50s there are lots of possibilities. All I have to change is a few names and I can go a couple different ways with it. Likewise with my occult mystery. I haven’t quite decided where this one will go. Again I have a couple of options for it.
So that’s the latest. Hopefully I will be back very soon with a new title to announce.
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