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| image of me lost in the sands of time by annca from Pixabay |
Current Writing Projects:
Destiny Detour - The Black Pearl Series, Book 3
In November, I finished up posting Destiny Detour over at Royal Road. Royal Road has been a great home for casual serial writing. I get quite a few views, and I've had a smattering of uplifting reviews/comments, but for the most part, people are quiet. I assume if I put any effort into being a part of the community and/or reading other authors' work, I might be able to generate more useful chatter. I miss they heyday of JukePop and its active community.
Currently, I'm not going to bother turning Destiny Detour into a print novel and/or polished e-book, but I could easily do so if there was enough interest. The Shrilynda short story that follows is currently over on Wattpad, a much fancier (but less welcoming) place for serial writing.
Bermuda Lake
I love this story! It's the right length for a fast-paced, upper middle-grade story about a group of quirky friends transversing portals to other worlds, but no agents or kid-lit publishers were the slightest bit interested. Since none of them read it, I can't even be sure there was anything wrong with the poor story other than being the wrong type of story at the wrong time. So I'm left with a finished book I could do anything with: overhaul, self-publish, serialize, burn for fuel. According to my spreadsheet, this poor novel has been sitting around for almost 3 years now. Hang in there, little buddy. Maybe someday someone will read you!
Vaylia's Magical Mess
This is my most recent finished project, a YA fantasy adventure, except it grew into a series rather than one book, and half of me feels like I need to finish the sequel before I can query it effectively. I did throw it into PitMad today and I've received an unexpected request, so fingers crossed.
Vaylia and Dawlin are friends who run away from their cushy town rather than getting punished for cheating on their magical exams. They try to start a life of crime to survive out there in the gritty real world, but they're not great at being criminals. They land a job to steal back a mysterious item from the royal treasury, and the adventure story snowballs from there. Also, I threw in a key-hoarding dragon at the end on a whim.
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| image by cocoparisienne on Pixabay |
Odessa's Sea
I have barely started writing this project, but it's been on my mind forever, and it is a blast to write. It's basically a modern "retelling" of the Odyssey, except with high school students in the Seattle area. The best part is that some Seattle landmarks are so strange, I just have to describe them for them to feel like fiction. I got pretty lost in ferry schedules and Gas Works Park last week.
Co-Writing Projects
Laura and I got a great response to our summer camp murder mystery with Felicia and Emily--not the murder mystery duo you'd want to call in if you want investigators who are consistently on the right track. Although we had quite a few agents request the project, they consistently said they didn't connect with the characters, which is hard to read to much into, since it's one of those generic catch-all things agents say nowadays. Like Bermuda Lake, this is a finished project I'd love to do something with. It deserves a home. And a series that is eventually ghost-written and showers royalties down on us. And launches a TV show and a disappointing movie adaptation.
Anyway, we're currently working on a fantasy story with two mom protagonists. The working title is Coffee Story since it revolves around a magical brewed bean that unlocks special abilities when consumed. It feels like exactly the right project for us, if only we had consistent time to work on it.
Current Podcasting Projects:
Laura Morrison's Space Mantis podcast will be pretty fantastic when all the voice-acting is in. I've read narrator lines for the first seven episodes so far. The project started out easy for me, because I was reading rambling paragraphs of lines all grouped together and not speaking to any other characters, but in the last few episodes, I had back-and-forth dialogue, which is a bear to record by myself! JA Waters produced the first episode for us a while back, and it sounded fantastic. I hope we're able to get the first season put together someday soon.
The Creativity in Chaos Podcast is on hold. This comes as no shock, but it would be fun to record if I could devote more time to it. Laura and I recorded the first episode, and played an amazing writing game where we co-wrote a mini story blind. I have so many ideas for topics and creative parent guests, but finding times when our schedules overlap is less than feasible most days.
That's a smattering of the projects in progress over here, not to mention all the pesky life stuff that gets in the way.
