Supposedly I’m taking a break from writing. As I figured out this week, what my brain interpreted that as being was a break from fiction writing. I’ve been noodling around on a competition essay for a creative nonfiction contest, and two three other want-to-enters lined up, all with deadlines coming up fast. Stuff’s a roiling but we’ll see if I do it.
Add to that the desire to scribble something in the Disruption Chronicles for Valentine’s Day–something like Diana and Will chasing the Disruption Machine around while trying to have a date night away from the kids. I’ve been thinking about it.
The other thing I’ve done is make out a writing plan, which has been incorporated into a production calendar for the year. Which I then put on the Calendar Wall, which ain’t gonna work.
Oh well. I’ll move it, and pack away the whiteboards. Need to be doing that in four months anyway.
But before I talk about Farpoint, I do want to share this. I’ve decided what I am writing this year. All three books need rough synopses, and I think I’m going to start creating a page for each book, with ongoing pages added. The website needs work, badly, but I’ll get it done.
These are the big projects:
Netwalk’s Children–the third big book in the Netwalk Sequence, about Melanie’s daughter Bess becoming aware of just how much a threat Gizmo can be–while Melanie reconciles with her brother Drew, they become aware that their mother Diana is becoming a threat, and Sarah starts building alliances with Bess and Will.
Welcome to Klone Lane–A contemporary Western scientifical romance, with a tribute to Mary Shelley and Baron Frankenstein.
Bearing Witness–Weird West AU, may or may not be in the same world as my Peter McLoughlin stories (“Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t, Gears and Levers 1, Sky Warrior Press). Missionary in the Oregon Territory breaks an oath to not use mechanical implements on the land by using a horse-drawn sickle bar to harvest hay. Magic happens. All is not as it seems.
Children Left Behind–Memoir of ten years spent teaching middle school special education in a low-income rural school during the time of No Child Left Behind’s rise and fall. I’m not particularly interested in making this one nasty and venomous, which means it probably doesn’t have a lot of commercial interest. Probably a self-pub but I may try to sell parts of it as essays, which may delay the actual publication.
I figure that Children will probably be the biggest project, but even at that it’s going to be a shorter one. Klone Lane and Witness I intend to keep to novella length. I want to have Children ready for Worldcon release, Klone Lane for around Halloween, and Witness early next year. I’m kind of wanting to play around with the mix of spec fic and Westerns because people seem to like that sort of work and well, hey, it’s a good time for it.
Besides that, I plan to write the aforementioned competition essays, plus write some spec short stories. I am also going to aim to have self-published pieces out for Valentines, Mother’s Day, and Solstice. Additionally, I’m writing some further self-pubbed Netwalk Sequence short pieces as part of the Disruption Chronicles.
There’s also going to be two omnibus editions coming out. One is a Netwalk Sequence omnibus which includes the story I’m hopefully going to get my rear together and get thrown up on line in the next two weeks–“Of Archangels and Fuzzy Green Mascots.” In another form, it earned an Honorable Mention in Writers of the Future. I’ll pair it with my WotF SemiFinalist story that no editor wants to buy because it’s too long, “Tranquility Freeriders.” Both are Bess stories and they’ll add to the prep for what I’m now thinking will be the final book in the Sequence, Netwalking Space.
The other omnibus will be at an earlier part of the Sequence, and will be about the Disruptions that I refer to in Netwalk and Netwalker Uprising. Some of the stories for The Disruption Chronicles are already written, but I still need to create a few more.
And none of this even touches the stuff I’m selling that I’m not publishing on my own. I have one story coming out in February, in First Contact Cafe from Sky Warrior Press. I most likely have two more coming out as well, and then supposedly I’m supposed to have a book coming out from a small press. Yeah, right, I’ll believe it when I see it (relations are at that stage right now). I’m hoping to sell some more short stories as well as creative nonfiction works in the coming year, and I’m planning some queries to various small newspapers for clips/exposure/drumming up freelance writing gigs in NE Oregon sort of things.
Dang. Not enough time or space left to write about remodeling at Farpoint. Maybe next time. I promise it won’t be so long. And then Mocha needs a blog and updates for her fans as well.
Need to be more diligent with this. 2015 is going to be an intense year. Come along for the ride.
