The Spring Synopsis

So, my computer died a few days after the last post that I made here.  As far as I can tell it's a motherboard failure, so my hard drive is intact, and I didn't loose much stuff.  All in all, not nearly as terrible as it could have been.  But, as a result I'm working on a laptop.  I'm glad I've got a backup but it's hardly a convenient or reliable machine.  Keyboard is fried so I've got to plug an extension board in to type and it will occasionally turn off with no warning or justification.  Not the most ideal thing for writing.  So, there's the reason for the lack of updates.  New computer is probably a couple months away so I figured it was past time to let everyone know what was up and why stuff had stopped appearing.

Now, just because I haven't been posting doesn't mean I haven't been busy writing.  Here's a bit of what I've been up to:

• The Horsemen: Mark of the Cloven - This is my upcoming super-hero novel I'm working on set in The Horsemen world by Jiba Molei Anderson.  I've finished up chapter one, Cripples Deluge, and am into chapter two, Plagues Ransom.  Ogun is up against The Eleventh, a dangerous member of the Cloven with an arsenal of diseases at her disposal.  Circumstances force their cooperation in a remote secret facility in China.  I've also been outlining ahead and have worked out details for chapters three, four, and five.  I've fleshed out my baddies a bit more and I can't wait to show off the leader of the Cloven.  His powers are pretty devastating and not like anything I've ever seen in comics.  Issue One of the nine part series drops November 2nd and I'm well on track.
• An author friend of mine Alexei Collier is setting up a fiction website called The Dream Quarry.  His first issue is centered around eldrich horrors and I'll be contributing my story, Little Star, to it.  It needs a bit of a polish.  The current draft feels a bit rushed at the end and I need to pace it out a bit more, beef out the length, but I know what it needs and it shouldn't be difficult.  I'll keep you posted on when it's finished and when The Dream Quarry opens.
• Another friend of mine, Dave Michalak, is doing a fun little collaboration called the Collingwood Project, where different authors take different units of an imaginary apartment building and all write stories set within. Communal areas are shared.  I picked unit 4A and have a pretty solid idea of my story.  Something to do with a gay couple  living in a space with a locked panic room and the possibility that something might still be inside it.  I want it to be pretty short and all my ideas keep outgrowing my goal.  I'm hoping in the next month I can hack off the excess, keep it trim but still manage enough creepy.
• I'm halfway through another entry to WildClaw theater's DeathScribe horror radio play this year.  They do a blind selection, and since I'm friends with a good number of them, the chances they might see this are fairly high, so I can't tell you anything about it without giving away who I am.  And that would be bad form.  They usually pick the entries by early October so whether it makes the cut for the show or not, I'll let you know about it then.

Okay, so there's one more big project I'm working on.  By "working" I mean daydreaming feverishly.   It's a a bit abstract, and I should probably hold off on talking about it, but I'm far too excited not to offer a glimpse.

First, a little background. After I finish 'The Mark of the Cloven' I'd planned on starting the first book in a horror series called 'The Shudder Beyond Breath'.  I love the idea and want to write it, but it's heavy horror with a lot of drama, and takes place in a modern setting.  I don't feel like that's what I want to follow a super-hero book with.  As much as I like straight, hard edged, horror, I often miss my fantasy writing roots.  As many of you know, sword and sorcery fiction is one of my first loves.  I adore New Weird writing.  The strange fusion of fantasy, horror, and surrealism appeals to me like nothing else.  While the 'The Shudder Beyond Breath' is a wonderful story idea, it's rooted deeply in horror.  It is slightly fantasy, of course, with supernatural elements, but it only wades in those waters.  I've come to realize that I want do delve deeper into the strange.

So, I've been working on a new book.

Something horrific, of course (this is me after all), but with a much more abstract fantastic setting.  My inspirations are things like Zelazny's Shadows in the Amber series, Barkers Dominions in Imajica, Moorcock's Planes in the eternal champion series, and even some Jonathan Carrol, Bones of the Moon, style stuff.  All stories that start out normal but bring you to someplace so alien that 3/4 of the way through the book you look back and realize you're off the map, into undiscovered country, and you have no idea what might lie ahead.  Right now it's a patchwork of entirely new and strange locations where I can let my strengths in visual imagery and creativity run without the restrictions stories set in the real world impose.  It's horror, and it's a very dark place, but it's also sort of wondrous.  It's strange cults, abandoned toys, addictions, demons, tattoos, mandibles, heavy metal and, mostly, madness.

It's in daydream phase.  It won't be until after 'Mark of the Cloven' is finished before I write a single scene.  But it's being written nevertheless, every day.