It’s been a couple of months since I offered an update on my writing projects. I can’t claim to have made a huge amount of progress word-wise, but I am grinding away and I feel like there are a number of things that will see the light of day before too long.
Current Projects
In current order of priority:
Axon, Inc. is calling to be finally finished. I originally started this blog back in 2015 to help launch the book, so since we’re coming up on the 10th anniversary, it only seems fitting. (I actually started the book in the fall of 2013.) Recent advancements in telepathic control of computers and language modeling have only emphasized the need to get this done. I have a solid list of concrete tasks to get done on it (add such-and-such a scene, check for thingumajigs throughout, etc.) If I buckle down, it may be done by the end of October, which would be amazing.
Crown of Crows. This has been the focus of my work this summer, and I’m extremely happy with it. You can read all the progress I’ve made here at my Patreon. I have only two disappointments:
- It still isn’t done! GNASH TEETH There are a few chapters left yet.
- I haven’t been able to keep up with the illustrations at all. I’d rather not use AI for them, and I’m not a super talented illustrator, so they’re very time consuming.
Nevertheless I think it’s time to set it aside for a bit because of Axon’s urgency.
Cozy Mysteries. In this genre I’ve been working on the Perry Flockfoot mysteries. But after reviewing last year’s progress on the second story, I think I’m going to leave it at one story for now, and maybe release it as a free ebook. It’s clearly incomplete in that I’ve set things up for lots of future stories, but that’s all fine. For now, I’d rather write something I can monetize, so I’m thinking about a sleuth of my own design — Ashley Isaacs. She’s got a strong character voice in my head, but I don’t have any mysteries for her yet. I can be developing one this month, so that maybe I can write her first book during NaNoWriMo.
Wild Enough and Free. This still needs me to finish up the new novella, Orphan Moon. I don’t think the project or my audience is clamoring for my attention, though, so it’ll be deprioritized.
Writing Projects Journaling Page
In order to keep track of all my projects, I’ve made a “Writing Projects” page in my journal. There’s still plenty of work to do to improve this, but you can get the gist here from my September page:
The upper chart lists the projects horizontally, and the stages each project is in vertically.
Projects List
- CC: Crown of Crows
- AI: Axon, Inc.
- WF: Wild Enough and Free
- HM: Hobbit Mysteries
- DK: Dragonskein (an old project I WILL do one day)
- CH: Cretaceous Humanity
- AX1: In-depth Axon Firings post (eg Elves)
- PT: Patreon update
- AX2: Writing Status Axon Firings post (like this one! I didn’t finish one in September)
- DJ: Druid Journal post
Writing Stages
- Seeds: just some thoughts, ideas, impressions, maybe a character voice
- World Building: fleshing out the world and setting
- Sketches: notes about characters, ideas, plots, etc.
- Framework: plot summary, sometimes down to the scene level
- Draft: complete first draft
- Revision: complete revisions
- Publish: out in the wide world
You can see how close Axon is to being published. It’s calling so strongly to be released.
Hold on, old friend, it’s almost time.
