The last few months have been interesting. King Solamet’s Mines is in the editing pipeline for release next month, but it was a bit of a struggle. Why? because I keep having new ideas!
In the past month or so I’ve come up with:
- The Demon Generation: What happens when people start exhibiting supernatural abilities and changing into monsters without warning.
- Something I just called ‘Elven Knight’: A portal opens in Central Park, NY, bringing various creatures out of fairy tales with it. Something dangerous has come through and a knight from the other world is sent to bring it back with the help of an NY detective. Fish-out-of-water stuff.
- UNO: Ultimate Necromance Online: A sort of LitRPG/isekai story where the twist is that our hero is a guy who gets transported into a sort of fantasy game world, but on his secondary character who is female.
- Renae Clifton: Supernatural detective story set in Manchester, England.
- Bullet Dance: A weird western story.
- And I shouldn’t leave out Sign of the Dragon which is to still ongoing, but has had some radical rethinking.
They all got a little development and thought. I even wrote a few pages of The Demon Generation and I restarted Sign of the Dragon. But I’m not quite in a cyberpunk mood right now. That will change in mid-November, however, because Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out and I’ll be playing it on a nice, new XBox Series X. If I can drag myself away from the controller, I should be in a strong mood to write sci-fi.
So, right now I’m doing something different. It’s a one-off fantasy which is something of an experiment. I wanted to see if I could do a slowish burn story set in a world with a highly stratified class system. so far, so good.
I blame YouTube reviewers. There was this anime series that got some pretty rave reviews for its world building and relative plot complexity: Ascendance of a Bookworm. It’s a rather unusual isekai. A Japanese girl who loves nothing aside from books is killed when an earthquake topples a badly piled stack of books on her and she wakes up in the body of a small, frail girl, the daughter of a poor soldier in what, at first, appears to be a straight medieval society. Her beloved books are practically impossible to get since books have to be hand-copied; no printing presses. So, she decides that if she can’t buy books, she’s going to damn well make some. And that’s the plot: how Myne starts changing the world by (re)inventing shampoo, crochet, plant-based paper, woodblock printing… And she has to deal with some fantasy stuff and an exclusionary social system, but it’s really about the books. I’m hooked. I watched it twice in succession (helped by there not being anything else I wanted to watch, I admit). I started the light novel it’s based on.
So, I took a few ideas from that and real medieval society and something I don’t normally do: straight-up, impossible without magic cosmology. Put in brain. Turn on mixer. Pour contents onto page. The Empress’s Mage was born. As I said, it’s designed to be a one-off, but it could get a sequel if a plot comes up that works. As it is, it’ll take a poor girl with a talent for magic to the heights of society, which is a good place to end things. I hope it works out (before November 19th when I go all cyberpunk). If it does, it should see a release date in January. As they say in a strangely large number of anime episode previews, ‘Look forward to it.’
Witches and Ray-Guns 
They all sound interesting, but based on descriptions I’m hoping you’ll feel like working on Bullet Dance. I really like enjoy western stuff mashed up with with sci-fi or fantasy. Hope you enjoy the hell out of 2077 when it comes out in a couple of months. Also, thanks for the update 🙂
I am interested by your litrpg world!
Thought you might be.
I’ve always thought of you as an author with great world building, so I’ve enjoyed your worlds greatly. Somehow you manage to create an interesting and intricate world in a relatively small page-count, while not neglecting either the characters or the plot.
So a slow burn from your hand sounds like an amazing idea. It’ll be something to look forward to in these weird times.
Gr Cloak88
To all:
I’m probably going to try to do all of them at some point. I’ll try to prioritise the ones people like. And now I’m going to get people liking all of them. 😦
Well… most readers happen to be a greedy bunch so, that not bad news from our perspective. More book, more worlds, more cool characters and more enjoyment.
Can’t really see the downside this far :p
Gr Cloak
UNO is the most interesting to me. The world needs more necromancer stories. But I have read every book you wrote so far and will continue to do so.
Thanks for the update!
As far as what I like, the characters & story count for more that the setting for me, though I would say the western setting sounds the least interesting. Anyway, I pick up everything you publish via Amazon US so you’ll have sales regardless of how you prioritize. Just go where the muse takes you.
I too like the idea of Bullet Dance the most, especially if you can add Steampunk elements to it as well. Looking forward to King Solamet’s Mines coming out and The Empress’s Mage next year. After reading about all the movies just about not coming out at all this year and having looked forward to seeing Dune by Xmas authors like you are in the boxseat for the next 6 to 12 months so keep the creative juices flowing!
Yes please. 😉
(I will read anything you write, though UNO sounds interesting to me)
It all sounds so interesting, I’m like Johnny B , I’ll read anything ya right. So keep up your writing and enjoy your new game when it comes out.
Are you continuing your death’s handmaiden books? Or any of your other existing series?
Oh yeah. There’s certainly going to be more Death’s Handmaiden. And I’ll do more of the others when I come up with a plot.
My vote is for weird western!