Update: Dave's Writing Projects
Here's the status of my various writing projects as of this posting (January 2011):
The Jake Story
That's my project name for my main fiction project these days. The other working titles are Stories Scratched Into the Side of a Battlecruiser (maybe a little too long, that one) and Death Before Distemper.
It's an action/adventure story featuring the Monstrous Jake and his friend and quasi-loyal sidekick the Great God Voltoon. The Dweasels, a race of aliens not known for their common sense or their people skills, have launched a new weapon system that they're unable to control or recall. Jake and Voltoon must assemble a team to stop the weapons, thwart the Dweasels, and confront hidden forces too frightening to contemplate.
This is a stand-alone single novel, but the characters are a lot of fun to write, so chances are good this will turn into a series. The outline is done on this project. Early drafts of the first couple of chapters got the "thumbs up" response from the surviving test reader.
I slapped together a few test blurbs, the sort of thing you see on the back cover of paperback novels, to help me explain the book to potentially interested parties. Here's one of those preliminary blurbs describing the story:
“In a universe where the laws of physics have been tied up in court for years, one monster stands alone between us and annihilation. Well, one monster and his friend the Great God Voltoon. And a turtle named Steinbeck. And a squad of trombone players. And a couple of temps.
We’re pretty much screwed.”
They Who Are Having A Bad Day
I completed the most recent revision of They Who Are Having A Bad Day, the first novel in the Generic Legions series, a couple of years ago. I had no luck shopping it around to prospective agents, so I decided to shelve the project and start again with The Jake Story project, which will hopefully be easier to market. If, years from now when the Jake and Voltoon books have sold a bazillion copies, I decide to come back to the Generic Legions series, I'll want to completely revamp and rewrite TWAHABD from scratch anyway. Meanwhile, I'm "robbing the corpse" and scavenging a couple of the scenes from this book to use in the Jake Story. Other scenes from TWAHABD may find their way into later projects as well, and of course, three excerpts from TWAHABD are now posted as freebie sample snippets on the Bad Day Archive. Nothing goes to waste.
Tales of the Hamster
Some of the ideas for this collection of short stories have been rolled into the Jake Story project, but there's enough of the Hamster storylines left to keep this project on the books. The outline of the first story of the collection is done, the rest of the stories aren't much more than one or two lines of ideas at this point.
Long Run
Hanna and I have been hashing around ideas for writing this workplace comedy together. It's still very early in the planning stages, but this one looks like it'll be a fun project.
Last updated: January 13, 2011