Future works?
This recent Tic-Tac-Tome going viral thing has brought my focus back towards writing, although I'll always seem to have a dozen or so totally random projects going at the same time - scattered across my desk, kitchen table, basement, and garage...
One of them, that's semi-related, but has been pretty much mothballed because it's the kind of thing that can't easily be self-published is a book of 3D mazes that I designed and had a coder friend of mine create a generation algorithm for. I made a fancy mockup and shopped it around Toy Fair but it’s a weird not-quite-book, not-quite-toy so impossible to find a manufacturing partner for ☹
The other book ideas are due to the fact that I’m emailing back and forth with my agent who got the Tic-Tac-Tome published in the first place. I did try to go the more traditional publishing route with Shifter back in 2018 but being a first-time author and not really dedicating myself to writing full time, it’s understandable that they didn’t pick it up. I learned a ton about writing query letters and the whole ecosystem of agents, publishers, reviewers, etc. I worked with a developmental editor when I was getting some sparse feedback from the agents, so I chopped the original, long manuscript into three books – something I had already kind of done in the text as a larger grouping of chapters, but now planned as works that can hopefully stand alone.
Using the original Star Wars trilogy as a sort of base line for what can work as a stand alone work, Shifter is Ellen’s introduction to the world of underground Shift racing. She wants a legit and safe job but racing plays to her strengths. In book 2, Yield, she gets that safe job but it’s not as free of intrigue as she expected. She’s soon dragged back to the racing world, which has expanded world-wide. Some old enemies and allies help frame this expanded league and see how it is linked to her corporate experiences and new political influences. This installment wraps up with Nixie stranded on the wrong side of the DMZ in North Korea as World War 3 begins. Go big or go home authors :)
My original 3-in-1 Shifter manuscript was 123k words, the part relevant to Yield was 41k and book 3, Drift, had 33k. The remaining 49,000 words of Shifter had a lot of supplemental material added to let it stand on its own and bring it up to a respectable 112k words. In Drift, Ellen becomes one of the founding members of a city lost at sea. Hanjin City, her new home, consists of a flotilla of cargo ships, cruise liners, and various fishing and research vessels stuck in the great Pacific garbage patch. Here she is exposed to a new way of living / governance and the merciless responsibility of controlling access to limited resources. Ellen being Nixie, a term from Scandinavian folklore I recently discovered is a type of shape-shifting mermaid trickster, (!!!) gets into serious trouble while tinkering with a McGuffin stolen from a Xiba2 research lab in Seoul. She flees back to the states, leaving a breadcrumb trail of pings back to their mainframe servers to lead the team of brutally violent investigators away from her city.
She’s smuggled across the border between Vancouver and Seattle before making her way, by bus, train, and hitchhiking across a depleted America. International trade has ceased, and in the first days of the war, many anti-satellite missiles turned near earth orbit into a sea of shrapnel. Political connections and technology she developed from book 2 have adopted to darker purposes – Shift technology is weaponized and more of its unusual side-effects exploited. Back in NYC, she reunites with old friends and a new one she made along her journey to take down the corporation and its nefarious backers.
One of the methods that helped me to write this story was to think of it as a video game; notably a racing game. With book 2 I was going to try stealth, spy-craft, and mystery. Three would be a bit of city building / management and maybe real time strategy. Ellen’s story ends with Drift but I do have some loose notes on short stories that continue within this same universe.
One of them, that's semi-related, but has been pretty much mothballed because it's the kind of thing that can't easily be self-published is a book of 3D mazes that I designed and had a coder friend of mine create a generation algorithm for. I made a fancy mockup and shopped it around Toy Fair but it’s a weird not-quite-book, not-quite-toy so impossible to find a manufacturing partner for ☹
The other book ideas are due to the fact that I’m emailing back and forth with my agent who got the Tic-Tac-Tome published in the first place. I did try to go the more traditional publishing route with Shifter back in 2018 but being a first-time author and not really dedicating myself to writing full time, it’s understandable that they didn’t pick it up. I learned a ton about writing query letters and the whole ecosystem of agents, publishers, reviewers, etc. I worked with a developmental editor when I was getting some sparse feedback from the agents, so I chopped the original, long manuscript into three books – something I had already kind of done in the text as a larger grouping of chapters, but now planned as works that can hopefully stand alone.
Using the original Star Wars trilogy as a sort of base line for what can work as a stand alone work, Shifter is Ellen’s introduction to the world of underground Shift racing. She wants a legit and safe job but racing plays to her strengths. In book 2, Yield, she gets that safe job but it’s not as free of intrigue as she expected. She’s soon dragged back to the racing world, which has expanded world-wide. Some old enemies and allies help frame this expanded league and see how it is linked to her corporate experiences and new political influences. This installment wraps up with Nixie stranded on the wrong side of the DMZ in North Korea as World War 3 begins. Go big or go home authors :)
My original 3-in-1 Shifter manuscript was 123k words, the part relevant to Yield was 41k and book 3, Drift, had 33k. The remaining 49,000 words of Shifter had a lot of supplemental material added to let it stand on its own and bring it up to a respectable 112k words. In Drift, Ellen becomes one of the founding members of a city lost at sea. Hanjin City, her new home, consists of a flotilla of cargo ships, cruise liners, and various fishing and research vessels stuck in the great Pacific garbage patch. Here she is exposed to a new way of living / governance and the merciless responsibility of controlling access to limited resources. Ellen being Nixie, a term from Scandinavian folklore I recently discovered is a type of shape-shifting mermaid trickster, (!!!) gets into serious trouble while tinkering with a McGuffin stolen from a Xiba2 research lab in Seoul. She flees back to the states, leaving a breadcrumb trail of pings back to their mainframe servers to lead the team of brutally violent investigators away from her city.
She’s smuggled across the border between Vancouver and Seattle before making her way, by bus, train, and hitchhiking across a depleted America. International trade has ceased, and in the first days of the war, many anti-satellite missiles turned near earth orbit into a sea of shrapnel. Political connections and technology she developed from book 2 have adopted to darker purposes – Shift technology is weaponized and more of its unusual side-effects exploited. Back in NYC, she reunites with old friends and a new one she made along her journey to take down the corporation and its nefarious backers.
One of the methods that helped me to write this story was to think of it as a video game; notably a racing game. With book 2 I was going to try stealth, spy-craft, and mystery. Three would be a bit of city building / management and maybe real time strategy. Ellen’s story ends with Drift but I do have some loose notes on short stories that continue within this same universe.
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