Writing Progress Report

So, what’s happening on the writing front?

Quite a lot (as always):

1) Revised version of Dark Matters. After giving up waiting for Edge SF and Fantasy to re-issue the revised version of Dark Matters (they sat on it doing nothing for over a year), I managed to get the rights back and am putting the revised edition out myself now. I’d very much like to have the book ready before the Hal-Con which happens on the 12th and 13th of April. Yuk! That’s in four weeks! It will be quite a race Let’s see if I (or rather CreateSpace) manage… The new Dark Matters has a new title: The Glow of the Dark and it has grown from 33,000 to 45,000 words.

2) That One Minute – my second novella with Dark Quest Books – is finished, the galley proofs are checked and now it’s up to Dark Quest to release the book. I don’t know yet when that will happen. It’s all a waiting game in this business (pained smile). Here is a bit of an excerpt from what I like to call a fantasy horror comedy

3) Hagen 3: It’s finished, last revisions are happening, the cover is already commenced to the great Katoh sensei and I’m excepting to get it around Japan’s Golden Week at the end of April / beginning of May. The actual book which concludes the weird adventures of my favorite alchemist will probably be available sometime around July or August.

4) My first full length novel with Dark Quest, the beginning of a high fantasy trilogy, is also in the making and it will probably see the light of day some time in 2015.

5) Two more novels are finished for quite a while already: A space opera and a historical fantasy/sf hybrid. Since I am currently pretty tired of traditional publishing attempts, I am contemplating whether to go the indie-pub route as well or whether continue to submit the beasts. With lottery-like odds it is hard not to get frustrated. I shall read some more Dean Wesley Smith advice and decide later.

6) Another contemporary fantasy I have written at the end of 2013 is now in the revision process and I’m intending to submit it to the Odyssey critique service and then again the question what to do with it once it had gone through final revisions. Try the traditional publishing lottery or forget about that and go on my own.

7) Since the books under points 5 and 6 can all stand alone but could also be the beginnings of series, I found myself at a loss as to what to write next now that the Hagen trilogy is finished. Which series to pursue? The answer is apparently none of them!

Instead I have big plans… it’s back to the Dome of Souls, ladies and gentlemen. It just does not leave me alone.

I don’t know yet if I will really write it all again (all that stuff originally written in TV script format (some hints about that here)) but at the moment something is foul in the state of Lei Lao.

It’s the year Lei Lao 898 and thus of course no characters from the “Dome Child” are around anymore. But the Dome of Souls is going strong and messes with the lives of Lei Lao’s, Jove’s, Vana’s and Shavendra’s successors in the conglomerate of Tonasa.

I’m not even looking at my old TV scripts, I’m writing the novel from scratch out of sheer memory, following the main plot lines and letting it have a new, reborn life of its own. It was just vexing me too much to have “Dome Child” as the only “result” of the ten years I have already spent constructing my future history of mankind, which spans many hundred years and which is held together by the Dome of Souls.

It’s amazing to now revisit the characters of the second leg in this (so far) six-legged monster, my hapless heroes Floyd and Marusar, and to let my lovely villain Master Darnar pull the strings again.

I don’t know yet how long it will take me to write this beast anew and how epic (= long) it will be, but I expect it to see the light of day maybe in early 2015? Let’s see how the Dome of Souls and I will be getting along