THE LOST LEVEL and HOLE IN THE WORLD – Status Update

Fingers crossed, but it looks like I’ll finish my new novel, THE LOST LEVEL, later this week. I’m starting the last chapter today.

THE LOST LEVEL isn’t a horror or crime novel. It’s more of an ode to things like Edgar Rice Burrough’s PELLUCIDAR, Joe Lansdale’s THE DRIVE-IN, Mike Grell’s WARLORD, and of course, Sid and Marty Krofft’s LAND OF THE LOST. I’ve grown up reading and loving that stuff, but writing them… writing them is an entirely different skill set than what I’m accustomed to. I’ve stepped outside of my comfort-zone, challenged myself, and as a result, it’s taken me a LOT longer to finish this one than I’d originally conceived. The downside to that is I kept the publisher waiting, and blew the deadline. And then, because of that combined with an influx of shit I couldn’t control (like a winter storm reducing my home to rubble), I blew all my other deadlines.

Another downside is that my delay on THE LOST LEVEL cause a delay on other new novel, HOLE IN THE WORLD. The two books are very much tied-in together. I began writing HOLE IN THE WORLD first, but when I was about halfway through the first draft, I realized that events from THE LOST LEVEL would directly influence HOLE IN THE WORLD, and therefore, I needed to finish the former before I could complete the latter. The good news is that I’ve begun working on HOLE IN THE WORLD again now, and since that book was already halfway completed, it shouldn’t take as long now.

Although THE LOST LEVEL is very different than my other work, it still ties in strongly with the rest of my overall Labyrinth mythos, and you’ll see a few familiar faces in it, and say, “So that’s where they went!”

Also, it has a scene in which a Tyrannosaurus fights a giant robot…

So, anyway, I’ll soon cross that off the list. And before any of you shout, “Where is ______ novel?” I’d refer you back to the pic below, which tells you exactly where it is.