Current Works in Progress

I try to be organized, I do, I try really hard not to start one project before the other is finished too, but that so very rarely works out for me. Happily, I’ve learned that I am far from the only author with this problem, so it’s awesome to know I’m in good company. At this point in time, I’ve found myself with seven projects in various stages of completion, and one complete work that’s in need of some chapter breaks before it’s submitted to my publisher. The plan for that one is to submit it sometime in December to give me time to read over it a few more times and just be certain that I’m happy with the way it turned out.

I experienced quite the sense of accomplishment today when I actually managed to go through and give each of the projects a working title as well as getting a word tracker for them set up and added to the blog. At least this way, I have this glaring, rainbow line of counters reminding me to focus and sit down and write. I also managed to get my project for this year’s National Novel Writing Month organized, a working cover made, and even added a quote from some of the hand written notes I’ve been making to sort of inspire me once November starts.

Until then, I have a few short stories for anthology submissions I plan to work on too, should the characters actually decide to crawl out from underneath their rocks or out of the ocean to decide to talk to me.

As for Guitars and Cages 2, its about 6 chapters away from completion. My goal at the moment is to have it completed before Christmas. Not sure why those six chapters and I are having such issues, maybe because Asher is still afraid of opening up that last little bit and saying those all-important words that Conner needs to hear. Or maybe it’s just that he’s waiting for the perfect moment. Of course it could also be that the ending to the book and I have been having a bit of a debate about how it should go, I know what I want to accomplish, it’s just the matter of getting there. Funny, but as I sat here typing this I had an idea…yey plot bunnies!

The next story on my work in progress list is titled Ice and Steel. It was written as a novella about 3 years ago, and since then I’ve toyed with the idea of fleshing it out more and turning it into a full length novel. It’s a bitter/sweet romance between Rick, a shy and self-conscious artist, and Josh, a gruff bartender who is older than him by about 15 years. They never quite got the HEA I planned for them in the novella and I think they deserve to have it, not to mention there is an art theft ring to break up and some serious suspense to add in thanks to a crooked gallery owner named Hideaki.

So the third work in progress is a piece that I abandoned about a year and a half ago. It was probably the very last piece of writing that I ever plotted out completely, which is also why it’s been so hard to get back into the flow of working with the story. Well, that and the fact that my character decided that not only was he going to hang out Beneath the Mountain, but he was going to barricade himself in the damned thing and refuse to come out. So I’ve been letting him simmer while I’ve been getting a bit of a dynamite charge ready, and soon, very, very soon, I plan on blasting a hole in his precious rock and dragging him out into the sunshine again. Beneath the Mountain is a story filled with shapeshifters and ancient beings, semi-immortals who have been living in recluse for centuries. There is a menagerie of mystical creatures being nurtured and protected there, and wouldn’t you know it, a bit of a love story brewing too.

Drawing a New Life, the forth work in progress on my ‘to finish’ list, has also been sitting in mothballs for a little over a year. Outlined slightly before Beneath the Mountain, the story was abandoned more out of frustration than anything else. It was a project that I was in love with when I started it, but I made the mistake of allowing outside forces to take my joy of working on it away. I’ve vowed since then to never put myself in a situation where that can happen because not only did it make working on this story impossible, but it made me not want to write at all for a little while. This is a story of switching places with the self that exists on another astral plane, learning about forgiveness, and a disillusioned warrior finding something very important to fight for…with just a sprinkling of romance added in because, well, LOVE!

Serpent’s Kiss was born from a writing prompt, and I have every intention of finishing it in time for Valentine’s Day, and what a perfect Valentine present it will be, especially for the two snake shifters who are finding their way towards love in between political scandal and attempts on royals lives. In this story, I’ve got a somewhat stuffy and proper member of the upper class of serpentine shifters trying to reconcile himself with the fact that his mate, the last pure blooded seer of their entire race, is a bounty hunter who prefers to live among humans, and even worse, doesn’t even realize who and what he is.  

Stalking the Music is my rock star romance and this one has been a lot of fun to start pulling together. Complete with a bodyguard and a stalker, there are suspenseful elements as well as some very dramatic ones in this one.  Jesse Winters isn’t your typical rock star. He isn’t a showoff, he doesn’t have much of an ego, he’s never been one for the long series of one night stands and he prefers the quiet coast of Maine to city life. All in all, if it wasn’t for the time he spends in the spotlight, he’d be just the guy next door, which is why it was so easy for the one person he’d decided to trust to take advantage of him. So when his best friend and bandmate suggests that they need a change in band security, the last thing Jesse ever expected, was to find himself falling for the prickly ex-marine who happens to be in charge of their new bodyguard detail.

Burning Luck is just a series of notes in a notebook at the moment, but it is going to be my National Novel Writing Month project for this year. The original idea popped into my head while I was on the train heading down to South Carolina and I haven’t been able to stop making notes on the characters, the settings and their various issues, since. Currently this one is planned to be a threesome, but we’ll see where it’s truly ends up. This is Lucky’s story, and I actually put together a little blurb and cover for it for NaNoWriMo.

I hope you’ll pop in from time to time to see how each of the works is progressing. I will be continuing to update my Freebie Friday story …And All Shall Fade To Black as well. I have no idea how long the story is going to go, right now I’m just playing it by ear and allowing the characters to dictate the pace of things.

I’ve also been playing around with Pinterest creating storyboards in order to collect different images and notes that might help me get a better visual on my character’s interests, since this was one project suggested at the writing workshop I just attended. It’s actually been a great deal of fun beginning to gather images, tutorials and instructional bits of research to better help flesh out my stories. My writing journey has been filled with so many new and interesting things, it’s always exciting to see what the next day brings.