Status of Upcoming Projects
I have two projects going right now and it is starting to stress me out a little. Here’s the status update:
Passages of Consequence: The Open Door is a current day alien invasion novel featuring subplots of love, loyalty, and intergalactic politics. In this story there are doorways that connect worlds – doorways that open and close, that can be seen by some but not others, and that each carry consequences for entrance and more dire consequences for avoidance. A door opened on earth and group of seven came through. This story is about these seven and the one they were sent to assassinate.
There are some similarities in plot, structure, or characters with the Host (book), Jumper (book), Stargate (movie and TV show), Sliders (TV show), and those crazy people flying around in wingsuits.
This novel has been hovering around 90 pages (or about 1/3 complete) since, I don’t know, forever ago. In the last two weeks I have felt a renewed interest in the work – I believe that in part to be because of Toff and the other FSFW members. This week I polished up the first ten pages and sent them off to be critiqued Central Coast Writers’ Conference. If the reviewer’s remarks are positive, there may be excerpts up by mid-October.
Chimree Republic: The Cleansing features a futurist civil war. It’s nearing the turn of the 29th century when a scared, little sulteer boy crawled unnoticed down a sewer drain in Shurefleet to escape the Chimree, winged beasts with the bodies of lions and the heads of demons – goddesses to die for, literally. No one knew until 16 years later, The Cleansing of the Southern Grid, the second massacre by the Chimree, that there was a living witness to the Rise of the Chimree. No one knew until the little sulteer that ran became the one that stood defiant in the face of the Chimree horde.
I have no idea what influenced me here and there is some pretty strange stuff in this novel. There are some similarities with Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick (movies), Minority Report (movie), Ladyhawke (movie), and, well, you can see a little bit of The Wizard of Oz (movie) and Through the Looking Glass (book) too. However, where you are going to see a lot of the truly interesting differences in their culture and ours is by looking at the doctoral projects of scientific researchers and the hypothetical reports of climate, population, and disease forecasters.
I have about 40 pages written and a pretty detailed outline of the story. According to my place on the outline, I am about 1/10 to 1/15 through the storyline. I just got the first 30 pages organized enough to share with the FSFW group and I will be hearing the good and the bad this upcoming Tuesday. I doubt I will have anything up until I am further in the novel – things are just a little too in flux as I am discovering details that need to be trickled back into the early parts of the story.
So there you have it, my current projects and where they stand.
