Salmonweird is now on the last leg. The first draft is complete; all I need do now is a thorough edit and then I start seeking publication options. This I will probably do in the New Year. There is still a long road ahead, but the biggest hurdle to writing any book – completing the first draft – is over.
Although I didn’t sign up for NaNoWriMo (because November is my busiest month), I did aim to get it nearly finished this month and go into Christmas with one eye on the finish line. I am very pleased to say that I smashed that record and it is now done🙂
So what is next? Well, I have the small matter of a zombie companion story to write next year…
I don’t know whether I will use this as my final cover, but I do love its simplicity. It cost me nothing, I made it myself with a hi-res image from Pixabay and a rugged looking font. If I don’t use this one, it will be something like it. Cold, grey, miserable colours as opposed to the bright, cartoony Dead Heat cover. The contrast is deliberate. This will be a darker affair, edge of the seat and probably a lot more violent with little humour. That is everything that Dead Heat was not.
Dead Lock is already more than a year overdue, but I got involved with Salmonweird so heavily and so quickly that last year it fell right to the back of my mind. I think it will be my major priority for 2017. Maybe I can aim to get it done by the summer. It will be around 30,000 words just like the original story to which it is a follow-up.
But What About My Gladiators?
Then and only then will I turn to my incomplete Romans Vs Aliens novel. That will be my primary focus once Dead Lock is complete. But that is way off into the summer or autumn of 2017. No doubt that will come around fast, but I want to get Dead Lock done first and released on Kindle.
While on the subject of titles, I’ve been playing around with ideas for the Romans vs Aliens book and come up with these:
- Children of Phobetor
- Born of Morpheus
- The Formidini
- Children of the Alps
That’s all I have for now and at present I favour the first one. That will probably be the working title. If you know anything about Roman or Greek myth, you might get a sense here of what the plot is about. If not, I will simply keep you guessing or leave you to look it up. The fourth one is descriptive in terms of Germanic mythology but doesn’t translate well for a modern audience who will naturally think of the mountain range. An Alp is actually a malevolent mythological creature.
In brief: A group of six retired gladiators (five men and one woman) are called to a meeting with Emperor Vespasian. He requests their assistance for a mission to the forests of Germania, beyond Roman borders. A chain of Roman forts have been destroyed. The job of this team of gladiators is to investigate the destruction, rescue survivors (if any) and return them to Roman territory. Sounds simple?
Salmonweird Sleighing
Only when that is complete (or nearly finished) can I think about A Salmonweird Sleighing which I do not expect to even start before Christmas 2017 and (I hope) complete some time in 2018. I don’t even have a plot yet, just a handful of scenes, some loose ideas about new characters, but nothing more. I have a title though, and that’s a good start. It’s little more than a few paragraphs in my brain at the moment so please don’t get too excited about it at present.
Please do tell me about your recent writing efforts – NaNoWriMo or otherwise🙂