Its been a busy year for me. I've released a new book (Sunborn), moved to a new state, started a new job, and almost finished my fourth book. All of that is really exciting for me. It's pushing my life in a new direction, and stopping things from growing stale. Now, with all that going on, I'm still constantly plotting my next three or four writing moves down the road. Here's a rough outline of what I have planned for the coming months.
- Publish Phidelphius (late winter of 2015)- So this is the sequel to Sunborn. It follows the continuing adventures of Daniels, a man who's cursed to never age, and can harness the power of the sun. The book is already completed, but the editing process is pretty slow with my writing group, but the quality of the edit is worth the wait.
- Publish Untitled Fourth Novel (Spring 2016)- So this novel is a science fiction story that I'm currently working on (and almost finished with) that follows a teacher who lives in a world where kids who can't pass the government mandated Intelligence Test are sentenced to death.
- Adapt Bad Dreams into a screenplay (project will start as soon as I finish my fourth novel)- So this shouldn't come to many of you as much of a surprise that my first love has always been film. As much as I love writing, there's just something about the emotions images stir inside me that I can't ignore. When I first wrote Bad Dreams, I knew I wanted it to be a movie someday. The images and themes would lend themselves so well to the big screen that I'm confident that adapting it into a screenplay will not be a waste of my time. You can check out the kind words people have said about it here.
- Write Dick and Henry Sequel (some time in 2016)- This is a series I haven't written in almost a year, but that hasn't been due to a lack of desire. I have some pretty big plans for this series as a whole (it'll likely be three or four full novels on top of the original short story collection), and I can't wait to get back to writing it, but there's several stones I need to turn before I can get there. It's going to be a blast though. This is a series I envision writing for years to come, each one having a slightly different writing style and theme than the last.
- Complete Sunborn Trilogy (sometime in 2016 to early 2017)- I started writing Daniels' story thinking it would simply be a novella, but realized there was just too much to this world and to this story to not tell more. When I finished Sunborn, again, I knew there were more stories in that world to tell. This third novel will conclude Daniels' story arc, and the fate of the Decropolis and the rest of the United Poles. Perhaps I'll revisit this world down the road, but for now this book will serve as a conclusion for the series.
Now of course plans can change, story ideas will likely pop up, and may push back some of the projects on this list. The last time I posted a guide of my predicted published works Dick and Henry 2 was scheduled to be my next project after Sunborn. Phidelphius hadn't been written yet, and neither had my Untitled Fourth Book, but the basic ideas of this list will not change. These are titles that I will write. The fun of creating your own production schedule is that it is flexible, and that I can start on any project I'm passionate about at any time. The projects listed here are all ones I'm excited about writing and completing. I like stories that are passionate and conclude their stories, so that's what I write. You will not find a story that I write, not even one in a series, that does not have a conclusion by the last page. I don't believe in splitting up a story arc over a series of books. I prefer each book to have its own story, even if it's in a series, and that a theme be what connects the books in the series, let that be the arc and each book have it's own story. So if you read the Dick and Henry series, or Sunborn and its sequels, you'll find that each book has a different set of challenges for the character, and that you can enjoy them as a singular story as well as a piece of a larger overarching theme.