New WIP Time!
A week ago, on June 6, I finished writing the first draft of The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady.
My policy has been to always have a new WIP that I'm drafting. I have never been that author who works on a single book until it is completely revised and edited and proofread and only then starts drafting a new book. Once I finish a draft, I usually launch right into work on some new shiny thing. I'll write the new draft alongside revising/editing the previous draft.
The last time I finished a draft and hadn't already decided what book I was going to write next was January, 2018 -- two and a half years ago.
I had thirteen story ideas on that 2018 poll. In the intervening 2.5 years, I've completed two items from the list: The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince, and The Twilight Etherium. I finished drafting three books that weren't on the list: Frost and Desire, Spark of Desire, and The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady. Also, one novelette that also wasn't on the radar, The Mortal Prince and the Moon Etherium.
I spent yesterday combing through Evernote, looking for scraps of ideas, and collecting them together in a new folder named "Schenectady".
Works In Progress
Fellwater: Polyam BDSM fantasy erotica; features two male subs and a handful of doms, mostly female. I wrote about 80% of my original outline. There's another 20% to go, and then I'd want to put a consensual frame story around it, so that the original story becomes the roleplay of consensual participants playing characters who are "not consenting". I am thinking about this again because I already put a lot of words into it. But it doesn't really follow that "therefore the rest wouldn't take long to write." I'd really need to revisit the outline and figure out what ground I needed to and wanted to cover.
Sequels
The Twin Etheriums: A prequel to the Etherium novels, this is a polyamorous FFM fantasy romance between three people who are searching for the secret to immortality. I already have an outline but I still feel a certain ambivalence about the story. Probably the characters need more work on the "what makes you lovable?" front.
Eve and the Fox: This would be another Fey-Touched novel, featuring a fey character but set in one of the mortal worlds. It's a romance involving Miro and Ardent's daughter. I don't think it's going to be next, but I put it here because I already have an outline for it. Fun fact: this story idea predates the first Etherium novel but is set chronologically well after The Twilight Etherium.
Demon's Solution: sequel to Demon's Lure and Angel's Sigil. Mostly I want to write this for the polyamorous romance between Sunrise, Raven, and Mercy, but the main plot is the fallout from the resolution of Angel's Sigil and how the demon hunters/their guild handle it and also handle the increase in demonic activity. I have a bunch of notes but no outline for the book yet.
New Ideas
You Thought You Wanted to Be Level 99 But Really You Wanted to Be a Better Person: a LitRPG polyam romance. One protagonist is trying to reach the level cap in an MMO in order to impress another protag. Shenanigans ensue. The idea was gifted to me by Tuftears and I have most of an outline from brainstorming about it with Maggie and others on her Discord.
Ideas That Aren't Romance So Why Are They Even Here
You Are Not Prepared: LitRPG. A group of players get transported to a fantasy world that they're familiar with from a CRPG. But instead of each event from the CRPG waiting politely until the players have vanquished the current one, new villains and catastrophes Just. Keep. Happening. The players are going to have to get very creative indeed if they are to keep their new world from being destroyed ...
No outline, no notes, this is pretty much all I have on it.
Just Me and All the Demons in My Head: To avoid being destroyed by one demon, Kaden made a deal with several a long time ago, and has been paying the price ever since. But as far worse forces cause global upheaval, Kaden's monsters may be the only hope many people have for any form of safety.
I don't have much on this, either. But I miss Wysteria's "The Restless Dead Want YOU to Fight Necromancy" game from Sufficient Velocity and am tempted to make my own take on "working with one scary supernatural force because it's not as terrifying or evil as a much more threatening one."
The Way the World Ends: Sprawling epic fantasy. I've had this idea for six years now, about a prophet with visions of different catastrophes that will destroy the world, and trying to figure out how to avert all the catastrophes. Every time I stumble over the notes I made about it, I get excited about the ridiculous scope and breadth of the idea all over again. Picture something like Game of Thrones, but with one character running around screaming "NO DON'T DO THAT IT WILL ALL END IN FLAMES" at various other characters, and then somehow convincing them NOT TO.
I have a few thousands words of notes on this, include two completely incompatible versions of the setting and the main conflict.
The Least of All Monsters: Concept is two characters with a strong brother/sister bond trying to survive in a crapsack setting and rescuing a third character who promises to make everything either much better or much, MUCH worse.
I put this in a crapsack setting so that two of my unsympathetic protagonists would look less unsympathetic by contrast. I don't have a plot for it, just characters and their traumatic backstory. I keep coming back to it whenever I think about 'things I could work on next', so I wanted to put it on this list.
~
Of all of these, the most likely candidates are The Twin Etheriums and You Thought You Wanted to Be Level 99 But Really You Wanted to Be a Better Person, because they (a) are polyam romances (b) have mostly-complete outlines and (c) no serious uncertainties about their structure.
Nonetheless, I think what I'll do first is put some more notes into The Way the World Ends. Perhaps at some point I will accumulate enough notes to make a complete outline for this monstrosity. This entry was originally posted at https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/650544.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
My policy has been to always have a new WIP that I'm drafting. I have never been that author who works on a single book until it is completely revised and edited and proofread and only then starts drafting a new book. Once I finish a draft, I usually launch right into work on some new shiny thing. I'll write the new draft alongside revising/editing the previous draft.
The last time I finished a draft and hadn't already decided what book I was going to write next was January, 2018 -- two and a half years ago.
I had thirteen story ideas on that 2018 poll. In the intervening 2.5 years, I've completed two items from the list: The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince, and The Twilight Etherium. I finished drafting three books that weren't on the list: Frost and Desire, Spark of Desire, and The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady. Also, one novelette that also wasn't on the radar, The Mortal Prince and the Moon Etherium.
I spent yesterday combing through Evernote, looking for scraps of ideas, and collecting them together in a new folder named "Schenectady".
Works In Progress
Fellwater: Polyam BDSM fantasy erotica; features two male subs and a handful of doms, mostly female. I wrote about 80% of my original outline. There's another 20% to go, and then I'd want to put a consensual frame story around it, so that the original story becomes the roleplay of consensual participants playing characters who are "not consenting". I am thinking about this again because I already put a lot of words into it. But it doesn't really follow that "therefore the rest wouldn't take long to write." I'd really need to revisit the outline and figure out what ground I needed to and wanted to cover.
Sequels
The Twin Etheriums: A prequel to the Etherium novels, this is a polyamorous FFM fantasy romance between three people who are searching for the secret to immortality. I already have an outline but I still feel a certain ambivalence about the story. Probably the characters need more work on the "what makes you lovable?" front.
Eve and the Fox: This would be another Fey-Touched novel, featuring a fey character but set in one of the mortal worlds. It's a romance involving Miro and Ardent's daughter. I don't think it's going to be next, but I put it here because I already have an outline for it. Fun fact: this story idea predates the first Etherium novel but is set chronologically well after The Twilight Etherium.
Demon's Solution: sequel to Demon's Lure and Angel's Sigil. Mostly I want to write this for the polyamorous romance between Sunrise, Raven, and Mercy, but the main plot is the fallout from the resolution of Angel's Sigil and how the demon hunters/their guild handle it and also handle the increase in demonic activity. I have a bunch of notes but no outline for the book yet.
New Ideas
You Thought You Wanted to Be Level 99 But Really You Wanted to Be a Better Person: a LitRPG polyam romance. One protagonist is trying to reach the level cap in an MMO in order to impress another protag. Shenanigans ensue. The idea was gifted to me by Tuftears and I have most of an outline from brainstorming about it with Maggie and others on her Discord.
Ideas That Aren't Romance So Why Are They Even Here
You Are Not Prepared: LitRPG. A group of players get transported to a fantasy world that they're familiar with from a CRPG. But instead of each event from the CRPG waiting politely until the players have vanquished the current one, new villains and catastrophes Just. Keep. Happening. The players are going to have to get very creative indeed if they are to keep their new world from being destroyed ...
No outline, no notes, this is pretty much all I have on it.
Just Me and All the Demons in My Head: To avoid being destroyed by one demon, Kaden made a deal with several a long time ago, and has been paying the price ever since. But as far worse forces cause global upheaval, Kaden's monsters may be the only hope many people have for any form of safety.
I don't have much on this, either. But I miss Wysteria's "The Restless Dead Want YOU to Fight Necromancy" game from Sufficient Velocity and am tempted to make my own take on "working with one scary supernatural force because it's not as terrifying or evil as a much more threatening one."
The Way the World Ends: Sprawling epic fantasy. I've had this idea for six years now, about a prophet with visions of different catastrophes that will destroy the world, and trying to figure out how to avert all the catastrophes. Every time I stumble over the notes I made about it, I get excited about the ridiculous scope and breadth of the idea all over again. Picture something like Game of Thrones, but with one character running around screaming "NO DON'T DO THAT IT WILL ALL END IN FLAMES" at various other characters, and then somehow convincing them NOT TO.
I have a few thousands words of notes on this, include two completely incompatible versions of the setting and the main conflict.
The Least of All Monsters: Concept is two characters with a strong brother/sister bond trying to survive in a crapsack setting and rescuing a third character who promises to make everything either much better or much, MUCH worse.
I put this in a crapsack setting so that two of my unsympathetic protagonists would look less unsympathetic by contrast. I don't have a plot for it, just characters and their traumatic backstory. I keep coming back to it whenever I think about 'things I could work on next', so I wanted to put it on this list.
~
Of all of these, the most likely candidates are The Twin Etheriums and You Thought You Wanted to Be Level 99 But Really You Wanted to Be a Better Person, because they (a) are polyam romances (b) have mostly-complete outlines and (c) no serious uncertainties about their structure.
Nonetheless, I think what I'll do first is put some more notes into The Way the World Ends. Perhaps at some point I will accumulate enough notes to make a complete outline for this monstrosity. This entry was originally posted at https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/650544.html. Please comment there using OpenID.