Bloodshed, Book 3
My team in New York did a fine job of editing Bloodshed. I am reviewing their input on highlighted areas and making necessary corrections. Editing is time-consuming and not one of my favorite things to do, but it is necessary. It will take another week or two to finish. Then it's back to NY for proofreading. After proofreading, it will undergo its fourth and final edit, becoming a full manuscript—a complete, finished, self-contained draft of a book or novel, fully written, edited, and polished from beginning to end. Once it reaches this stage, I will work on marketing, the release date, and when to upload it to Amazon.
Revelation, Book 4
While Bloodshed is being tidied up, several ongoing projects need attention, starting with Revelation, the fourth book in the 11:34 series. The first act picks up where Bloodshed left off. I plan to write the next sequence, which ultimately reveals everything you have been waiting to know about the apocalypse. The Executive and his new team of Test of Mettle survivors fit all the pieces together, only to realize how truly screwed things are.
Karma (Standalone)
Mary Thompson is nine years old when she is struck by lightning during a freak storm after church service. She awakens three days later with no mark on her body and the ability to alter someone's fortune simply by touching them. Guided by her sisters, Mary wants to help people. But people have a way of changing—not always for the better—a hard lesson Mary learns along the way. As she grows older and more mature, Mary finds others sharing a freakish ability, but the universe isn't done with her yet. When things happen without her intervention, it casts doubt on whether Mary fully controls her ability or is simply lying. As life grows more complicated, Mary wonders whether her ability to change one's karma is a gift or a curse.
Karma is a standalone novel I have been working on for years. It covers Mary Thompson's life from the age of 9 to 80. I am in the midst of writing it using the James Patterson outlining method, something I learned in his Masterclass. No promises, but I hope to finish the first draft before the end of the year. The outline currently stands at 140 pages. In an odd twist, I completed the cinematic trailer before the novel, knowing how the story would play out.
Deathsword (Standalone)
I envision Deathsword slowly slipping from its cocoon before the end of the year. I gifted myself this fantasy story written over twenty years ago, before I truly learned to write. It's 360 pages of such awful writing that reading ten pages is enough to make one run away screaming like their hair is on fire. Okay, it's bad, but not hair-on-fire bad. This personal gift came with two blessings: a timeline of events and a solid story that still resonates with me today. It will be like restoring a long-forgotten car, requiring time, patience, and a shit-ton of elbow grease.
My graphic designer finished a book cover for it earlier this year, so you better believe I'm all-in on this project.
The restoration phase will give me time to sew together the pieces of a cinematic trailer, if one can be made for this particular novel. Time will tell!
Novellas!
I wrote a few interesting short stories that, with a little nurturing, would make terrific novellas. Here is a glimpse into what I am considering.
Father Tom
A series of flash stories about a man of the cloth named Tom. Tom has extraordinary abilities that allow him to fix what needs fixing, help what needs helping, and remove the blight of evil from the world we live in.
Angel's Wings
Angel is a Latina baker whose lot in life is to help the needy. She crosses paths with a homeless man and helps her downtrodden companion as best she can. But this stranger is different than most, and she soon learns that, just maybe, it was the other way around.
Soulless
Also titled Something Amiss, this creepy short story follows a dad who suddenly wakes up to a baseball game playing on television. Nothing strange about that. But the house is quiet. Eerily so. He rises from his comfortable recliner and tiptoes to the back of the house to find the source of his anxiety, starting with his catatonic daughter sitting up in bed and her weirdly twitchy friend from next door standing outside the bedroom window.
Tests of Mettle
With dozens of Test of Mettle ideas and only five 11:34 novels, it might be a good idea to place them into their own set of novellas.
