What Next?

[rowyn]

I finished the draft of Demon's Sigil on Wednesday and sent Alinsa the backmatter for Golden Coils yesterday and my final proofreading notes last weekend. So Coils is awaiting final layout and I have drafts for two more books complete, Demon's Lure and Demon's Sigil. Both of the Demon books need significant amounts of editing.

 

The obvious thing for me to Do Next is edit the Demon books, but I am not ready to dive into editing and even if I was, I'd still want to be writing new material at the same time.

 

I am not sure how long the Demon books will take to edit. Scales and Coils combined took a year, total, including time for first reader comments and accompanying revisions. The Sun Etherium took two months. My guesstimate is three to four months per book for the Demon books. They are about half the length of Scales and Coils so I expect them to be quicker to edit, but the draft is rougher than TSE.

 

In any case: I get to pick a new project to write! For the first time in about ten months! SO EXCITE.

 

I have a bunch off ideas but I haven't settled on one yet.

 

Old Boring Ideas

Fellwater: my ridiculous BDSM fantasy novel. It's about 80% done but I have so very little interest in the last 20%. Even though I'm fond enough of about half of it that I reread it for fun sometimes.

 

Poll RPG: I love some of these characters still and I know generally how the plot goes. But I don't want to commit to a serial, and the long hiatus means the people who were reading it have probably forgotten it by now. And the audience for it is smaller than for a book. It is so weird to me that I am less good at giving away my stories than Amazon is at selling them.

 

New Exciting Ideas

The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince: a polyamorous fantasy romance, set on one of the mortal worlds that the fey shard from the Etherium setting passes through. It would have cameos from some of the Etherium book characters, but mostly be set in the mortal world. The dragon is a shapeshifter and the prince is trans, either a man or a masculine-leaning enby.

 

Amaryllis and the Demigoddesses: polyamorous fantasy romance about a trans woman from Newlant (the setting for A Rational Arrangement) and two Blessed women from Southern Vandu (where Blessed are considered to have two parts, one

human and the other divine.)

 

Demon's Solution: third Demon book, which I am mostly interested because I could finally get to the polyamorous romance between the three human protagonists. It'd have a main plot about demon-hunting, though.

 

Wisteria's Daughter: an f/f romance between Astraia Striker and Sharone Whittaker, with an epic fantasy subplot or possibly main plot.

 

Pyrite Chains: third book in the Warlock, the Hare, and the Dragon series. This would be about Lilith and Hell and escape therefrom, and probably involve Madden prominently.

 

A Fey in Exile: One of the fey folk from the Etherium setting accidentally gets stuck in a mortal world when the fey shard moves on, and hijinks ensue as he ways for it to come back. I have no plot, I just did a few cartoons of him and he amuses me. Also, he's a sympathetic figure, in contrast to the fey in the idea below.

 

To Kill a God: A couple of fey trapped in a mortal world use their power to conquer a human nation and terrorize the population. Mortals struggle to find a weapon that can stop immortal, invulnerable people who can walk through walls to escape traps.

 

The Twilight Etherium: about the creation of a new Etherium, with bonus polyamorous subplot involving Miro/Ardent/Whisper.

 

Bowracer: Callie (Anthser's love interest from ARA) finds a bowracing partner of her own. I wrote an outline for this novella when I was writing FA, and then decided I needed to write "A Regular Hero" first. I'm thinking of writing this and giving it away as a freebie for people who sign up for my mailing list.

 

Real: An itinerant writer on modern Earth. A former space marine with PTSD trying to recover on a peaceful world while the war rages on. A princess in dangered of a political coup. They have nothing in common, other than that they are all the same person. Kind of a psychological action-fantasy story.

 

The Future Unbounded: a small-town seer has a vision of the end of the universe, and struggles with how to best use her gifts in response. If she can save one world, or risk that world for the remote chance of saving them all -- which should she chose? Epic fantasy.

 

 

Of all of these, the princess/dragon/prince one interests me the most. Only one of these -- "Bowracer" --has a complete outline, but the princess one has a significant chunk of development.

 

Also, I really want to do a female-centric romance, and also another poly romance. It's been so long since I wrote a poly romance. SO LONG.

Anyway, poll because polls are fun:

Poll #19306 What Next

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17

View Respondents

Which projects would you most like to read?

View Answers

Fellwater
2 (11.8%)

Poll RPG
3 (17.6%)

The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince:
9 (52.9%)

Amaryllis and the Demigoddesses
7 (41.2%)

Demon's Solution
0 (0.0%)

Wisteria's Daughter
9 (52.9%)

Pyrite Chains
5 (29.4%)

A Fey in Exile
5 (29.4%)

To Kill a God
1 (5.9%)

The Twilight Etherium
7 (41.2%)

Bowracer
7 (41.2%)

Real
1 (5.9%)

The Future Unbounded
2 (11.8%)

Comments

[tuftears]

You have no shortage of ideas! You need to win a lottery so you can work on them full time. ^_^

[rowyn]

I have a vague fear that if I really didn't need money at all, I'd be unmotivated to write as fast as I can. :)

[tuftears]

I dunno, you could write without the pressure of needing to make money SOON or die. :) Think about it the other way, would it work better if you were paid by some reader who had won the lottery, and was acting as your patron in the old world sense? They'd suddenly be Most Important Reader.

[rowyn]

I think I just want my needs adequately addressed by my retirement savings and then I can write for pin money. :D

[(Anonymous)]

It looks as though the poll is closed. I'm inclined to vote for anything from the "Rational Arrangement" universe, but I haven't read all the other ones, so I may be missing out.

[rowyn]

You are not the only one! Wisteria's Daughter got one vote on Twitter, but my other no-DW-account vote is for Pyrite Chains. The poll is still open, it's just that you need to be logged in to a DW account to post on a DW poll. :|

[archangelbeth]

While I answered the thing with what I was most intrigued by at the moment, I think you might want to do a cross-section of "what interests the author most" and "what's been selling best" -- or, contrary-wise, "what's completely new and would therefore potentially attract new readers?"

I would probably personally head for low-hanging fruit of the 80% done -- though it might need a kick to see why the last 20% isn't "omg get this DOOOOONE"? But that's me, and I like low-hanging fruit. (Low hanging fruit is the only reason I got a short story in that furry anthology last year... 90% done, finished, then a light bit of rewriting/editing to fit the anthology better.)

...luck!

[rowyn]

I am in the happy position of feeling like none of my series are selling so well that I need to write more of them in order to make money. :D

The "Arranging Paradise" books have sold significantly better than my other series, but it's not "you can retire on this" income, and Paradise is not a setting that inspires me to write sequels. More Etherium books is a lot easier. Especially Etherium-adjacent books, since I can invent whole new mortal worlds for the shard to pass through for those.

I am probably just going to write whatever I want to the most, because I don't have the kind of mindset to keep plugging away at one series in dogged determination that its success will build further if I just put out three or four new books about each year. :)

[archangelbeth]

Yeah, writing what you WANT is probably best, especially since you've got other stresses to worry about. And easy is also good. So!

[canis_lupus03]

Many shiny ideas! I'm partial to ridiculous BDSM fantasy novels, 'cause there's not enough of them, :-) But yes, if you don't feel like doing the last 20%- why? If you like the first half, did you already tell the bits that you were interested in? Do you really need those last 20%? *shrug* Just going on the advice that if you're bored writing it, that's probably a sign that the reader'll be bored reading it... Write what you love, :-)
Anyway, good luck, have fun, and I'm looking forward to anything you've got coming up!

[rowyn]

It's not so much that the last 20% bores me as that the last 20% has the most non-con stuff of all the non-con in the book. And while I was having fun with that early on in writing it, I like my characters too much now and don't want to hurt them any more. c_c

I had a story arc I wanted to tell with this book, though, and that arc is incomplete. So I'd feel like I have to wrap it up somehow, and I don't have any plans for that other than the original one.

[canis_lupus03]

Ah, I see! ...Yes, that would make things difficult. Maybe another solution to the story arc will occur to you in time if you let it sit in the back of your head! Looks like Princess, Dragon, Prince is in the lead, anyway, :-) (Which I also voted for, so... I've no complaints! :-D)