Editing and cover for ‘Cursed Hearts’ complete and the hardcopy proof will be in my hands Thursday or Friday.  I’m sure there’s a half dozen more surprises lurking in there for me.  So for now, I can sit back and relax…!

[Wanders around the house.  Vacuums upstairs.  Looks at interwebs.  Glances at watch:  noon]

Bored!

I’d a notion last night this would happen, but was far too drunk to worry about it.  In the few quiet moments at Mass this morning, I did.  If I don’t start writing something, I’ll go crazy.  So, I paged through some notes and pondered.

At first, I thought about striking out in a completely different direction:  going back to the script I wrote for the Steampunk Reilly graphic novels; it has a good series of stories held together by a coherent overall arc and a brace of interesting characters.  It also has nothing to do with Machine Civilization.

About a week ago on A Writer’s Path (a super resource), I read an article about why a writer should, basically, “stay on message;” if you do SF, do SF.  If you write romance, write romance.  Given that I’ve written SF, religion, magic, romance, horror, friendship all through visual novels, traditional novels, websites, and picture books, I considered that to be a crock of shit.  In fact, I’ve very deliberately chosen to change genres, just to see what I can do.

However, there might be a useful nugget there still:  while I have used different characters and settings to tell different stories, they’ve – so far – all been in my future history, Machine Civilization.  Mulling on that – and that I think steampunk is much better suited for a visual medium – I put the Reilly story away.  Again.  So, what to do?  There on the sidebar (or in the Menu, depending on how you’re viewing this) is my free novel/writing experiment, “Defiant.”  It’s just possible that I could edit Acts 1-3 into Part 1 of 2 of another novel (and that would be a lot of editing!  It was never designed to be a free-standing story!).  It has some romantic elements that I could turn up or down, as well as a strong military theme.  Some politics, but not so much that my head starts spinning by page five (as it did with ‘Crosses & Doublecrosses).

Then again, having just come off of a novel, do I want to undertake something big again?  Would maybe two or three short stories be better both to keep me writing and the creative process engaged?  Short stories can also be scaled up, witness, ‘It’s Just Business’ (that was the original title) turning into ‘Cursed Hearts.’

Sighing into my computer screen, I imagine Ai’s family, Nichole’s family, and anyone left alive at Neuroi Corporation, sighing back at me, wondering when Stupid Writer will tell more of their stories.  Apologies, friends:  I’m trying.