Ten years ago, I did a post about turning 40 and
signing my very first publishing contract.
To say I was giddy at the time would be an understatement. Sadly, as I mentioned in my post two weeks ago, that contract fell through, and I eventually went with self-publishing,
which mainly consists of making up your own deadlines and blowing past them
most of the time (or at least for me it does).
But dangit, I’m gonna change that!
I’m officially old now -- got an application from AARP in the mail with
my name on it and everything – and the clock is ticking, so I gotta quit
screwing around and GET STUFF DONE.
With that in mind, here’s a list of the five
works-in-progress I have in various stages of completion, it’s all just a
matter of getting it down on paper (so to speak):
Swords
& Sixguns: Crossing The Line
- As
you probably figured by the title, this is the sequel to my first novel, Swords & Sixguns: An Outlaw’s Tale. At the moment, I have 136 double-spaced pages
written, meaning somewhere between one-third and one-half of the story is done,
and has been for quite a while. I’ve got
the beats worked out for the rest of the novel, so it’s not a problem of
writer’s block, just time. I also have
the beats for the third and fourth novels, plus rough ideas for the others
after that -- things in the overall storyarc have changed a bit since I first
began plotting it out in 1994 (yes, that’s how long I’ve had this idea!),
mainly because I’m a better writer than I was when I started, so I’ve been
weeding out some of the clichés I’d originally put into the plot. Thankfully, many of them were so far down the
line, story-wise, that it’s only taken a few tweaks in the upcoming stuff to
avoid them. This is the ONLY advantage
I’ve had in regards to how slow I write!
Hero
to Some, Villain to Others: An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex – This
is my long-running, non-fiction work that’s going head-to-head with my second novel in terms
of “Who’s gonna get to press first?” It
has the advantage of being closer to completion -- only 5 chapters left to
write, plus another appendix for two -- but some disadvantages. The first is that I have to format it
differently than my novel, since this will include multiple pictures
throughout, not just a couple pieces of clip art like my first novel. The second is how little material is in the
first few chapters compared with the later ones (again, I’m a better writer
now), so I want to beef them up. And
third is that there’s still a couple of interviews I’m trying to arrange, but I
haven’t got a hold of the people yet (I’ll likely just have to let those go and
deal with the info gap). I’m still
kicking myself for missing Jonah’s 50th anniversary, but so did DC, therefore I
don’t feel too awful.
Godheart - One of two
works that are currently exclusive to Kindle Vella, which are released
chapter-by-chapter instead of one fell swoop.
It began life as a fanfic I wrote at the request of a site that was
launching out of DC2, but when the new site fell through, the fic was never
used, and it’s been sitting in my files for years collecting dust. When Vella launched, I decided to file the
serial numbers off of the fic (i.e. remove anything that would identify it with
the property it was originally riffing on) and post it as a test of what this
new site could do -- if anything went seriously wrong, I wouldn’t lose a
property I’d put a massive investment into.
That’s not to say I don’t like the story -- I kept it for years, after
all -- it was just a low-priority thing.
I put up four chapters, with a note at the end of the fourth asking
people to contact me if they want to read more, and so far, I’ve had zero
responses. I think part of the issue is
the paywall: the first three chapters are free to read, after which the reader
must buy tokens to go further, and I get a small percentage of that token’s
worth. Other than a “signing bonus” of
sorts from Kindle due to me being a beta tester, I haven’t made a dime off of
it. So this is on the back burner for
now, though it will eventually get finished so I can at least publish it in physical
form sometime later.
Forgotten
Be Thy Name - My second Kindle Vella work is in the same
boat as the first, though it’s further along in regards to chapters due to me
having stronger ideas for it. This tale
is pretty much “Jonah Hex in Hell” without mentioning him by name because
copyrights (fiction work goes by different rules than non-fiction). I thought it would do better than the
previous one since I’m a known quantity when it comes to Hex, but again, I
think the paywall is stopping people.
Like Godheart, it will get finished
so it can be published. Matter of fact,
I’ll likely do both in the same volume, along with another finished story I’ve
been submitting here and there for many years (I’ll talk about that in another
blog post). One shortie, one midrange,
and one novella…that sounds like a nice package, don’tcha think?
Miscellaneous
DC2 work - This entry is a bit of a cheat because it’s not
one work, it’s three, all of which are loosely connected. Despite having my own original universe to
muck about in, I enjoy putting various DC characters in predicaments, so
that’ll likely never stop. To be sure, I
need to finish writing the final installment of Omega Crisis -- which is plotted and a couple of scenes completed
-- and once that’s out of the way, the other fics can proceed. There’s at about 5-10 more issues of Weird Western Quarterly that need to be
done so I can wrap up the long, winding storyline that I’ve been weaving since
WWQ#0 hit DC2 in November 2005. And Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray is just
getting started in terms of where the story is headed, but I realize now that
it will likely never have a solid end just because I have so many other things
to work on and a finite amount of time.
I’ll get out as much of that story as I can, though, because I’ve got as
lot more to say about Hex living in the 2010s (yes, I’m sticking with the
original timeline, no bumping it up to keep it in synch with the here-and-now…which
means I’m still writing in the past despite setting it in the 21st Century!).
So that’s the state of my WIPs at this moment in
January 2024. And now I put a question
to you fine folks: would you rather I polish off my second novel by the end of
this year, or should the printed version of my Hex history project take
priority? Drop me a line here, on
Facebook, or at swordsandsixgunsnovel@gmail.com
and let me know!
