Just thought I'd lay out some directions for my ongoing efforts toward becoming a true professional author eventually, specifically the novel works I intend during this year. Not all of these may achieve fruition, but at least it's a plan of some sort.
First, I am currently reformating my 2005 other-worlds adventure novel entitled Sister Helena of the Sword for submission no sooner than January 23rd at the earliest in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. My entry last year, Worldjumpers, failed to even make it into the first finalist round of February, but after my bitter disappointment at that result I'm getting back on the horse again, even if I achieve the same result.
In March, or whichever month this is open, I intend submitting my super hero novel from 2008, The Circle of Light, to Angry Robot Books' Open Door Month. Last year I sent them A Legacy of Blood which was rejected. I guess the moral from those two rejections is I got two books ready for self-publication out of the work put into the manuscripts before they were shot down.
I would also like to get some new material written this year in terms of follow-up novels to two mentioned above. First, Sister Catherine versus the Volcano People will be a sequel set a few years after the epilogue chapter from Sister Helena of the Sword, in which the American nun' s only daughter goes in search of her parents across the ocean to the Jaffian Coast's interior to find native tribes oppressed by a larger jungle tribe's empire centered around their capital citadel around and upon a mountain's crater lake, and where she meets a man from her mother's home world of Earth as another refugee stranded on Sepharata named Jack Grant, a 1920s barnstorming pilot and overseas adventurer. Second, I intend writing the next Jack Petrov novel taking place three years after events in A Legacy of Blood, currently entitled Beware any Dark Lands mirrored. In this story Jack Petrov and his new legman Elroy Moody investigate the case of a missing young adult heiress, only to discover the lady has vanished through an enchanted mirror to another Earth-like world into a mountainous-ringed valley ruled by its long-lived Archduke with an iron fist. Petrov and Moody will join forces with local peasants and village dwellers to oppose this Archduke, a centuries-old vampire, as the villain seeks his reincarnated bride among the populace, and rescue the missing heiress staying as that ruler's guest/prisoner. I would also hope to have enough time during 2012 to finish a third Jack Petrov novel set in 1931-32 entitled The Life Eater. In this story, Jack tracks down a German teenager who drifts to Gotham from New York City and other places, seducing young women and draining their life forces to leave a trail of dead bodies behind him.
Other projects I would like to pursue in 2012 include revising my two novels from winning the National Novel Writing Month in 2010 and 2011. From 2010, Invasion Bubble of the Eternal War would make a compact sci-fi novel set in contemporary Los Angeles, as well as possibly a decent screenplay (for a change) to become one of Sci-Fy Channel's original movies. My 2011 novel, Damsel in Distress saves the Hero, needs a bit more work than the earlier one, but could be a nice romantic fantasy set in my alternate Earth world known as the WycheRealms.
I hope at least some of these plans come to fruition, as I scale back my short story output for 2012, after finishing 45 new stories last year and still remaining rejected by every major market where submitting my work to date. Wish me well. Guess I'd better get started someday soon.
First, I am currently reformating my 2005 other-worlds adventure novel entitled Sister Helena of the Sword for submission no sooner than January 23rd at the earliest in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. My entry last year, Worldjumpers, failed to even make it into the first finalist round of February, but after my bitter disappointment at that result I'm getting back on the horse again, even if I achieve the same result.
In March, or whichever month this is open, I intend submitting my super hero novel from 2008, The Circle of Light, to Angry Robot Books' Open Door Month. Last year I sent them A Legacy of Blood which was rejected. I guess the moral from those two rejections is I got two books ready for self-publication out of the work put into the manuscripts before they were shot down.
I would also like to get some new material written this year in terms of follow-up novels to two mentioned above. First, Sister Catherine versus the Volcano People will be a sequel set a few years after the epilogue chapter from Sister Helena of the Sword, in which the American nun' s only daughter goes in search of her parents across the ocean to the Jaffian Coast's interior to find native tribes oppressed by a larger jungle tribe's empire centered around their capital citadel around and upon a mountain's crater lake, and where she meets a man from her mother's home world of Earth as another refugee stranded on Sepharata named Jack Grant, a 1920s barnstorming pilot and overseas adventurer. Second, I intend writing the next Jack Petrov novel taking place three years after events in A Legacy of Blood, currently entitled Beware any Dark Lands mirrored. In this story Jack Petrov and his new legman Elroy Moody investigate the case of a missing young adult heiress, only to discover the lady has vanished through an enchanted mirror to another Earth-like world into a mountainous-ringed valley ruled by its long-lived Archduke with an iron fist. Petrov and Moody will join forces with local peasants and village dwellers to oppose this Archduke, a centuries-old vampire, as the villain seeks his reincarnated bride among the populace, and rescue the missing heiress staying as that ruler's guest/prisoner. I would also hope to have enough time during 2012 to finish a third Jack Petrov novel set in 1931-32 entitled The Life Eater. In this story, Jack tracks down a German teenager who drifts to Gotham from New York City and other places, seducing young women and draining their life forces to leave a trail of dead bodies behind him.
Other projects I would like to pursue in 2012 include revising my two novels from winning the National Novel Writing Month in 2010 and 2011. From 2010, Invasion Bubble of the Eternal War would make a compact sci-fi novel set in contemporary Los Angeles, as well as possibly a decent screenplay (for a change) to become one of Sci-Fy Channel's original movies. My 2011 novel, Damsel in Distress saves the Hero, needs a bit more work than the earlier one, but could be a nice romantic fantasy set in my alternate Earth world known as the WycheRealms.
I hope at least some of these plans come to fruition, as I scale back my short story output for 2012, after finishing 45 new stories last year and still remaining rejected by every major market where submitting my work to date. Wish me well. Guess I'd better get started someday soon.