What Next?

One project is done. I'm just waiting to get the ebook. The other project is on ice. It's difficult to do a good self edit, because after writing and reading the material so much, so often, your brain knows what to expect and automatically fills it in. You miss errors that way, so I'm giving myself plenty of space before I print it off one final time and read through it.

In the meantime, I'm helping to developmentally edit the next book in that series. It's informing a few minor changes I should make as well, so that's great. And the more time I spend with the series, the more excited I get about it, even though it isn't really mine. The author and I work well together, and I think when we collaborate, it has a synergistic effect on both of our work.

So have to make a choice. I was originally going to take a long break from writing altogether, because of parenting/work balance/self control issues. I still need to work on that, because rationally speaking, I would rather be a great parent and not write at all than be a mediocre parent and an amazing author. However, one too many sources have cautioned me against stopping completely, so I'll have to gingerly proceed and choose a project.

I have a variety of ideas. The first, of course, is First Monday Park. I think that will always be my favorite, but I don't think I want to pick that up for two reasons. First, I agree with all the assessments made about it from the beginning. It isn't commercial. I do want to make money. Hopefully, one day I can make enough to allow my wife to cut back on work. That's the new long term goal, so the short term goal is to produce something that will generate a tiny trickle of cash flow, and First Monday is not it. The second reason is that I love the idea so much, I think I want to sharpen craft a bit more before I pick it up again. I refuse to compromise and say "good enough" with that book. I want it to be perfect, and I keep worrying at it until I am satisfied. But that takes a long time. I need to work on something I don't care about quite so much, something I am willing to say "good enough" for.

I had been thinking about C.S. Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia" and how much it would have sucked to have been any one of the Pevensie children. Go on a fantastic adventure, save the world. Become a kind and benevolent king, conquer the outer reaches, go on diplomatic missions and hunts and tournaments. Or be a queen, loved and adored by all, same thing with the missions and tournaments, and be ardently courted by exotic princes... and then return to mid war England. Return to being a commoner with no magic gifts, and have to go through puberty all over again. I developed an idea with that as the basis. A lot of differences, of course, but so cool. Same problem as First Monday, though; too literary. Won't sell. On to the next.
 
Another idea would be the fairy book. I have no characters, and no plot for that in mind, just the fabulously rich setting of a normal riparian forest at an insect scale. I want the correct flora and fauna in the correct proportions, with correct properties and behavior, and just throw some tiny winged people into the mix. Maybe from Missouri, maybe Costa Rica, I'm not sure. However, that would take ALL of the research, and I just don't have time.

Or, I thought I could do a vaguely historical fiction book set in 10th or 11th century England, but with all the witchcraft and folktale monsters being real. Naturally, the Catholic church would maintain an order of monk/knights, or paladins, to keep the bugaboos at bay. So all the fantastic elements would be there, alongside the normal political jockeying and such... but it feels like something like that has probably already been done. The same concept in 6th century Eastern Roman Empire, though, that's probably up for grabs. How cool would that be?...
How much research would that be?

So that's out, but there's an idea for a missing person's crime novel I developed for my advanced creative writing class, and it has some promise. The plot is, I guess, so-so for the genre. There's some motorcycles and bribes and rogue FBI agents, all standard fare for crime. The narrator is amazing, though. It's basically me, if I gave myself all the time in the world to be eloquent and didn't balance my snark with kindness. I wrote everything with that voice, the outline, the summary, and the first and last chapters. Everybody loved it. My instructor, the only one I had who scoffed at literary pretension and encouraged us to write commercially, said it could sell.
But it has nothing to do with anything else I'm interested in writing, and... research. I don't really know exactly how the FBI works, and I don't even know how to go about finding out.

Then there's the paranormal idea. Graduate students of the coincidentally necessary disciplines find an ancient spellbook. The religious studies one insists that it's all superstition, and offers to do a spell to prove it. Of course, it works. I don't know what the spell would do, but isn't that a great opening? But paranormal isn't my genre, either. Some have been telling me that I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, but is that really good for building a brand?

There's the possibility of continuing work on one of the series that I have already written a short for. Originally I wanted to do several shorts for the series, then compile them in an anthology and sell that. Anthologies don't sell, though, so I'm back to square one.

Finally, there's always that Warcraft fan fiction that I can dust off, rip all the licensed material out, and repackage in an original setting. I know, the term 'Warcraft fan fiction' sounds a little scary, but I truly believe my concept is legitimate. I'm just not jazzed about creating my own world. I like limits. I like knowing what I can't do, or even better, tight parameters for what I can. Tell me that anything is possible, and I get crushed by the potential to do everything wrong or stupid or worse, derivative, and I want to hide in my shell like a gastropod.

So if anyone has an opinion on what they'd like to see most, or an inside track on the Byzantine Empire or the FBI, let me know. I'm just sitting over here in the corner, being non committal.