My writing projects and goals for 2018

• New YA story Creature Hunt on Planet Toaria. I managed to complete the first draft at 29,633 words and it is now in the hands of two beta-readers, I am confident will assist me in the line edits etc. I am also now working on the chapter headers with my illustrator. Hopefully this novella can be launched in late spring.

 

Just so you know yes that’s a real plant I am standing beside!

Excerpt from Creature Hunt on Planet Toaria

“You stay there. Everybody stay where you are, I’m safe here. Just wait.”

“Wait? Wait for what? Get out of there, Braze.”

Braze did not answer, but slowly sat down on his hovering gruggle.

“What’s he doing, Nevis? You have to get him out of there.”

“Lenni, if I had an idea what he was doing or could make him do anything, I would. You know how stubborn he can be.”

“Well, try again, call him.”

“Braze, you have to get out of there, please we’re all worried.”

“For the last time stay quiet, all of you. It can’t get me up here anyway.”

Lenni gripped Nevis’ arm.

“He can’t know that, no-one knows what that thing is.”

As his friend’s watched, the coil under the sand began to rise and a tapered shape broke through the surface. It had a circular top with a conical neck, which became a thick tube with scales all over it. The front part motioned back and forth as it continued to rise upward.

“Get out of there now, Braze, now. Do you hear me?”

The fear in Nevis’s shout scared Lenni and Troon. It was so loud there was no need for a communicator. They saw Braze fall forward on top of Eccles and the gruggle rapidly turned toward the outcrop. The creature lurched toward Eccles, but fell back to the sand scattering the grains in every direction.

*******

After much voting from friends and followers it was decided I should edit and revise a long shelved manuscript, Life in Slake Patch. It is a speculative fiction set in a world where men & women live separately with only one day a week visiting. POV is of a young man living in Slake, a male compound. I will have to consider the book cover and do have a rather unusual idea for it. The one below is a temporary one.

Update:

After a month or so working on revisions and making a commitment to complete them, I managed my self imposed goal at a writing retreat (29th March  – 1st April 2018). The new word count is 80,968. Now it will go to my publisher.

Excerpt from Life in Slake Patch:

Jacob turned the pages, his old liver spotted hands shaking as he revealed picture after picture of a life unthinkable. My young eyes grew wider and wider upon seeing images of men and women with children sitting, eating, and playing in strange dwellings, so different from our log structures. Some made of a regularly shaped stone of sorts and others towering above ground with shiny surfaces. There were no words to express my amazement.

              “You see, Evan? Such strange lodgings built in lines and others on top of each other. These alone would be fascinating but when I saw the next few pictures I was amazed.”

            “Surely, these pictures are the wild imaginings of a possessed person, Jacob.”

            “Somewhat my thoughts at first, my young friend, but on closer inspection I have discovered this book was compiled as some sort of historic and societal recording.”

            “But men and women living together, it’s…”

            “Yes, inconceivable to our present way of life but obviously prior to the Grand War, life was lived differently.”

********

This leaves me with two manuscripts to consider for 2018. The Giving Thief, a thriller/suspense or a cowgirl romance. As my cowgirl romance, Willow Tree Tears has received the majority of editing and revisions this is the one I will read through and make changes to. I can take my time as I am not considering publication until 2019 – but who knows!

What are your writing plans/goals for 2018? Care to share?