Fresh Start

Those who follow my author blog are already aware that I unpublished Books I and II of Rise of Azraea for philosophical reasons. Though I don't see a place for me in the professional market,  I still want to write. I may eventually seek publication again, but since I don't know when (if ever) that might be the case, I've decided to devote a blog space to my current work-in-progress. I want to focus more on letting my creative whims off their reins and on having fun than on producing a publication ready manuscript. That means that what goes up on this blog will have much less polish than Rise of Azraea had, and that it might not be assembled into discrete, novel-length collections.

So what's going to be on this blog? A couple of years ago I wrote a book called Wild Justice; it was a historical/urban fantasy story set in Boston 1773, and focusing on the infamous pirate Anne Bonny - still very much alive thanks to being a semi-immortal banshee. It was an experiment in 'voice' (the entire book was written as if she were narrating it in the present) and an opportunity to exercise my academic background in history. I had one near-miss with getting an agent for the book, and based on her comments I decided it needed to have some heavy revision before I tried again.

Unfortunately, I had to put nose to the grindstone on finishing my education, and that prevented me from doing that while the book was still hot in my mind. On the upside, I've had lots of time to expand the story in my mind, world-building and history-building. Oddly, I've come up with more stories going backwards from Wild Justice than going forwards. How far backwards? One of the plot-lines I'm working on is a science fiction piece that takes place about 4000 years before Wild Justice, and another plot-line parallels the events of Homer's ultra-violent historical fantasy, the Iliad.

Anne Bonny has been, by far, my favorite character to write, but I don't want to rewrite Wild Justice until my writing skills and drive are back up to what they were when I wrote the original version of the book. Until then, I'm going to focus on the stories that occur earlier, and shape the world Wild Justice takes place in. That should work out to the equivalent of one short novel or novella for the story taking place in prehistory, two or three roughly novel-length stories spanning the Trojan War, and various short stories that bridge the very large leap of time between the Trojan War and the American Revolution.

Also, a caveat - the stories and characters I'm working with are not especially 'polite' - the villainous characters range from charlatan gods who readily abuse those beneath them in every way possible to undead sadists. The protagonists range from swashbuckling pirates to Greek war heroes which - if you know your history - were not especially good people. These stories will definitely be unsuitable for children (I leave it to the reader to define that for him or herself), and you can expect a fair bit of adult dialogue, language, sexuality, and violence.