Ironmaster and Other Updates

Well, last week was half-term, and so as is traditional I got flu or something, but with the kids back in school today and my health recovered I have chance to look at where I’m up to with my current projects.

Ironmaster & Other Tales

Almost finished, just the final few light editorial touches on the text and then the seperation into Lulu print and ebook editions…  I’m pondering whether to go the kdp route for kindle or let Lulu handle it, although I’m pretty certain I don’t want to split the ebook up this time, that way the free sample will be a significant few stories to give people the idea,  which I hope will persuade them to buy. I think in the future I may play with an episodically released novel, but the chapters would have to be carefully constructed and balanced in advance, not done as an after thought. Once I have finished and am ready to go then I need to make a load of promotional material, including video book trailers and cool additional images to become adverts and wallpapers, etc.

With Strange Aeons series

This series came from an idea I had that Dan Brown’s greatest successes were based on secret cults and religions, a mainstay of Lovecraftian Horror. So I thought I’d try and write a Dan Brown style thriller set in the Cthulhu Mythos. The first book in the series will be very light on the Horrific aspects of that universe, but as the series goes on I hope to unveil the full horror of the Stars becoming right. I’m also hoping to write a book that my mother-in-law (who reads a lot of thrillers and the like) can really enjoy (although I think she might enjoy Ironmaster too, most readers seem to) .
Right now I have about five and a half chapters of a convoluted pot-boiler based on an supposedly Atlantean Theosophical cult, that will need a lot of 2nd draft work when it’s done, but this stuff practically writes itself.

The Adaption Files project

Still world-building this in our monthly T13 game and then I can move to actual planning and plotting before worrying commences.
Things that the world-building has taught me so far about the universe :

1. The Night-folk definitely could have more than one novel dedicated to them (although more likely, a series of short stories and Novellas be great)
2. The Technos aren’t as paranoid as I thought, but they aren’t as human as I had thought either
3. The Adaption Files name (which I originally came up with when I was about fifteen) stinks (along with a few other concepts that probably worked great and were fresh in the late 80s, but are tediously overdone in modern Sci-fi). So I’m definitely going to change that before I put pen to paper.

Next session will be looking at the Mystics, and here I’m really pushing to try and create something completely new. I don’t just want a society of wizards, or a telepathic community of new-age hippies, and I certainly don’t want to go near Harry Potter or the X-men…  Hopefully, the players will lead us between these things into a whole new world of psychic potential.

Right, better get on with it 🙂

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