Future Novels
My next writing project always appears to be more exciting than the one I’m actually working on. I have so many ideas for new stories it can challenging deciding on what to write next. I’m finishing up my thirteenth novel, called The Kill Switch, within the next week. Other than book one of The Copernicus Coercion, the others remain unpublished. That’s a lot of material to have lying around. However, looking at my notes, I have two outlines for two new Novellas, one called Magic, the other Algorithm and the opening chapter of a new novel with a working title of Ghost in the Machine. I have another outline for a novel called Time, which I’m sure I will rename at some point. Alongside this is the outline for Book Five of The Clockmaker Conspiracy. My next project is supposed to be a rewrite of Book One of this series, as new ideas have come to light so the first book needs additional work.
The Kill Chain, which is available right now, has a sequel called The Kill Switch, but I have notes for subsequent books called The Kill Box, The Kill Dial, The Kill Key, The Kill Block and The Kill Wing. I think you can see a pattern here! Once I started this series, new ideas and plotlines just came to me.
Looking further through my notes there are rough ideas for other novels, but they are simply no more than a few lines. Mind you, as noted elsewhere on this blog, The Kill Chain was nothing more than two lines in a notepad file for the best part of eighteen months before I wrote it. I just counted the words in that file, and there is 42 in total. That was all I had when I sat down to finally write it. This is potentially good news for the novels lurking in the other small files of notes I have.
I read Amerika by Kafka, many years ago, not knowing that it remained unfinished and was most disappointed when I got to the end to find this out. This was a time when I only dreamed of being a writer. This has stayed with me ever since and is always in the back of my mind when I look through my unfinished writing. Neil Gaiman said awhile back to finish what you’re writing, and to do whatever it takes to finish it. I need to take this to heart and do so. Presently I’m sitting on close to a million words. The only one who can make sense of this is me, so it’s my job to finish what I started. This won’t stop me writing new books. I just have to find a way of making time to finish up what’s lying around while working on new material.
Having written this, I feel the pull of the Novellas. Having written one called Eva, I’m excited to experiment further with the format. I know I have to finish up The Kill Switch first and see if that will be considered for publication. That’s my top priority right now. Next Friday I will write some thoughts on the Novella and why I intend to write more.
The Fiction Factory 