Posted in News Work In Progress on April 29, 2012
You’ve probably seen the spate of recent releases in the last month or so, with both Journey’s End and Five At Table now available in all formats. Having two books ready to go at once was something of an accident, the result of setting work on Journey’s End aside, because I wasn’t quite happy with the way one bit was going. I went back to it after I packed Five At Table off to my beta readers, and managed to get past the sticky bits much better.
So, what am I working on now? I’m currently about halfway through another book revolving around David and Gun, and the little family they created in Five At Table. The working title for this volume is “Letting Go”. I’m only introducing one more new character to the group, but I plan for all of them to grow and change. One or two might be moving on, for a while at least.
I’m not sure when the next book will be ready. I’m trying to take it easy for now. For one thing, temperatures here in Bangkok have been skirting 40°C (~104°F) for most of April, which seems to have turned my brain to mush. In any event, I haven’t been pushing it, since finishing up these last two books was a little too much like work. I’m writing fiction mostly for my own pleasure. The fact that some other people seem to like what I write adds to the enjoyment, but I don’t ever want to feel like I have to write, unless of course it’s my muse, bitch-slapping me with another idea. That writing, borne of impulse - the need to get something out of my head and into the computer - is what makes writing fun, for me. Without it, writing is too much of a chore, so I like to bide my time and wait for the muse to awaken, crack his whip, and tie me to my chair.
I’m traveling on one of my rare visits back to the US in mid-May. This trip always involves a lot of down-time, what with the 18 to 20 hour flight, a three or four hour layover in Taipei and a full night in San Francisco before reaching my home in Portland. All that idle time often gets my mind working on stories, so I might be making a fair amount of progress on the next book in May, or I might strike on a completely new idea that sidetracks me. It’s happened before.