With Irma battering the United States, from Puerto Rico to Tennessee, I found it difficult to find much to write about it.  It’s kind of hard to discuss the nuances of character development or neat exercise tidbits I’ve been exploring when some people are struggling with life and livelihood.  Still, I wanted to write something, so I thought a quick project update might be in order.

 

RocKaiju

My third novel with Caffeine & Ink, RocKaiju remains in development.  We’re at the copyediting stage and things are moving slowly, but well.  I am pushing to have RocKaiju available for Anime USA this December (more on that in a second), but that will involve hitting multiple subsequent benchmarks that are, shall I say, ambitious.  I think it is doable and my publisher does as well, so here’s to hoping.

Rhest for the Wicked 2

I’ve gotten some tweets and emails about if or when there might be a follow-up to Rhest for the Wicked.  A manuscript has already been completed and accepted by my publisher (the working title is Rhest of the Time).  Unfortunately, it is in the que behind RocKaiju so we don’t currently have a projection when it will be available.  I’m pushing for this summer, but we’ll have to see.  Currently, I am finishing up writing Rhest for the Wicked 3, so the issue of the manuscripts being completed isn’t the delaying factor.

 

Other Novels

I’m currently working on bringing out some unaffiliated novels this winter as well.  With the advice of quite a few friends in the industry, I am going to try my hand at direct publishing (slightly different from Print-on-Demand and/or self-publishing).  The book ready to go will be separate from RocKaiju or Rhest, but I am hopeful that it will be well-received.  It’s a superhero novel, but one with a more nerdy bent.

Yes, more nerdy than a superhero novel already is.

 

Short stories

The short stories will continue as they have, with updates going up on the first Friday of every month.  I feel like it’s gotten into a good groove and people generally seem to be responding well to the stories.  This is where a lot of my more random tales get presented, as well as stand-alone tales like all the Rhest stories.

Currently, I am toying around with releasing some anthology series, but I’m still figuring that out and it isn’t a priority for me at the moment.  We’ll see.

Some people have asked after the Playgrounds, Arcades, and Other Places Not of this Universe short stories, as well as the Knights vs the KKK short that went live last week.  Will Crossworld and/or Red Moon Rising return?  The short answer is yes.  The long answer is…maybe?

Crossworld is definitely on the slate to be re-released.  What I consider my flagship novel series, I want to see it in print and, more importantly, to finish the damn story.  As those who have seen me at conventions have probably heard, Crossworld was intended to be a five-book series (six, if you count Queendom as separate books).  Books four and five have never seen print and I want to remedy that.  I don’t currently know in what form or in what distribution these stories would find their release, but Crossworld is coming back.

Red Moon Rising?  That’s a bit trickier.  Red Moon Rising belonged to a massive continuity which included APT Responders, Neo-Romance, Deadman, Epi, and so many of my other stories.  To rerelease RMR would be a Herculean undertaking, if for no other reason than because so many of the stories would need to be rewritten (Neo-Romance did NOT age well).  If you recall, when I relaunched this site, I started a relaunch of Red Moon Rising.  Regrettably, I did so prematurely and in the process of writing the series, I was confronted with the magnitude of the undertaking.

I still plan to tackle a rewrite and rerelease of Red Moon Rising, along with the rest of the series.  Like Crossworld, it is near and dear to my heart and, just as importantly, it has never been completed.  There was a lot farther to go after Self-Alignment and Epitaph for a Memory, but financial/professional troubles back in 2009 killed the momentum.  Like Crossworld, I don’t know in what form or format the series will see its return, but I have every intention for it to return.

 

Other Projects

There have been little hints and whispers of a new project I am working on.  Said project is still on-course for its January release, with a preview taking place at MAGFest this January.  I have high hopes for it and I think you will enjoy it.

This connects to Red Moon Rising and the entire serial continuity in that development of this new project is what has delayed RMR from seeing more effort to get off the ground.  Once this new super-secret project is released and has sufficient momentum, RMR will almost certainly go into development.  That, however, is a ways off and I don’t want to make any promises just yet.

 

Conventions

I am currently slated at three conventions for the winter/early spring: Anime USA in December, MAGFest in January, and Katsucon/JCI in February.  All three conventions are confirmed but the panels and schedule have not been approved so I don’t want to make a formal announcement (a la change the banner on here).  I am currently looking at AUSA to be the release party for RocKaiju, MAGFest to the be the big reveal for the next project, and for Katsucon to be the big blowout for the winter con schedule.

I am trying to do a few more conventions each year, and trying to spread them out more as well.  Given that work limits a bit my ability to do convention after convention, I still enjoy connecting with crowds and speaking at panels, so it is something I want to give a little more attention to.  I also would love to broaden my convention scope.  I used to attend conventions all around the eastern US, but recently, I’ve centralized on the Virginia/North Carolina circuit.  I’d love to get back out to Chicago, Atlanta, and maybe even farther west (I’ve been promising fans in Utah, for example, that I’d make it to a convention out there).  If you know a con looking for guests, let them know, let me know, or heck, write us both.

 

Convention Panels

I am developing some new panels for the aforementioned conventions above.  Not much is set in stone yet, so there’s not much to announce.  I have several controversial panels that I have growing interest in, but I have yet to have them accepted by any conventions (and understandably so).  Conventions are meant to be fun affairs and celebrations.  More serious, heavy topics need to be approached (and scheduled) with great care.

One panel I can talk about is the Top Ten Episodes of Transformers.  The plan had been to review Generation 1 (the original 1984 cartoon) through the current series (Robots in Disguise, Combiner Wars, etc).  I am currently finishing up Transformers Energon, which I can objectively say is the worst Transformers series I have seen (thus far).  I didn’t get the chance to watch the Unicron Trilogy when it first aired, but I heard that it was on par with the 2001 Robots in Disguise.  That is not true.  The Unicron Trilogy is MUCH worse, but Energon is so bad, it is harmful.  Not an exaggeration.  The amount of victim-blaming and abuse that goes around in this show is genuinely unsettling.  I thought the Japanese trilogy was bad, but sheesh.  Unless Cybertron (the third series in the Unicron Trilogy) is vastly superior, it looks like the dearth of additions to the list will continue.  Anybody who missed these series and has contemplated going back to see if they are worth anything, let me go ahead and save you the time: they aren’t.  If anything, they’ll wound your love of the franchise.

 

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So yeah.  That was that.  A little random, but it seemed like the best option given the circumstances.  If you are reading this and you’re dealing with or suffering from the effects of the hurricanes, please hang in there and be safe.  Hopefully support is on its way.