Projects

I am a horrible writer. I tend to work on something, set it aside, work on something else, return to the first project, re-do it from scratch and so forth. Over the past few years my actual output of finished projects has decreased dramatically thanks to this, but the products themselves are -- arguably -- the better for it.

Currently I am working on two a few stories, some stalled and some not.

Boy & Fox (aka Falling Toward The Sky)

As it says on the tin, this is a fairy tale story about a Boy and a Fox and their various friends and enemies encountered in a world that isn't ours. It's about a king and love and memory, the kind of person Boy was before he lost his memories and what happens if you realize that it might be best to never remember the person you used to be.

It has changed a lot since I began writing it, to the point that the current version of the plot bears almost no resemblance to the first beyond the existence of Boy, Mister Fox and Bess. As the style of the story differs markedly from my usual one it takes a longer time to write and I find I can only write it in short sections at a time so those waiting for a finished version may be waiting some time, alas.


The Book of Going Forth by Night

The first book in an honest-to-gods series called Rites of Exorcism. Modern urban fantasy/horror about an exorcist with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder whose attempt to deal with what he assumes is a fake haunting in a small northern US mill town goes horribly wrong.

My name is Aiden Nel. If you're lucky you won't have heard of me. If you're not, you probably found my webpage and need an exorcist. Most people don't believe in ghosts, but I don't hold that against them: they're made to forget the wider world that lurks outside in the dark. I come in when too much happens for people to dismiss it, and they often pay me a nice sum to keep the dead quiet.

Sheffield Bay should have been just another routine call. The Klein family run the mill town and the owner's son was convinced he was hearing ghosts in their home: it should have been a quick exorcism. Easy in, easy out, payment strictly in cash. But there's a magician playing with terrible magics and an ancient spirit stalking the family to uphold a terrible pact lost to history. If they fall it could well cripple the entire town.

All I have on my side are a friend who is trying not to become a monster and a blogger who wants to write my life story. It may end sooner than she'd like.

 Ghoulish Series

A set of possibly 4 novels involving a ghoul, magic and what kind of life one has if you eat corpses for  snack food. I currently have 1 draft of the first novel done (need to revise it) and the second is going to be revised and fixed after that is done, with the third novel in the series sitting in my head and waiting to come out. It is kind-of YA in my head though that probably means it isn't really YA at all. Because me.

Magician Stories

These are a series of stories about an unnamed magician in the modern world and tend to be about magic and regret. I first began them in 2007, revised a couple this year, and then went nuts adding more stories to the sequence, including flash-fiction bits. 

There is also a series (well, two/three stories) from 2008 involving a girl turned into a magician and her pet troll. I may revise/fix those as well for inclusion in the current series but am not sure at present.