Sorry if I’ve been mostly absent from blogging and social media lately. Except for a music review a couple of weeks ago and the weekly sampling in my personal blog, "Being An Only Elgon", of a sci-fi story I wrote about 11 years ago, called COLONIAL AUTHORITY, I’ve been mostly absent while still being "being a writer". You see, I just finished another book!
For the past month of so I’ve been on a crash plan, crafting HOMER UNDERBY, the sequel to BECOMING THUPERMAN. BT was released a little over a year ago. HU (BT2) is due out in Fall 2018, just in time for Back-to-School. The main characters are a pair of precocious eight-year-olds, a boy and a girl, who are inseparable friends. It is set in the summer of 1988 in a mythical version of Normal, IL where the duo is in the process of enjoying summer vacation, playing Little League baseball and discovering that they have emerging superpowers. It may sound like a kid’s book but it’s not. It is kid friendly, though.
As is the case with all my books, there is a lot going on in HOMER UNDERBY, like some mysteries and general strangeness involving Gatekeepers, Fairies and assorted people with Wiccan and wolfcat heritages. It also plugs in nicely with FRIED WINDOWS and the grand universe of WOLFCATS (1st book due out late Summer 2018).
I started building the alternate universe in my books back when I was still in high school. I continued development throughout college, my service in the Air Force and well into my adult life as a father and a retail manager. Writing was mostly a hobby then, but it gradually grew into an obsession.
I'm excited about HOMER UNDERBY. Jessica Reino, the same editor who worked with me on BECOMING THUPERMAN, has consented to work on this project, and I couldn’t be happier. She is an author as well as a fine editor. She served as a key sounding board for some of the ideas that evolved into the Homer Underby storyline. We also mapped out a framework for a third book while we were getting BT ready for its debut. I expect we’ll revisit the third book planning in the process of bringing HOMER UNDERBY to the world. I plan to begin writing BT3 in the next week or so. However, I also plan to begin writing the sequel to FRIED WINDOWS, titled CASTLES OF NINJA BREAD.
HOMER UNDERBY is the first book I've written since moving into my current place. For some reason, the inaugural book in any residence is a challenge. Oddly, I started writing this one about a year ago while critter-sitting my son's dogs. BT was just released, and I was planning an April weekend in Chicago to promote BT and FW and meet a half dozen of my fellow Pandamoon authors who were attending C2E2. Also had a chance to see my youngest daughter, Sarah, who lives in Illinois. I hadn’t seen her for years!
Other than that, there was a year’s worth of excuses and some other things that got in the way, such as my other jobs that pay bills. And I may have, for the first time ever, experienced some of what other authors call writer's block. It’s hard getting comfortable with new surroundings and people. That is necessary for a writer to write.
The best news, though, is now I can get back to initial planning for two new novels while, in the background, I’m reading other authors’ books and catch up on my To Be Read pile. First one up is CRIMSON MOON by Christine Gabriel. It's a sequel to her CRIMSON FOREST and she also experienced a lot of the same things I did in the process of writing, getting sidetracked with other work and the interruption of everyday life.