Works in Progress

Enlightenment

Chronicles from the Long Apocalypse: Book Three

Percent Complete

Progress Report: July 15, 2019

This is probably the last book in the series… It might have a fourth one, but if I do write another after this, it will jump way ahead in time after society is put back together… just so I can break it again one last time.

Book Three will see the girls and their dad reunited at last… I don’t know the how’s and the why’s yet, but I do know that Jen IS actual pregnant and will be the first berserker to carry a child to term.

Today, I’m thinking about titles – so far I like “Enlightenment” but I am also looking into non Judeo-Christian equivalence of something like “Benevolence” or “Absolution.”

Danse Macabre

Percent Complete

55%

Progress Report: August 15, 2016

I need to clean my palate before I can get back into the long apocalypse. Writing Entropy is going to be a refreshing break from berserkers… Or so I hope.

This story was originally written back in my hollywood days as a screenplay that never found its way into production. But I love the story so much that when I was thinking about what to do between CLA books, I just couldn’t let these characters get left wasting away in some dusty desk drawer.

Entropy is the story of two brothers on their own after the tragic death of their parents. The older brother – Hugh – is an extremely intelligent college boy, or at least he was until schizophrenia suddenly poked its ugly head into his life and forced him to drop out. And then, just as he was getting himself back on his mental feet – so to speak – his parents died in a freak car accident and he now finds himself solely responsible for his younger brother, Ashton.

Hugh must keep himself from losing his grip on what is real what is not, as he struggles with the reality of his new responsibilities. But unfortunately for these brothers and everybody around them, the dark forces that are haunting Hugh this time are NOT just in his head.

I love the concept of an unreliable narrator. One of my favorite films is Alfonso Cuaron’s adaptation of Great Expectations, simply because of the line: “I’m not going to tell the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.” Too bad Cuaron himself hates the film so much! But what can you do? Sometimes even the artists themselves are not the ones who can appreciate the value of their own work.

Anyway, in this book Hugh can’t trust what he sees and neither should the reader…

Progress Report: December 8, 2016

Progress Report: July 21, 2020

Progress Report: February 10, 2021

Two more chapters to go in the first draft… already working on the cover design.

Check it out:

Fukusawa Deviations (a novella)

Percent Complete

45%

Progress Report: February 10, 2021

As I write Danse Macabre, I am realizing I will need another “reader magnet” for novels outside of the Long Apocalypse.

Enter Fukusawa Deviations – half speculative fiction romance and half steampunk horror.

The story goes like this:

Two chemists are working to understand their observation that the individual atoms making up molecules do not just randomingly bond with each other, but instead always seem to try to bond with the same individual atoms they were originally connected to (if they can) – as if they somehow “mate for life.”

Of course our chemists are in a messy on and off again relationship. So, when one of them, Ken Fukusawa, finally proposes to the other, Grace Fitzgerald, he discovers that she has already accepted the proposal of her current boyfriend and their boss.

Ken knows very well that Grace is just settling for security and that she doesn’t have anywhere near the depth of feeling for the boyfriend as she does for him, but he can’t convince her to believe in his love for her after so many breakups.

Frustrated and angry, he storms off and immediately gets into a horrible motorcycle accident that leaves him in a coma and probably paralyzed as well.

Grace’s devotion to him while he is hospitalized erodes away her relationship with her fiance, while Ken finds himself locked away inside his own damaged mind in a surreal steampunk nightmare where his fight to recover has become an actualized fight to the death against splinters of his own personality.

I’m excited about it. I have a secret love for steampunk worlds and so far this has been a lot of fun to work on…