Updates

Looking over my list of ‘Things to Complete.’ Okay, so I’ve published the anthologies, We Dream at Twilight, Whispers from the Grave and Tiny Stories. Check.

What’s next?

Oh, attend a week-long anthology workshop in March. The goal is to write six shorts in science fiction, fantasy, and a few other genres. Writing begins this month, and it continues until we present in Las Vegas. This won’t be a meaningless exercise–paying editors will attend the event. Should be fun.

What else?

Not all of my work is short stories. I’m three chapters into a novel. Each chapter is about 2,200 words, plus or minus. (A little more on the plus side.) Yeah, that’s a lot considering that an average chapter is about 900 to 1,500 words. But the length fits the pacing of the story, so I’m not worried about it.

My goal is to write a chapter a week. It’s not always working out like that, but I’m pretty close to hitting the target. I thought I lost my path in ‘Chapter 2,’ not really understanding the primary character’s main problem. On a separate sheet of paper, I scratched out enough notes so that I now feel that I’m back on track. So continuing on, twenty more chapters in twenty weeks? That’s the plan, anyway.

I like writing this novel, but at times it’s challenging. Eve, the primary character, has an interesting problem–no, I won’t reveal the story in this post. I will tell you that she’s living in a dystopian world, so the story has to be interesting without being too depressing. This is a lesson I’ve learned while writing short stories. So maybe this book will be sort of like The Age of Miracles. And sort of not.

Anything else?

Yes. I’m working on a second novel, a fantasy. This will appear under a pen name because works under ‘M. Duda’ are known to be a little dark and Twilight Zone-ish. This book will be what genre readers expect. But if I really start to evolve this character, it could be more like The Name of the Wind.

Also working on a sci-fi. This one will be a fun read. The main character is a roguish adventurer who seeks out artifacts for bounty. Nothing original here, but I don’t think readers ever get tired of these kind of stories.