#project summaries

[tree-of-life-and-death]

I've done an intro post before but I'm on mobile and I don't feel like digging it up, besides, starting all the way over seems fitting for a fresh start. I'm going to try to actually post about my writing now, so here goes.

My name is Gale, I'm an enby who prefers they/them pronouns, and I've been brute-forcing my way into a writing habit for the last four years. I've completed very early rough drafts for three novels, edited a second draft for one of those, and written two short stories (both oddly focused around reincarnation). At last count I had twenty-seven works in progress, which tells you a lot about my sporadic writing style I think.

I tend to focus on one main project while bouncing between the rest as I need mental breaks, so here are some little summaries of my current works along with their primary inspiration.

First off, I watched the show Altered Carbon and went on to read the book. My thoughts about immortality kind of started to crystallize and I had a really intense dream which was primarily a video game style boss fight. Over the course of the next three days I wrote a short story that was almost more of an outline for "the first immortal's early reincarnations" but I kept coming back to the idea of a medieval-era apocalypse. That's what I'm writing right now.

MC is Osanne, inventor of zombies, but she had nothing to do with the apocalypse, okay. When mysterious stranger Pers (Perce?) arrives in her ravine, she'll have to decide whether to risk it all to help him save the world, or leave him behind for the sake of her crew. Working title: Shambling copse.

My secondary project is another fully plotted idea pretty much stealing the classic historical romance novel idea of "young woman must marry for the benefit of her family, but oh no here comes extremely handsome man to teach her the value of love instead" only it's set in a high fantasy world, MC is a trans man, and the ridiculous love interest is a 300-year-old playboy prince with hidden depths. Working title: Heart of Aion.

I'm taking a break from a third project involving a super-slick superspy who kidnaps another agent ostensibly because the technology in him will benefit her home country but really because she didn't like how his country was treating him. I'm not sure how to make the plot make sense but it is really fun and I might write some scenes for it here or there. Working title: Femme Fatale.

Fourth project is an ongoing attempt at writing my very own super detailed high fantasy world, with one series focused around a princess who wants to be king and plenty of history and depth to write any other characters I'm feeling, like this little thief boy who's doing his best, a minor prince from a much smaller country, or even the ancestor that turned half the continent into a desert in order to seize control. I know how I want the third novel in the main series to go and I know what has to happen to set that up, but I'm still struggling anyway. Working series title: Eden's Throne.

Thank you to anybody that read this far! Hopefully I'll actually manage to post about these, wish me luck 🌻💛🌻

[aschenink]

*slides into your inbox* hello there! I'm getting very out of the loop on projects! What's currently your main(s) wips? And what about the characters??

I wrote this last night with a lot of coffee in my body so I was able to give a somewhat comprehensive answer for once in my life!

My main WIP right now is a second draft of the novel Give My Love to the Ocean (it’s getting a new title soon, probably). It’s a contemporary/literary novel with elements of legal thrillers and dark romance incorporated, in which professional idiot and sometimes criminal defense lawyer León San Andres has a passionate affair with Vicente Rivera, a corporate executive for an international boat manufacturing company--only to discover that Vicente is also the heir to an international crime syndicate, the Hagonoy Cartel. From there his relationship with Vicente escalates and León becomes the cartel’s main defense lawyer in the States, where ultraviolent turf wars have broken out along the west coast. León struggles with anxiety and his own traumas, but he’s also a sassy, ambitious, self-destructive moron who likes cheap beer, tequila, quiet nights in, and literally any event that involves free food. Vicente is... painfully confident, and painfully intense. He’s got an insane amount of drive, terrible insomnia, and only drinks expensive wine. Other characters include Seven, Vicente’s childhood best friend and right-hand man (charismatic, extroverted, a romantic, a Fool); Ana, León’s best friend and fiancee [it’s... a marriage of convenience thing] (PsychD student, wine connoisseur, confident, heart of gold); Violeta, Seven’s fiancee (ex-yakuza, aloof, intelligent); and Benjie, one of León’s clients and a distributor for the Hagonoy Cartel (young, terrified, weasel-like).

I’m also working on a novella, Layers of Hell, which is a cyberpunk retelling of Hades & Persephone. In a future where the pantheon of Old Gods abandoned the world during the War, the survivors of the War live in city-towers over what was once the city of Seattle. Persephone lives in the city-tower of Demeter, working through deep simulations to research ways to develop agriculture in the destroyed world. Hades is a Venter, a rare and secretive class permitted to move between city-towers, maintaining the ventilation systems that filter out the radioactive air from Outside. Their relationship, an illicit thing on its own, gives way to even more illegal things--like figuring out that what they’ve each been told about the Outside doesn’t line up, and neither of them knows the truth.

And lastly I’m working on a contemporary fantasy project, Graycrest Memorial Park, which is a loosely connected series of short stories about Annihila, a witch and the graveyard keeper of Graycrest Memorial Park. In a reality where ghosts regularly wander back into the world of the living, Annihila has her hands full with organizing the dead and their games of tarot poker... and the oldest ghosts that suggest she isn’t fully human... and disposing of the bodies the Mafia brings her... and beating back the terrible, hungry thing that lives in the woods behind the graveyard. Annihila is independent and sometimes seems aloof, but she cares deeply. The only other major character so far is Elias, the love interest, who died when he was 19 in a military training accident [he was an Army soldier]. Elias is a soft guy--the youngest of four siblings, a bundle of anxiety, a gentle soul, an absolute weapon at tarot poker. 

@honeybeewriter since you asked the other night and i couldn’t!! put things into proper words and managed to forget my own projects which isn’t a good sign