A Sneak Peek At My Desk

   The Weather Casters, Book Two: A Hole in the Sea, sequel to A Hole in the Ice. We pick up where we left off, on the lonely ice-shelves of the arctic seas, where the melting ice traps Parsifal, Balder, and company. It isn’t long before the allure of the mermaids pulls them into the other-worldly Sea, another dimension of adventure, if you will…where they meet new characters and more deadly creatures.

   Dioktes is an old sailor who endlessly wanders the uncharted waves of the Sea. He rescues Parsifal and Balder but can they really trust him? Fou is a poor woman who lost her mind in the nightmares of the tossing waves, but she knows every path through the island of flotsam that makes up the pseudo-civilization known as the Port.

   Vassilissa enslaves a pirate captain and enlists the fallen Weather Casters, Davy and Wilma Jones, both of whom have been transformed into hideous monsters, to help her take over the Sea and destroy the Weather Casters.

   Trying to protect The Compass from all those who would misuse It, Parsifal starts to wonder if it means too much to him, perhaps more than his loyal friend Balder. He finds himself at a loss for what to do and where to turn. He must rely on himself, but can he trust himself?

   Coming Soon.

   The tentative date is sometime in October 2015

   As for the zombie fighting:

   I’m 20,000+ words into the first draft of a zombie comedy—a ZomCom—if you will. With a little romance.

   It’s about two cousins, Lyra, bent on world domination, and Alice, who would rather not be involved with anything, particularly marriage to an odious Earl of advanced age. There’s a spy and a necromantic artist as well. And a vegetative Duke. And zombies, of course.

    I had this idea about a girl and her father who has the ability to influence other people’s minds. The necromantic artist featured as well. It was kind of a steampunk Regency.

   I had also written a fragment about a Regency girl who stumbles across a young man and some secret passages in her house, neither of which were supposed to be there, but I didn’t know where to go with it. Then I got addicted to Plants vs. Zombies and I drew a little cartoon inspired by the cute zombies from that game.

   Except that he likes java, not brains. Anyway, Little Bird saw this cartoon and said something about hoping it meant I had an Edwardian zombie story cooking up. I thought, hey! And before long I had those two ideas cobbled together with zombies thrown in the mix to…um, stitch it together.

   Not sure how long this book will take to finish. I’m almost a third through the rough draft, but it’ll take a while to revise, I think. I hope this humor thing works out. The droll tone is hard to maintain sometimes, and I have to be careful not to overdo it. The fun thing is, it’s meant to be cliché. The zombies have a very limited vocabulary: uh, urr, mm, and braaaaains! are their main words.

Anyway, I’m excited about both projects, and I’ll probably have more. I’m considering writing a story about Sir Oaktree and his adventures in Africa, as well.

   And one of these days I'm going to try oil paints.

   So stay tuned! Thanks for dropping by and don't forget to check out the Little Bird Bookstore for all kinds of amazing reads!