The Future

Future? More like daydreams

I am the kind of guy who is always talking about the big picture. As such, I have a lot of ideas. Plenty of them. An abundance of them. More of them than I can reasonably handle.

Below is a graphic I made that has a lot of hopes and dreams on it.

Will any of this come to pass? I hope so. It is good to have a plan.

So let’s break these things down.

Wardens of Deyncourt: This is the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2023. It is a sword and sorcery novel, featuring my character Gamel. A sort of origin, if you like. Gamel first appeared in my short story, The Voice in the Mist, which has been submitted to a literary magazine. With any luck, it will be published. The Wardens of Deyncourt takes place about twenty years before the Voice in the mist, and sets the stage for an older Gamel to wander the world, going on adventures.

The Last Warden: a follow up to Wardens of Deyncourt. This Novel will be a fix up novel of all of Gamel’s adventures. I plan to serialize it on Kindle Vella or some similar platform before I assemble it and publish it.

The Known World of Aterra: AH! Probably the thing I have wanted to write most. The very first sword and sorcery story I ever wrote was a novella called The Prisoner of Ruhak Tower. I decided to work on my skills as a writer and rewrite it, and I have an entire series of novellas planned around it. They feature a character called Trellen, who suffers from a curse and is constantly looking for a way to lift it. His pursuit leads him all over the known world, and to adventure. I cannot wait to share this with others. I plan on putting multiple of these out, one every few months.

Sword and Sorcery shorts: I just love Sword and Sorcery, and I find it is a great way to keep in practice. Domingo Garavito will be serving this purpose.

Mr. Risk: My loving tribute to The Shadow, Dick Tracy, James Bond, and Indiana Jones. Risk is a dapper man from a mysterious background. He has made an arrangement with the police commissioner to do what the police cannot; chiefly, confront the criminal element without red tape as a vigilante of sorts. I plan a fix up novel featuring Mr. Risk, and already have three of his stories penned, over on Amazon.

Flash fiction: Really, my flash fiction is for genre exploration, but I will be posting it all for free.

Wing Knights: I eventually want to try my hand at writing a graphic novel. Wing Knights is a concept I cooked up years ago, featuring a retro futuristic society. It would set in an art deco city, but not just any city. The place is like Cloud City from Star Wars. Art Deco skyscrapers floating in a perpetual sunset sky. Everyone would travel around the city using personal propeller planes, and they would be protected by a mixture of Air force and marines, called the wing knights. They are at war with the Zepplin Empire. I envision this being mostly for kids, maybe an manga inspired art style that harkens back to the 1930’s. It’s definitely a vision I want to see come to fruition.

Dominic out of Time: Think the Crow mixed with Elric of Melnibone. A trippy cosmic story about a man named Dominic who is pulled into our world to right wrongs. I am still working out the concept for this one, but I am thinking NaNoWriMo 24 might be a good fit for it.

Youtube, blog, Merch: I would like to see my brand expand, but that is a tall order.

The point is, much of this is probably just a dream, but I want to make them realities. Right now, I am feeling out options for my novel, Wardens of Deyncourt. Cover design, editing, marketing. Just trying to figure out how to pay for it all. With things being the way they are, this alone is a tall order.

But I wrote it, and I will see it to the bloody end.

As Howard Andrew Jones says, “If you cannot find a way, make a way.”