I’ve just posted the last episode of Gu, so if you were waiting until it was finished to start reading, the first episode is here.
I have several candidates for a next project. I thought about running a poll here, but I may just start them all and let people vote with their feed subscriptions (or continue working on the one I feel like working on at the time). This is one nice thing about not having a publishing contract.
Speaking of which, I keep going back and forth over whether to submit City of Masks to a conventional publisher or not. Sales of the self-published book have been disappointing, considering the number of subscribers I’ve had over at Podiobooks and the positive comments I’ve been getting. Not that I’m in it for the money (and not that you get much from a conventional publisher unless you’re in the top tier anyway), but wider distribution would possibly be a good thing.
If you have strong opinions one way or the other, please post a comment here. Thanks.
Getting back to future projects, I have three main candidates at the moment. In no particular order:
- Up the Line, a science fiction novel in the same setting as Gu (which I’m perhaps inevitably thinking of as the Guniverse). This is the one with the White Star Order chaplain at the bottom of the space elevator and the United Nations inspector up in orbit, and is largely about the people they meet – refugees, migrants, opportunists and other everyday quirky characters. It doesn’t focus on engineering in any way at all.
- A currently untitled Young Adult novel (meaning that the protagonists are young adults; this seems to be what makes a novel YA). The premise is that these YAs are orphans, they have strange abilities, and they don’t know why, or why a sinister man in a brown coat is pursuing them. Since I don’t know exactly why yet either, we can all find out together.
- An also untitled, and possibly more “commercial”, novel in a low-magic fantasy setting. It may be very low magic indeed, almost deniable magic, in fact. Premise: Insecure female thief infiltrates castle in search of loot, gets caught up in plot of sinister fanatic, finds herself forcibly married to the rightful lord of the castle as part of this plot, which involves having her bear the lord a controllable heir so that said lord can be killed off and the fanatic can control the supposed power site in the castle. She’s not having this, and he’s a decent man (if rather scholarly) who refuses to rape her despite threats of torture, so they escape together into the wilderness, pursued by, um, pursuers of some sort. Personal growth and, eventually, romance ensue, followed by justice against the would-be usurper.
I suppose I’m in the market for title suggestions, as well, aren’t I?
It’s funny. I can come up with great titles for which the stories just won’t come, and vice versa, but seldom both at once. I mean to say, “Gu”?
Mike Reeves-McMillan lives in Auckland, New Zealand, the setting of his Auckland Allies contemporary urban fantasy series; and also in his head, where the weather is more reliable, and there are a lot more wizards. He also writes the Gryphon Clerks series (steampunk/magepunk), the Hand of the Trickster series (sword-and-sorcery heist capers), and short stories which have appeared in venues such as Compelling Science Fiction and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.
