Question State of the Author

Welp, after hitting a solid snarl where me and the Muse have had our spitting match and stopped talking to each other, I am happy to announce that I'm putting Siblings And Savages back into the queue. All three parts of it.

The next story in the Days of Our Outcasts soap opera I've inflicted upon you all does have some brand-new characters for you all to have a look at, and finally the culmination of a scene that left the readers hanging a few years ago. Hint: It involves Diamondback.

As my silly little spoilers continue I will be happy to introduce Team Awesome! No, I'm not telling you who they are, but you may find them slightly amusing.

So, for transparency, I'm about to introduce you to something I've never showed you all before: My Burn Pile.

The Burn Pile is why I got irate about people poking around the back-end on the tags. Sometimes I post Burn Pile Stuff to the other authors and I include the tags so that they're easy to reference for anyone reviewing them before release. If I kill a project I might keep it for reference, but if it's in the system and someone's snooping they might assume that it's a live project and tell people about it.

What is the Burn Pile? Basically it's any story I have written that not only has the (There is no) Canon Cabal not reviewed and approved, but I haven't gotten far enough into that I am happy with the plot, characterizations, and writing of. Ashes & Steel sat there for years. Then I scrubbed most of what I'd written and started over.

That's what the Burn Pile is, a name for the collection of miscellaneous shit that I might, at any moment, scrub with extreme prejudice for any reason. For a while, up until very recently, Siblings and Savages was in there. I never even really called it the Burn Pile, but that's basically what it is, so it's as good a name as any.

But for now? I'll give you a sneak peek at what's percolating.

Disclaimer here: This is not a promise that any of these projects will see the light of day. This is just a look at how my brain works. I may kill a story just because the writing's not coming up a quality that I like, or because I botch an interesting concept in execution.

So without further Dricking, I will share with you the current occupants in the burn pile.

"The Sheriff's Daughter." - Razorback is a good kid, but he's gone feral before, and lived for years as though he were a wild animal in the wilds around Darwin. Can he survive civilization, and the people who don't know he's not a monster when separated from everyone who knows him?

"What the Hell did I Just Watch???" - Team Awesome! has their first adventure together, a wild, untamed foray into the insanity that is...

"Reinforce: Shifter Royale" - Adam Carlyle's made a few friends, pissed off an amazon, but it's nothing he can't handle, right? Wrong. What happens when a shifter, who is arguably a potential powerhouse is face with someone who's better at it, more powerful, and has a couple years of Whateley Training in being a better shifter than Adam? What happens when the bigger dog decides to take the pup to school and put him in his place?

"Mutant Mayhem Machine" - A collaborative piece. Working with MageOhki primarily, but since this story touches on potential stuff that belongs to the Gen 2 Authors as a whole? There will be no spoilers here. It's still in the mapping/planning and approval phase to really take off. I don't know if this fits the story the other authors want to tell for their characters, so this one is arguably the most precarious. If I do it, I want to do justice to the characters created by the others.

"Adoration" - Adore is an experimental character for me, one that I'm seeing if I can write a viscerally compelling character without deep-diving into the Monster Squad Motif of the Outcasts. Can I write a character who is as good and enjoyable to read without the penchant for tearing things apart? We shall see. This one may take the longest, because I am both unused to writing this kind of story, and I feel a deep-seated need to keep the story classy, even if it does involve a seeming-succubus who sets everyone around her on edge. Progress is slow, and I can't promise Adore will end up as more than a tragic background character.

"The Lost and Their Loved Ones" - Johann Richter loves his daughter, but he isn't a good man. As he delves into the nightmare world the Carter Twins escaped from, he has to wonder... Did the events believed to happen to Sandra actually occur, or was the whole tale and invention of shared trauma? And he must face his own beliefs. Cutting down the deformed is a mercy, surely. So why can't he bring himself to end the misery perpetuated upon his children? This is another experimental story, and I'm not yet sure this tale will have a happy ending.


So there you have a look at what's on my plate. As I said, none of this is far enough along that I'm comfortable calling it a story, much less putting it out as likely to go into Whateley Canon and continuity. Me and the Muse still have to find a way to cooperate before any of this even dreams of reaching you guys.

So the state of the Author is... Working.

Update time!

The Sherriff's Daughter has entered full story status in my brain and has been renamed: The Death of Khloe Aldridge and is in full swing

The follow up story to this is now called The Eldest Children of Atlantis and is also in full swing

Finally there is a bit I think you crazies will like: The Gates of the Garden