At The End of The Day I Burst Into Flames is finished (and under contract with Journalstone/Bizarro Pulp Press) and though it must still be ushered into the second stage of its life, I am now faced with developing one of many existing manuscripts to a point of completion:

1. a follow-up collection of short stories, one which has all ready eclipsed the length of Now That We’re Alone. Like the last collection, there’s a bit of everything included, but the overall theme seems to be . . . body horror.
2. a novella (approaching novel-length) crime fiction/kaiju monster mash up.
3. an apocalyptic sci-fi, the third (and final) entry into my unofficial “Cyclical Narrative” trilogy that began with Necrosaurus Rex and At The End of The Day . . .
4. a full-length mystery about an amateur sleuth in the throes of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

There are other stories and various projects beyond these, but I feel like that quartet is the closest to the finish line.

Gotta be honest, I think the short story collection may end up wrapping first, if only because the stories themselves are (obviously, yes) shorter than the self-contained books. And it is the project closest to the necessary word count. Last I checked, the included stories were north of 40K, in total. I have several pieces to add, but there is the possibility that I may cut one or two of the stories. In the end, I expect this collection to be somewhere around 60K words, give or take.

No title, yet. No plans for interior illustrations, though that ended up being such a fun aspect of assembling Now That We’re Alone that I am inclined to think I’ll look into the possibility. At this point, it’s up in the air, and I won’t dwell on it too much, at least, not until I know more about At The End of The Day . . . and what its release looks like.

But, after that, I do not know. The other three manuscripts are all pretty tempting. The crime/kaiju book has been coming together quick, and it’s fun to work on. A bit Jim Thompson, a bit World War Z, and more than a fair shake of Toho-style destruction. I had a title but hated it, so back to the drawing board (leaning towards Big Damn Monster, though).

The sci-fi thing has been the biggest pain in the ass, and I’ve been working on the manuscript for a long time. I really like the story though–and the characters–so I’ll be seeing this one through to the bitter end. I mean, come hell or high water, this book will be finished either this year or next. Once upon a time, the book was called LaLaLand, but then that god damn movie came out and it ruined the title for me.

The last manuscript is a full-blown, audience-friendly mystery. I’ve worked on it, stepped away from it, and have recently come back to it. The book is well beyond 60K, and heading towards 90-100K in all likelihood. This one means a lot to me, and my hope is that it’ll be a title I can shop to representation. I’ve had some really good eyes on this work, both Randall Silvis and Victoria Thompson were incredibly helpful in guiding this project through its early days. Now, it’s a matter of dragging it over the finish line.

. . .

Elsewhere, projects at Rooster Republic are coming along at a clip. We’ve got the last of our first series of RoosterVision titles “in the can” and the book ought to be live any day now. We’ve got titles from John Bruni and Michael Allen Rose coming out over the next month or so. And, of course, we are staying on top of the rest of the year’s releases: some novellas, a new book of horror poetry inspired by HH Holmes, a couple short story collections, an illustrated screenplay, poetry from Christoph Paul, and at least one New Kink entry.

Nodacoy’s first video game, Heckpoint, has entered general release since having graduated from Steam’s Early Access platform. The game has been well received by players and has moved quite a few units. At last count, several thousand, so word is getting out about our venture into video game production. We’ve got at least two more games in active development, and there is a pretty high probability that both will be available before the end of 2018. In fact, one of them may be coming out as early as June!

And work on our feature-film project keeps chugging along. We’ve started picking up crew members (got a 1st AD) and we may have some cast locked down. We’re still looking at shooting in September, give or take. A finalized script is being worked on, now, and ought to start finding its way to interested parties before the end of the month. It’s going to be a helluva lot of work, but anything worth it usually is.

And that, as they say, is that.