Hi,
The previous post, “What I’m Working On,” was about my plans for finishing and publishing my novella, Flood and Fire, and its sequel, The Jagged Man.
If I can somehow manage to complete those two books and get them ready for publication this year, I will start working on Murder Between Friends, the first book in what I hope will be the Deep Springs mystery series. Fortunately, it’s already partly written. It takes place in a small Texas town that I’m very familiar with, so it won’t require any additional research or plotting. After that I will probably begin planning/plotting the second book in the series. I already have a basic idea for it. My brain has been telling me that the second book will be called The Blue Note Dancehall is Dead and Gone (but my brain is often delusional). 😊
Murder Between Friends is a murder mystery (I know, surprise!) set in the Central Texas town of Deep Springs. Less than 20,000 people, it’s small enough that word spreads quickly when anything unusual happens (like a murder in an old Quonset hut in Camp Crockett, a closed-down army base from World War II).
Brett Locklin, a reporter from Houston, grew up in Deep Springs, and happens to be in town because his mom was injured in a car wreck. The murdered man was someone he knew in high school, so he decides to do some investigating (Maybe, he thinks, there’s a story there).
Everyone he speaks to, hints that they know who the murderer probably is, but are too afraid to give Brett a name. To complicate matters, the widow of the murdered man is Brett’s high school girlfriend, and she seems eager to rekindle their relationship. There are lots of twists and turns, and the deeper Brett gets into things the more danger he finds himself in.
This book is farther along than any of the other several novels I have already started (and I have an idea file for a few more), but this is one I need to finish.
After the first Deep Springs book is done, the next project will probably be The Merle and Arthur Chronicles, a series based on the King Arthur myths, but set in a future version of the United States. It will probably be at least five books, and will require a lot of research and plotting before I even start writing it.
While I’m researching Merle and Arthur, I might also put together an anthology of a number of my finished plays, short stories, poems, and some other goodies. A tentative title is A Mixed Bag, but the Deep Springs Mysteries come first (after Jagged Man, of course).
The next post is about the progress (or lack thereof) I’m having with my novella, Flood and Fire, and why it’s taking so long.
See you then.
Michael
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