Where You'll Find Me Now: an update on projects
It's been almost six months since the release of my debut novel, Renewal, and despite moving from urban Oregon to rural Washington State in the same time period, things have been particularly productive.
Renewal is up on Amazon in Kindle and hardcopy formats, and though things were slow-going at the start, I've seen a steady incline in readership as the months pass. Most rewarding is seeing the Amazon reviews readers leave. After a couple decades writing in a void, it's nice to hear from people what they think about the work, or at least that's how I currently feel based on the very pleasant reviews I've gotten thus far; ask me how I feel about it when someone finally rips into me.
On the horizon, my second novel, Heritage, is now in its final stages and should hopefully be in print by as soon as this fall or early winter. Heritage is set in Charlotte, North Carolina in the fall of 1995 and centers around four people: Sutter Thomas, a man who as a child was abducted and held for 8 years he can’t remember and who now works as a public relations agent for other missing boys; Patrick Lucas, the 8 year-old being held in the boiler room of a derelict castle in Heritage USA, an abandoned theme park built by Jim and Tammy Faye Baker; Dale Hartman, the detoxing heroin junkie hiding from his dealer/employer in an abandoned motel also on theme park grounds; and Patrick’s unknown abductor who, if suggestive newspaper clippings sent anonymously to Sutter are to be believed, just might be the same man who abducted Sutter 30 years earlier. These four lives collide in horrifying and unexpected ways as the investigation into Patrick’s abduction – and the media circus that goes along with it – gets into full swing. Though there are no immediate suspects, the similarities to Sutter’s own abduction are pointing in an uncomfortable direction, and as this already-fragile man tries to rectify his unknown past with this turbulent present, missing fragments come to light in ways that transform not only the man, but the case, and the lives of everyone involved. I'm pretty excited about this one, it went places I didn't think it could. And if you thought Renewal was dark, you're going to find Heritage positively Stygian.
I read once somewhere that Anthony Trollope would start working on a new novel the same day he finished the previous manuscript. While I'm not quite that self-flagellating, I do like to keep busy, and so in that spirit, I'm just about ready to start writing the first draft of my third novel, tentatively entitled Eustace Saves. The characters have been fleshed out and the plot has been wrung from my imagination and smoothed, cleaned, and sharpened. I'm going to keep tight-lipped on this one for now but to say its another thriller set in North Carolina, this time in the early 1980s, and it deals with grandmothers and grandsons, faith and devotion, underpasses, and of course, the evil men do. We'll see how it goes.
And finally, as if all this wasn't enough, there's the screenplay I wrote entitled A Cold Peace, developed with my good friend, filmmaker, activist, and social-media-maven Geoff Todd. It's a female-driven revenge thriller loosely based on the 1956 Budd Boetticher/Burt Kennedy western, Seven Men From Now. Set in the world of contemporary train hoppers, ACP is the story of Mara, a victim of vicious string of crimes who drops out of civilization to crisscross the northern part of the country in search of the seven men who forever changed her life. Think Emperor of the North meets I Spit on Your Grave. The script is finished and honestly, it's unlike anything I've ever come up with, because I never could have come up with it on my own. I'd never collaborated on a script before this one, and I gotta say, I enjoyed having another mind to bounce ideas off of. Geoff and I are cautiously weighing our options at present, and with any luck, someday something will come of this dark little idea. Fingers crossed.
So that's it, the gamut of my creative projects at the moment. As always, thanks for reading.
