Since “LANTERN” is out to beta readers and my short stories are waiting for the last round of polish before I submit them to the professional markets, I am officially moving on to the next novel: Project Xavier.
Project Xavier is a near-future science fiction noir with telepathy, institutional trust, privacy, and two former partners trying to determine whether they are hunting a conspiracy, a system, or something closer to a mind. It has alternating first-person POVs, one for the detective and one for the murderer, and a narrative structure I am extremely excited to try on the page.
I have character dossiers, a full plot outline, and enough worldbuilding underneath it that I am no longer using preparation as an excuse not to draft. I have a lot of confidence in the formal elements of this one, and I have done extensive reading of noir, detective, and even science fiction flavored versions of these to get a good feel for the genre tropes and styles. Somewhere in there, I’ll find what I want.
There is still plenty left to discover—especially voice, prose, and the exact texture of telepathic perception—but the load-bearing work is done.
Drafting starts at the beginning of August.
20K words a month and I’ll be at 100K by the end of the year, which should be plenty. Stay tuned!
