Tart's Plate

I've somehow have ended up over-filling my plate, as usual, so I thought I'd share...

CONFLUENCE: this is the completed work I am shopping around. I am STILL waiting on ten responses—four weeks tomorrow. Some agents say two to four weeks, some say four to six... guess it's time to see which are which and send kind questions on status, though I will give a few extra days to account for this being the end of summer and a typical vacation time.

I have a new PLAN for CONFLUENCE though... if I haven't found an agent by the end of November (one more round of tennish, methinks), I intend to get it REALLY under 150K (instead of exaggerated to only 150K) and enter the Amazon contest next winter. Why? Because this query process sucks the life out of me and I feel like three months is about what I can give to it without moving on. CONFLUENCE may just be a work I need to shop around after another success because of its length.

TEEN SERIES: This was a bizarre brain child about a geeky group of middle school girls who, in an attempt to cope, begin to refer to the various cliques and their behaviors in monster terms, and to develop a (purely imaginary) set of super-powers to cope with them. In each of five books however, the kids (all girls at first, but a boy joins them in book 2) have to use said superpowers (or the real life strength that inspired them) to cope with real world issues.

I have done a lot of character development and written four chapters centered on the first three girls becoming friends, but it is indefinitely on hold while I work on the OTHER two (keep reading).

MURDER MYSTERY: this was a back-up project—something I felt able to write even in absence of jolts of inspiration, and is coming along (on chapter 8 of maybe 24), though not with as much passion or enthusiasm as my other works. I suspect it is time for its simmering, fermenting period, because I like the idea, but am sort of at a loss on execution.  I don't want it to feel too forced.

It is about a young woman who comes to spend 'her last summer of freedom' before starting a post-doctoral fellowship intended to lead to a professor-track position. She is to stay with her childhood friend 'in the lap of luxery', as her friend is from a very wealthy family. She arrives, only to find her friend has been brutally killed in a random act of violence. The family asks her to stay to help them cope, and Nikki begins to suspect the violence wasn't so random after all...

SPY TRILOGY: Meet my current passion. This (like CONFLUENCE, oddly) was a great idea, eventually joined by what I thought was a separate great idea (two, two, two books in one!). But in this case, I think I really have three solid stories, separate enough to stand alone, but tied together by this 'spy thing'.

I've written seven chapters of the first novel (five in the last week)--I'm calling it LEGACY at the moment, and have finally worked out a semi-detailed outline for the rest of it (that old hammering out of villains thing). The first novel is from the PoV of eight-year-old Peter (who witnesses his father's murder in chapter one and goes into hiding with his brother and sister), and thirteen-year-old Athena, whose mother tries to prostitute her in exchange for drugs in chapter two, so she runs away from home. The action is in Portland, Oregon, the only city I probably know well enough to 'live on the streets', so to speak, and I am THRILLED to be there. It is probably why all these Athena chapters have practically spilled onto the page.

I figure if I neglect all my other pieces, job and family, I can be done by Thanksgiving.

The next two are working under the titles COINCIDENCE, and CONSPIRACY for now.  I love one word titles... COINCIDENCE has one chapter written, but the broad conspiracy underlying all three is coming together at last!

So I'm curious if I'm insane to have so many balls in the air, or if this is normal for writers. I'm also curious if any of these in progress sound interesting enough to 'buy' so to speak, though I know I would in reality need more solid hooks written to really test that... Anyway... that's my progress report...