Since then I have finished and published my first full length novel, Sherpa Holmes. To date she has earned 3 reviews, all 5 stars. Quoting the most recent, she wrote: One of those books where you are sorry that it ends...
And if you're waiting for an excuse to get your own Kindle copy, it will be on sale for only 99 cents starting April 16, 2014!
I've been working on what thus far is a short story called Things that Go Bump in the Night. My wife told me I needed to quit with the short stories, since they don't make me any money. Well, this one definitely won't, since I am planning on releasing it as a free single when it publishes.
Why? she wanted to know. Well, I spent almost 3 years researching, writing, and rewriting Sherpa Holmes. I was steeped in the language, history, and heritage of the Wild West, as well as that of the Navajo Indians (along with several other tribes) during that entire time. I had my characters with me at all times, even to the point of having conversations with them as I sat in my truck. (My coworkers still think I'm nuts.) (No, belay that. They're positive I'm nuts.)
So when it came time to move on to the next novel, I was still enmeshed in Sherpa's time frame and region. My cultures that I was now writing about kept sounding the same as those in Sherpa's time. So I needed something to cleanse my mental palate, as it were. Thus, Things became my mental cracker.
Where do I go from here? Finish Things, trot her off to my Alpha readers, then rewrite, back to the Alphas, rewrite again, then off to my editors. Will I begin to work on something else within that time frame? I hope so. Sherpa Holmes was fun, and I have begun to flesh out Sherpa II, but it is time to play with some different characters. I may even go with a totally different genre. I've been working in the fantasy genre for so long, I believe it's time to go with some military scifi.
Who knows? It all boils down to, "What if?"
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