Decisions, Decisions
knowing which project comes next
Because I don’t feel like doing a deep-dive into anything I’m currently reading, listening to, watching, or getting overly upset over on the regular…Time enough to circle back on what I started this Substack for — analyzing my own writing process!
As previously noted, my big goal for early 2026 was to finish a new draft of my Midwestern gothic horror, The Sky Screams Tuesday, and pitch it to 3 agents at the Let’s Just Write! Conference here in Chicago back in June. While I did succeed at finishing the draft, cleaning it up, and pitching the manuscript to 3 agents, I’m currently sitting at 2 [polite] rejections thus far. I also ended up querying the manuscript to three other agents online who just happened to align with my project for this vision, but I’m not falling down the same rabbit hole with this work like I did The Sea of Rapture last year. If something good happens, you’ll hear about it. If you hear nothing, assume this novel died the same sad death as the last.
For maybe the first time in 20-some-odd years of writing, I don’t explicitly have my next project picked out just yet. I have a few lovely friends who have offered to read The Sky Screams Tuesday (hello out there!) and I’ll be more than happy to give it another go in the wake of their feedback, but until then, I desperately NEED to get my mind out of Weilog Bluffs and into a wholly new space that lets me build something from the ground up, and then destroy it unceremoniously.
Permit me, dear reader (I fucking hate novels written in that tone), to wax poetic about my current top prospects, and help me whittle the list down.
DEATH MARKET
Probably the idea I’m currently most attached to;
the story of a gay man and his husband crossing the border into Canada on a quest for revenge after a family annihilator takes away everything from them.
Told from the POV of the husband, it’s about the couple’s descent into unfettered wrath after one man seemingly loses his family, only to then discover his brother and two in-laws are precariously missing. The husband, who has a troubled past with dark sites on the internet, is able to track down the 3 missing men across Canada, revealing an insidious conspiracy involving infidelity, religious cults, generative AI, and death-market gambling sites.
This one being the most fresh, it still needs a proper outline before I actually start the first draft.
Suicidal Thoughts of Bisexual Bodybuilders
Obviously the most autobiographical thing imaginable…I wrote the first chapter to this one a year ago and then quickly abandoned it because the POV didn’t really make much sense in practice.
A story told over the course of multiple relationships a la Dennis Cooper, it’s about a bodybuilder who works as a personal trainer at a 24 hour gym. At nights, when the rest of the staff are gone, he hooks up with multiple people in the locker room, all the while feeling something primordial changing deep within him and threatening to boil to the surface.
With a Mouthful of Diamonds
An unabashed ripoff of William Gibson stories, it’s about the trashiest scam artist in a cyberpunk dystopian nightmare of a future who rips off the unsuspecting people of both the real world and the digital world, up until the day that he gets caught by a clever hacker who holds his digital avatar hostage until he agrees to become the trojan horse that will infect the world’s largest datacenter.
Self explanatory. Outline is virtually (ha) done. Needs a first draft.
Bloodbinder
More of a comic/graphic novel situation, but if I were to ever create a superhero, it would be a riff off the idea of bloodbending from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
On the day they try to commit suicide in the tub, a non-binary teenager is visited by a fabulous ancient demon who offers them the ability to ‘see’ into the history and sensations written inside someone’s blood. Over time, they learn to control and manipulate the blood of those around them, leading to both disastrous and miraculous consequences.
Needs an outline.
Into the Frying Pan
I fucking hate that title. I’ll think of a better one eventually.
Anywho, after auditioning for Next Level Chef last year, I got the idea to write a story about someone on a cooking show who is HOPELESSLY out of their depth.
The gist of this novel would be that the main character is constantly on the verge of being eliminated every episode, but manages to sabotage the dishes of his competitors — ultimately revealing that they’re using some kind of chaos magic to unleash pandemonium across the set.
Needs…a lot. It’s still in the “VAGUE CONCEPTS” folder.
Thunderclap Sonata
Witnessing a legendary feud between two huge rappers that reignites the hip-hop scene the world over, an aging rock band conspires with a batch of newcomers to fake an online beef in the hopes of mimicking the rappers’ success, only for the conflict to spill over into real life and get all too personal far too quickly.
Needs everything still.
City for the Ghoulish
Definitely just me working out my struggles with grief.
A woman who lost her son in a tragic accident struggles to make ends meet, despite the constant condolences from friends, family, and neighbors that bring no comfort. Written in the form of letters to her deceased child, it details the grotesque offers she receives from lawyers and corporations to try to ease her pain but ultimately only makes it worse.
Then the script flips and the second half of the novel are letters written by the son.
Needs an outline.
Deviants
I finished the first draft a year or two ago and was pretty happy with the final product, but ultimately got some solid feedback pointing out a few major flaws in the tone and pacing. I really wanna take another crack at this because it just felt so strong in my heart.
Part time truck driver, part time drag queen, Buddy Gustavson/Moxie Dawn is on a frivolous tour across the United States. But when a politically charged lunatic nearly ends their life, they’re forced to reconsider their priorities and ultimately choose to bring drag to the least suspecting towns across America in the hopes of changing minds.
Wrath Incarnate
I’ve bashed my head on so many tables trying to figure out the best approach to this. I’ve written more outlines than I can count. It really SHOULD be a found footage horror film, if I had the ability and resources to make such a thing…But as a novel, there’s something about the medium that’s holding this one back.
A high profile media journalist in New York is called back to their small hometown after the disappearance of a local teenager. What starts as a trivial series of interviews across town quickly descends into Lynchian terror as an unworldly truth erupts between the families that held the town together.
A Legacy of Thunder
I could probably knock this one out as a short story next month if I REALLY wanted to…
Long after humanity has wiped itself out, the next sentient species to dominate the planet begins excavation of an ancient crater. While they’ve crafted a perfect society of politeness and peace, one young creature is left feeling disturbed when a relic from beneath the crater starts emitting a strange frequency that only they can hear.
Tickled Pink
Y’all already read about this one. I just had to figure out a way to creatively exorcise my hatred for a particular federal agency that has wreaked havoc on the city I live in and love. I wrote the first half two separate times and then gave up both times because I couldn’t get around how depressed it made me.
Told from the perspective of a federal agent, it’s about the last days of the Occupation in Chicago, where the agency has been installed as a purging task force, designed to track, detain, and imprison all invasive ‘aliens’ deemed dangerous by the administration. But once the agent is captured by the radical Rainbow Coalition and injected with the toxic WMV serum, he starts to realize the agency itself might be the cause of all the turmoil.
Maw
I wrote this one back in 2019 and really need to reread it ASAP. It seems like it got a lot of love from the beta readers back then and probably feels even more palpable nowadays.
A man wakes up on an island and cannot remember his name or his past. He is a guest in a small house to a family of 4 who treat him like a servant. He learns to behave and he learns to helps, but knows something is wrong. Each time he’s severely injured, he’s placed on a mystical slab and is healed overnight, but remembers little about the day before. The cycle repeats over and over, all the while small fragments from his past lives slowly coalesce into a hideous tapestry of abuse, gaslighting, and manipulation that lead him to an inarguable, mortifying conclusion.
Sanctuary in the Silver Sleep
I want this novel to work. I want it to work so badly. It’s on par with The Sea of Rapture for the novel I think has the most “haha! look at what I managed to pull off!” chest-beating moment of pride upon completion.
Unfortunately, it’s way too long (close to 119,000 words) and almost certainly won’t be anyone’s cup of tea. It would need a full re-write and severe cuts.
After the second Civil War, the A.I. takeover, and severe climate catastrophes, America is in shambles. Big cities are under complete control of autonomous corporations and the rest has collapsed into post-apocalyptic bedlam.
One of the last human cab drivers is given orders by a powerful A.I. to deliver a special package from a warehouse in New York City to a mansion in San Diego, no questions asked. When the driver refuses, the A.I. abducts her and commandeers her taxi, forcing her to deliver the package against her will and with the A.I. now installed in her radio. What ensues is a cross-country fever dream of burning mountainsides, warring farmtowns, drowning deserts, and a series of primitive cults that threaten to tear the cab apart — all told through the combative arguments and philosophical musings of a bitter cab driver and a pragmatic A.I.
And then there’s the batch of novels that I considered done two, three, four times over, set in stone and never to be seen again.
All Available Platforms is my version of Network, as told by a Youtuber that becomes a sensation overnight and immediately discovers the true cost of online fandom. It feels even more prescient now but I have no idea how to revamp it into something that might attract eyes.
Dragonflies in Lavender works on such a campy, bloodbath-horror level, but I can admit it needs a totally new structure. We all love a vampire love story, but my version can’t seem to decide which vampires are good, which are bad, and what’s scary versus what’s sexy.
Evisceration could genuinely be such a shining star in my oeuvre if I would just figure out how to write like a literary genius and not a commercial airport-thriller author. (lol) Truly though, the idea of a cross-generational story set in a country of prison systems being overthrown by three key jailbreaks across an entire century has such potential, but I always seem to flub the prose.
And then there’s The Heretics of Hell series…My oldest love. My most fickle love. Every time I go back and read the first 4 novels I completed (I know, I know) I find myself so tickled by the complexity of the characters and the hookiness of the writing — and then annoyed at how convoluted the plot feels and how contrived some of the twists are. Maybe those are just the trappings of any good dark fantasy novel, but it feels like a real hindrance for this 6-parter that I’ll never go back and finish.
I thought writing these out would help me choose where to go next, but it actually just kinda gave me some insight in how to pitch any novel in 2 sentences of less — which is definitely useful!
When it comes to picking the next project, I think the heart wants what the heart wants, and I just need to go with what feels right. Yes, logically, Wrath Incarnate and With a Mouthful of Diamonds have been ready and waiting for YEARS, but I can’t deny the fact that DEATH MARKET is becoming more and more solidified in my mind with each passing day. I can practically write the entire first chapter in my head at this point.
And so it goes, I shall work on DEATH MARKET over the next few weeks and report back with the results.
The middling, meddlesome, mind-numbing results.
Same as it ever was!