Why more than one book?

I like to have several projects on the go at all times. Sometimes I need to take time out from one project to allow my subconscious to mess around with it. Sometimes I’m too depressed to work on complicated stuff. Sometimes I just fancy a change.

Fancy being part of it?

Some of the stuff listed here may never be published, but I’d be delighted to provide interested people with work in progress for comment - if you’re interested let me know:

fiction brewing  and some of it for quite a while

Jim

Accidents happen, even to a mountaineer. You expect the odd graze or sprain. But what if you start receiving messages suggesting someone has a grudge against you?

Jim’s work as a deputy head is tough enough to handle with his own health problems, his wife is in hospital with depression, and now he needs to figure out who could possibly be after him. Is it a past student? A parent? Someone else from his past? The truth awaits a trip to the Grey Corries mountain ridge in Scotland and a chase through the mist to the summit of Ben Nevis.

I’ve been playing with this novel for some years, and it may finally be coming together. I may start it again from scratch in the next few months after a thorough brainstorm on plot details. 30,000 words written.

Star

Matt Shepherd is a sixteen year old geek who was a winner in an unusual competition. He is now on his way to join several dozen of the most brilliant teenagers in the western world at a conference in New England. He is scared. He has been assessed for Asperger’s Syndrome and failed, but there’s something not right about him; and he has a secret only his rather odd parents know about. Not even Carol must find out, and certainly not the men in the background of the conference.

I’ve written 130,000 words and like the overall feel but the plot needs a lot of tightening up, so I put this on one side while I wrote ‘Subversive Ramblings’. Still trying to sort out what needs changing. A cross between John Wyndham and Robert Heinlein.

Universe

A surreal romp through one possible universe, this will probably end up somewhere between ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and ‘Sophie’s World’.

Currently written 25,000 words, so may never get finished. I’m not good on medium level plotting. Yet.