Now What?

Now that I've begun submitting my query letter and story to literary agents, the question is what to do now?  Writer creativity cannot live on editing alone, so I need to decide on my next project.

The first, obvious, project to consider would be a sequel to Legacy Soldier:  Hybrids Deployed.  While this does follow my personal favorite genre - military science fiction, it also has some disadvantages.  First, military science fiction is not exactly a fast-growing area.  In fact, as many experts have pointed out in articles and blogs, it's on the decline.  A second issue is that if the goal is to get published, should I devote my time to continuing a series when the first hasn't been published?

Fortunately, I have many voices in my head.  But the problem is figuring out which has the most marketable idea.  I've had online discussions about this on a few forums, and typically get the same response - just write something.  To me, it's not that simple.  Most of the advice I've gotten has been purely from a writer's perspective and it seemed to be about continuing the art.  It doesn't matter what I write as long as I write.  But the ultimate goal is to publish, right?  While writing is an art form, publishing is a business. 

So what are the top choices?  I have an epic fantasy that I shelved for working on Legacy Soldier.  The fantasy is started, but being epic fantasy, it's very complicated - world building and plot details.  I might have more luck with something a bit less complicated.  That and, like military sci-fi, epic fantasy doesn't seem to be a growth market for rookies.

I have two voices in my head that are probably twins.  Seriously.  They're "pitching" an urban fantasy and urban science fiction murder/mystery story.  The fantasy protagonist is a college student who's mother is a criminal investigator/profiler.  The science fiction protagonist is the profiler.  Naturally the other detail is that the student has an ability that she must learn to use (been using it for years, but never understood it) helping her mother with an investigation.  The profiler in the science fiction version is introduced to a new technology that she must learn to fully utilize.  I don't have a name for the fantasy story, but the sci-fi version would be called TIA (an acronym, not a name).  One thing to consider here is that I could open this with the hint fiction I posted from the December blog chain.  It seemed well received.

The last one is, and I don't believe I came up with this one, an urban fantasy/alternate reality story that has the US in a civil war - humans vs. werewolves.  The wolves have basically taken over the east coast, so I call this one Beast Coast.

That's just a few ideas.  I wish I could work on them all concurrently, but my son would graduate from college by the time I finish anything!  Like most people, I have a regular job to pay the bills, a family, I take and teach Tae Kwon Do, and when time allows, I write.  Right now, there's so little free time with the holidays and work that I'm not likely to make much progress until February.  On the bright side, Feb 18 - 20 is the TrekTrax convention here in Atlanta and I'm already signed up for the writer's workshop.  Maybe I'll have a chance to field some of my concepts by the pros and get an idea of how to prioritize.

So, I'll dabble where I can and...


Write On