Gadzooks, I haven’t blogged for a while! In case you’re wondering what I’ve been up to…

Mostly, I can’t tell you. Mostly.

I finished a short story for an anthology that hasn’t been announced yet. I signed a contract for another project I can’t tell you about. And there are a couple of other things in the works that I won’t be able to announce for months.

But I can tell you a little about HUNTED, book six of IDC, which is what I’m working on right now! But first I’m going to back up a bit.

I finished TRAPPED in mid-March and then wrote very little for two and a half months apart from some outlining. At that point, I’d been writing pretty  much non-stop for three years; I was a wee bit fried and I was also dreadfully behind in my work for school. I needed to catch up, so I did. After school was out and I went to Phoenix Comicon over the Memorial Day weekend, I threw myself into writing TWO RAVENS AND ONE CROW, the novella coming out Sep. 4, and also a short story called “The Chapel Perilous” for an (announced) anthology called UNFETTERED coming out next year. That was June. Then I started in on HUNTED, and whoa. It’s a tough one. Things that I’ve been setting up since HOUNDED are triggering and the doo-doo in which Atticus is wading is pretty darn deep. There was a string of chapters where I was a mess and telling my laptop “I’m so sorry!” and hoping that my surviving characters would hear me. I call them The Crying Chapters. But, fearing that maybe I was having issues (I mean, more than normal), I sent them to my editor and she confirmed they are The Crying Chapters. Those are going to be difficult to edit, but I’m past them for now and moving on.

Today was a pretty cool day because something unexpected happened. An old character walked into the story and introduced a new character, and neither was in my outline. Wauggh! I’m off script! Watch out!

This is honestly an excellent development. The Hammers of God walked into HEXED like that, which allowed me to create deadly beards and make fun of extremists. Those are two of my favorite things. When you combine them you get neck beards. Why? Because neck beards are extreme and can scare people unto DEATH.

So, the old character was Leif Helgarson, who, believe it or not, was not going to appear in the book at all save for a mention in one chapter. I was glad to have him back; I missed some of the wordplay he typically engages in with Atticus. And the new character he introduces is a villain. A VILLAIN, I SAY. I will tell you one thing about him and give some clues about what he is by telling you what he is not.

1) His initials are W.D. —no relation to WD-40.
2) He isn’t a vampire, werewolf, demon, or member of the Fae. He’s not an angel. Not a human. Not a god. He’s not a Timelord, nor is he a neck beard. And before you ask, he is not a bowl of beans. Beans are often villainous, I agree, but I’m not sure they’re right for my series. I may have to face reality and accept that I will not be the first UF author to feature a bowl of beans as a villain. Several other authors are already working on it in any case, so I’m tardy to the party and will have to watch as everyone else cashes in on the latest trend. 2013 will be the Year of the Beans and I will be left out.

HUNTED is about halfway complete now and when it releases next June this blog post will make a lot more sense.  Excepting, perhaps, for that bit about the beans. If you spent a half second or so thinking that bowls of beans would be the next big thing in UF, I apologize. I was just bein’ silly. :)

Grateful to you as always for reading. Peace n’ carrots,
Kevin