This is not me figuring out which novel to write next.

I posted awhile ago about how I do not have to figure out which novel to write next right now. (Which I don't. Right?) And zwol wanted to know what the options were -- with the caveat, of course, that discussing the options didn't mean that I had to pick one. So. Options I might get to soon:

There is, first off, Midnight Sun Rising. This one is first because I have 40K of it written. It's in the same world as Thermionic Night and Copper Mountain (née Sampo), and it features a few of the same characters and magical objects, albeit significantly aged (it's set about 40 years after Cu Mt, without significant anti-aging technology). Plot-wise, however, it should stand alone. I like it. I like it a lot. I also like the idea of a related but separately salable work. But I'm a little wary of it, because TN/Cu Mt did such a number on me that related works are scary.

See also The Winter Wars, the YA prequel to TN. Again, stand-alone. Complete plot arc all on its own. And it's YA, so it's easier to hold the whole thing in my head without having to go have a lie-down. But it's related to those two, and so: scary. But cool. But scary. But cool. Also scary because it will be a YA fantasy dealing with an essentially modern war, and I haven't got a lot of models for that. If you can think of a YA fantasy that deals directly with the fighting of a 20th century war, please tell me so I can let that author metaphorically hold my hand.

The True Tale of Carter Hall. This is the novel that precedes the hockey fantasy stories I've been writing. It will almost certainly be pure joy to write when it's time to write it.

The thing I've been calling the Aesir noir novel. Same world as Dwarf's Blood Mead and The Mark of the Sea Serpent, but several hundred years later. The blonde who walks into the detective's office in Chapter One is Sigyn, Loki's wife. Ragnarok either follows or doesn't -- which is the case would be a spoiler.

Eleven Words for Home, an Oort Cloud sort of weird social structures book with perfumers and first-generation relativistic effect problems.

Deportees, space opera that makes me sing Woody Guthrie and Buddy Holly (and maybe a little Louis Armstrong) and read Dumas and books about the labor movement in the early 20th century in the US.

The YA with the dome accident for the Europan colonists and some genetic engineering issues.

You Big Jerk, Bronson Alcott -- no more the actual title than What We Did to Piss Off the Continent was, but it's YA historical SF, set in the mid-19th century US (not nearly far enough west to be Old West -- utopian socialists, not gunslingers or cattle-rustlers).

And Zodiac House, which is a chapter book (grade school age readers) that's partly finished and may qualify as an experiment in whether I can write for that age at all, or at this point, or neither.


There are others I will be trying not to write (she said, very carefully not looking at The Alder-Wood Statue). But those are the frontrunners at the moment; and I can't tell you what'll pop into my head (either new or from a half-formed idea I already have) by the time I actually do need to figure out what book I'm writing next.

One of the interesting things that's happened here is that I am conscious of having discarded some full-fledged, outlined novel ideas more or less permanently. I'm not deleting the notes and outlines I have for them; I'm not fond of the expression, "You never know," because sometimes you do, but this time I don't. But they have moved distinctly to the back of my brain as something I ever expect to write. I keep coming up with more novels to write, and some of the old novel ideas will just never acquire sufficient shiny to get written. And that's okay; it's good, even. elisem shared something Mike once told her about unfinished projects being nurse logs in the artist's forest ecosystem, and that was such a kind, useful, and true thing to hear. But in the time since I've heard it -- and she only said this within the last few months, if I recall correctly -- I've acquired better recognition of which of my old ideas are going to stay ideas and not ever become Real Live Books.

Comments of the, "Ooh, write that!" or the, "Hmm, tell me more about this thing," varieties are a great deal more welcome than comments of the, "Ew, don't write that!" variety. markgritter, for example, wants me to write the Aesir noir novel next. And if I know my mom, she wants The Alder-Wood Statue, to which I say, "Lalalala I CAN'T HEAR YOU, Alder-Wood Statue, lalalala!" But they both know this is not a democracy. As long as you know that, too, we'll be fine.

ETA: The notification for shana's comment came with the GoogleAd, "Expose your book!" Which my brain completed with, "To the wolves on a barren hillside," which tells you either something about my character or something about my mood. Or possibly both.