Doug BrotherofCats Dandridge

I’m still in the early stages of this thing.  Hopefully it will grow and become successful.  I believe that perseverance is the key.  And if it doesn’t grow, then I am prepared to do it anyway, just for the fun of it.   Even through the heartbreaks and the frustration, it is fun.  I have control of so much of the process, and so much of my success or failure depends on me.  The one thing I don’t have control of is time.  None of us do.  A truck can come out of nowhere and take all the planned future time away.  Believe me, I know about those trucks, having been hit by one in the past.  Napoleon was credited with the quote “ask me for anything but time.”  This was during a battle, and I think that one of his Marshals had asked him for more time to get some troops into place.  But Napoleon knew that time was a precious commodity, and one he didn’t control.

Several days ago I was reading a blog from an award winning writer who said she didn’t know what her next project was going to be.  She didn’t have a clue.  I had to laugh at that.  I have too damn many possible future projects, more than I can handle right now.  On this post I will list most of them.  I am not really afraid that someone will steal my ideas.  They are much more developed than indicated by the blurbs here.  I will do a better job with them than someone who has to resort to stealing ideas.  I’m not mentioning the books that are already out.  There are links to them on this blog site.  So, here are the ideas in all their glory.

First to start off with has already been done in a first or second draft status:

The Chronicles of Connor McMenamin: Book 1, The Eirish Flight.   This one is already done and polished to a high luster.  Just went through trying to get an agent with no success.  Set in a gunpowder era with magic in which the powers of the continent try unsuccessfully to stem an alien invasion.  Problem is, if I put this out then I have to finish the planned trilogy, which is something I don’t have time for right now.

Daemon:  A steam punk fantasy, a world in which magic is killing the world, and Daemon Corp has found a solution.  Kidnap beings from another dimension and use their life force to power the magical net.  But there are consequences in the form of a force that is killing their employees.  Done and getting ready to send it out to an agent.  One of the 2010 five, the five novels I completed that year.

Refuge: The Arrival.  sitting at 205K words, this fantasy about millions of Earth people transported to a world of magic during a nuclear war on Earth will be split into two books and put on the net.  Also have about 15K words into book three, Refuge: The Legions.  Also many ideas for spin offs.  One of 2010 five.

Exodus:  A science fiction series that will be added to, then split much like Refuge.  178K words.  Also have 20K words into book 3.  Many ideas for spin offs.  Humanity escapes the alien Empire that first wanted to conquer them, then destroy them.  They establish themselves in another region of the Galaxy and over a thousand years established themselves as a dominant power.  Now the hunters have found them, and it’s war on a Galactic scale.  One of 2010 five.

Afterlife:  Finished to second draft stage.  A corporation offers mind uploads to dying people who don’t have faith in the religious afterlife.  Organized religions don’t like it, and they convince governments to not like it either.  So the people in the virtual world must use their creative genius to battle the real world.  One of the 2010 five.

Aura.  Triplets are born in a world where the Aura is all.  Those with powerful auras become mages, those with weak to normal auras become their subjects, and those with no aura are killed as abominations that cannot be controlled.  One of the triplets has a powerful aura, and is chosen by a God against her will to become his avatar when she reaches age.  One has a weak aura, and becomes first a slave, then a gladiator.  The third has no aura, and is rescued by a brotherhood and trained to kill mages.  The two brothers must save their sister from a fate much worse than death, the obliteration of her soul.  One of 2010 five and in the finished second draft stage.

Soulless:  Finished in 2012 in first draft stage,  A kind hearted scientist is disassembled by nanotech and reassembled in another location in a demonstration of teleportation for space travel.  Something doesn’t come through, and the scientist becomes a total psychopath who remakes himself multiple times into a superman, and uses the biomass of his victims to make replicants of himself in his plan to conquer the world.

Tau Ceti:  Working title and first draft finished in 2012.  My anti-Independence Day, set in the 29th century.  Aliens come to destroy the Earth in the name of their death Gods.  The Earth knows they are coming and prepares as best they can, which isn’t good enough.  But Earth is superior in some tech, and they must find a way to use it to defeat the aliens.

Theocracy:  Current WIP at the 62K word stage.  Set in the far future of the Exodus Universe (Or possibly The Deep Dark Well), set in a supersystem of eight suns in orbit around a black hole, with scores of terraformed worlds, and a fallen civilization.  One man on a Renaissance stage world holds the secret to ancient tech.  Two powers in the local systems want it, a Republic and a Theocracy.  Favorite character is the Republic agent’s quantumly entangled cat who is both spy and assassin.

A Different Kind of Cat:  Urban Fantasy at the 30K stage about a PI who can take the form of any cat.  Something is lose in Birmingham and the PI has to navigate the worlds of Vampires and Shapeshifters in order to find the Demon that is killing the fine people of Alabama.

Uncle Joe’s War:  25K stage.  Hitler is overthrown in 1939, and in 1943 a German Alliance must stand against the scourge of the Red Army.

Untitled:  People send their personalities back in time to take over the powers that be in Nazi Germany and changed world history.  Other go back as well, but because of Quantum uncertainties end up in the brains of secondary leaders of the Allies.  About 10K words in.

The Witch King:  Set in the Refuge world about year 1,000, a warlord arises on the steppes and threatens to overrun the Imperium of Free Nations.  15 K words in.

Untitled:  Evil rises in a castle that has been unintentionally built over a site of dark rites, in lands newly conquered by the Empire.  Set in the Refuge world.  15K stage.

Untitled:  Five airships go on an expedition from the Empire across the great steppes in order to recover a legendary cache of God Weapons.  But they also awaken guardians placed there to keep the weapons of good from the hands of those who might use them against evil.

To Well And Back:  Sequel to The Deep Dark Well, in which Pandora Latham explores the supersystem while trying to help the primitive civilizations therein.  And Watcher continues to battle the Xenophobes who wish to take the station for their own.

Untitled idea:  Alien flora and fauna are accidentally introduced into either Montana or Florida (Montana would take some research, Florida I could do in my sleep).  Want it to be a more intelligent development of an alien ecology clashing with our own.  Alien life forms would be from a heavy gravity world and two billion years more advanced evolutionarily than our.  Characters and basic plot developed.

Two Exodus ideas that would be produced back to back.  1) An alien civ is discovered (mid 21t century level).  The people possess an ability that could aid the Empire in their current war of survival.  The Empire tries to save what they can, with what they can spare in the middle of a war.  But the aliens are not wholly trusting.  2) Bolthole is established as a forge system.  But unfortunately the machine intelligences ejected from the Empire centuries before see this as an intrusion on their territory.

Untitled:  Series of short stories about the war between the Union and Confederacy along the Florida cattle drives.  And the supernatural horror that both sides awaken in the swamps and forests of the wilderness state.

Untitled:  Series of short stories set in 1930s Russia, based on a biography I read about Joseph Stalin.  Evil awakens in Russia, now that the Communists have removed the protectors from the land.  And commissars run into horrors beyond that of their system.

Now I probably came up with some more ideas while writing this.  Hopefully I will be granted the time to complete this list and more,  But it is not guaranteed.