My father used to have this perpetual calendar above his writing desk, so maybe there is a symbolism in this image for me. I found it and had to use it. Photo by H is for Home.
Yes, yes, yes! ROSEHEAD sequel is coming! It will be called DOGWOOD. And maybe there will be even more than one, I don't know. I'll see how that one goes, but I know you have been clamoring for more Lilith and Panther adventures, and I shall oblige.
You have been asking me now for a while about all those upcoming books and what their titles are and what they are about and when they are coming and all that jazz. So this is a post projecting (loosely, okay? loosely) my writing schedule for the next 2-3 years or so, provided no asteroids smack into our darling planet and blow it up. Or retired communists decide to blow up America. Or my laptop will explode in my face and I will be no more. Provided none of this happens, here are the books I plan to write and ship (some fairly soon).
BLUE SPARROW 2
Genre: humor, inspiration
Description: My second book of tweets, and probably the final one as I'm slowly retiring my Twitter and moving over to Ello. The text is compiled, the illustrations are done, and it's in the hands of Stuart the formatting genius. My daughter is in the process of making the cover, so it should come next month (thanks for your patience those who pre-ordered it).
Release date: May 2015
THE BADLINGS
Genre: fantasy, magical realism
Description: A novel similar in style/humor/macabreness to Rosehead: four kids get punished for not reading books by being sucked into one evil book they find at a duck pond. Sarah the editing genius is racing to finish the edits, after which it goes to Stuart for formatting, and my daughter is already working on the cover. Thank you for patiently waiting for it!
Release date: May 2015
SIREN SUICIDES
Genre: magical realism, urban fantasy
Description: Yes, my lovely editor Sarah (with the help of two readers who edited books by hand and shipped them to me, to indicate passages to keep and to cut) is done with the first book and after The Badlings will dive into the next two books to condense them all into one. It will have a new cover!
Release date: August 2015
TUBE: TRANS-URBAN BLITZ-EXPRESS
Genre: paranormal, horror
Description: Since I won the Amtrak residency, I got this idea about a killer train. And that killer train will kill Bolshoi ballerinas. And it would mush them into bloody pulp. And it would...well, I won't tell you all the things it will do. Not yet. I'm about 2/3 done with the first draft.
Release date: November 2015
JANNA
Genre: horror, thriller
Description: Okay, I don't know how much of a thriller it will be, but it will be horrific. A story about a black woman serial killer who murders rapists.
Excerpt: "I’m a bad girl. I was born a bad girl. I killed my mama. With the size of my head, I killed her, at birth. She was the only woman I killed. The rest were men. Are men. One every month. Rapists. Pedophiles. Perverts. I cut off their dicks, hang them around their necks. That’s my signature. By a thread. Black thread. Black, like me. I’m black like night. So black, I’m a little blue, almost shining. When they see me, in the night, in that moment, when they know what’s coming, they think of me as nothing, I’m so dark. Only my eye whites are white, they flash, when I roll my eyes. Makes them piss themselves. This. I like it. I like the smell of their urine, their fear, their blood. It excites me."
Release date: 2016
MARQUIS
Genre: magical realism, adventure
Description: This will be a cute book about a dog that gets born as a cat and befriends a pigeon who is a philosopher.
Excerpt: "I'm a cat, although I was supposed to be a dog, but the Universe got tired of puppy production precisely on May sixth 2012 at three twenty-two AM in the morning, so I was born a kitty. Not that I regret it."
Release date: 2016
CUPID
Genre: romance (with some explicit stuff)
Description: A retired librarian divorces her husband, the only man she'd ever slept with, after a cold 25-year-long marriage, and discovers sex for the first time. Get ready, this one will be juicy.
Excerpt: "I don't feel divorced, not really. Twenty five years is half of my life, with the word clitoris never having entered my vocabulary. Well, maybe when studying anatomy in school, but that was a long time ago."
Release date: 2016
SEAMSTRESS
Genre: fantasy, paranormal
Description: A seamstress copies clothes of other people and turns into them when she puts them on. Pretty nifty, huh? I would love to be able to do that.
Release date: 2017
DOGWOOD (sequel to ROSEHEAD)
Genre: fantasy, magical realism
Description: Lilith and Panther are back at the Bloom estate in Germany! Only now instead of a rose garden it has been turned into a whippet racing rink, fringed by tall flowering trees by the name of "dogwood." Everything is splendid until one day Ed notices something strange about those trees...
Release date: 2017
HEAD IN THE KITCHEN
Genre: horror
Description: A man leaves his head in the kitchen (he has a spare one) that spies on the inhabitants of the house—his wife and daughter who are not allowed to leave...or something. I'm not sure about this one.
Release date: 2017
HOCUS-POCUS
Genre: magical realism, adventure
Description: A little boy gets a magic set for his eighths birthday and discovers that every trick he does is real and can't be reversed.
Release date: 2018
THE TRICYCLE MONSTER
Genre: horror
Description: A little boy on a tricycle grows up into a serial killer.
Release date: 2018
DANDELION QUEEN
Genre: memoir
Description: Maybe I will write my memoir. Maybe. We shall see.
MAD TUTU WRITING
Genre: non-fiction, self-help
Description: Many of you have asked me to compile my blog posts on writing into a book, so it's on my list of books to write.
DOGS
Genre: speculative
Description: I want to write a book about a society were male and female stereotypes (as they stand now) are flipped. Men are viewed as sexual objects and are called "dogs."
STAMP COLLECTOR
Genre: magical realism, adventure
Description: A little boy collects stamps and finds a way to dive into them when affixed to a latter and travel.
Whew. My hands are tired from typing all of this up. I have five more, but they are not very well defined, so I won't put them in here. And here you have it. My writing schedule for a quite some time to keep me busy.
Onward.