Introducing ... Project: REAPER

2021 has been a challenging year for creative writing. The ideas keep coming, of course, but the act of connecting brain-to-fingers to put those numerous ideas on "paper" has been a struggle. I've been able to chip away at several projects. I worked through about 100 pages of my WIP "Phoenix Hill," the first 30 pages of my screenplay-to-novel project "Ruthless" and the premise and initial plan for the next Event short story collection ... The Event: Wreckage. Through all that, I plotted and wrote the first 10k words of the next dinosaur story, "Project: REAPER."

I'm accustomed to getting an idea and taking off like a rocket. Writing 15 or 20 pages in one sitting ... taking enormous chunks out of the story. With this one, though, it was uphill sledding. The entire story was plotted, in a general sense, and the first chapter basically wrote itself. Chapter 2 took a bit of elbow grease and then things just sort of stalled. Finally, I decided that I needed to finish this story before moving on to others, so I dusted off an old strategy from years ago ... "Just write something every day." The project was a success ....

Some days I wrote a couple hundred words and some days I wrote several thousand. But I truly wrote something each and every day. I sent a "heads-up" email to the publisher Severed Press on October 4th, that I was 10,500 words into a forthcoming story. I started my "write each day" mantra close to a week later. On October 29th, I sent them the completed first draft at 38,789 words.

Project: REAPER is the third science fiction story I've written in a series that started with "Objekt 221" and continued in "Hell Island." It addressed a lot of loose ends (Hell Island essentially ended with a "To Be Continued ...") and bringing up a few new questions. It's a fun story with some great set pieces. And between you and me ... the next story will features Epsilon Complex pretty heavily ;-)

More details to come the closer it gets to publication. Feel free to read O221 and Hell Island again to refresh yourself with the corporate intrigue, the military onslaught and the genetically modified dinosaurs!