Hidden in Plain Sight Series Plans

I’m three chapters away from finishing the first draft of Carrying Light, after which I am going to put it in a dark drawer (figuratively) for three months or more before I look at it again. To be sure, I don’t need a final copy for at least two years. I have two books that would get published ahead of it, Reclaiming the Balance (hopefully Jan. 1, 2025) and The Avatar of the Maker (hopefully Jan. 1, 2026). I also have one book that would be published after it, Whose Hearts are Mountains (January 1, 2028 if all works well). What will influence the publication dates is my cover artist, because I trust her vision on the books better than anyone else’s (she’s my niece).

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The next project is going to be a final edit of Reclaiming the Balance. I’m still on the fence about publishing that one. It’s a different novel about the collective known as Barn Swallows’ Dance. It centers on a relationship between a human with a vengeful Archetype ex-boyfriend and a potential, unique partner. The conflict is in her relationship and in the collective trying to prevent her kidnapping. And in the dichotomy between the collective’s progressive attitudes and their very real prejudice. There’s action, kidnapping, a battle, and an attack. I just hope it’s not too “brainy”.

Publishing the Hidden in Plain Sight pieces (all the above-named) is nerve-wracking; I have a lot more invested in those than I do the Christmas romances. The Kringle Chronicles series is fluffy and fun. The Hidden in Plain Sight series is more serious (with glimmers of humor; I can’t go without that) and sometimes even dark. It’s where I ask about the possibilities ahead.

I will publish them eventually, because what’s the good of asking about the possibilities ahead if nobody reads them?

Managing a Book Universe

Several of my books (two published, one nearly ready to publish, two needing a good go-over, one currently being written — that many already?) exist in the Hidden in Plain Sight universe — a world just like the one we’re living in, except with preternatural and virtually immortal beings and their half-human offspring. The stories are just as much (if not more) about how the beings deal with what they call Earthside.

The series is very character-driven, with one extended family of Archetypes (the immortals) and Nephilim (the half-humans) prominent in the plots. There are also several humans featured prominently. The books occur over a timeline of 20 years. As a result, I have to manage events in several characters’ lives.

For example, there was the Baby Boom. At one point, Nephilim were sterile, then their Maker decided they weren’t. (There is a reason, but the book hasn’t been written yet.) As many of them were in relationships and accustomed to not using birth control, there were babies. So yesterday I was going to write a story about four characters in Chicago going on a walk through the powder keg of a city pre-collapse. Three were Nephilim, one human, and all have strong personalities so it was going to be fun. Until I realized: Wait, Allan and Celestine have a kid. And later, wait, one of those two is the father to twins. And the original idea collapsed, because I didn’t see these parents taking the kids out for a field trip on volatile streets. Nor did I see them leaving the kids with babysitters while there were riots on corners nearby. I don’t know how to write the story now.

This happens all the time. Are Batarel and Ty in Chicago or at Barn Swallows’ Dance¹ right now? (Barn Swallows’ Dance, ever since they completed their field trip.) How do I keep Josh from being held hostage with the English Department during the siege of Illinois? (He has a vision and stays home from work that day. I knew a guy who survived 9/11 because he didn’t feel like going to work that day.) Just where is Hard Promises located? (Cook County IL sold off a lot of its forest preserve property, and the collective’s founders grabbed Beaubien Woods.)

It’s hard to take notes on these twists and turns because I can’t predict what I’ll need for the future. So I search through the previous books (thank goodness Scrivener has a pretty robust search engine) and find the details I need.

I’m sure this will keep happening. When does Barn Swallows’ Dance first connect with Hearts are Mountains?

^1: Barn Swallows Dance, Hard Promises, and Hearts are Mountains are all agricultural collectives. They have as residents a mix of humans, Archetypes, and Nephilim.

I need ideas!

I made 50k (50 editing hours) for Camp NaNo yesterday, and I’m almost done editing Reclaiming the Balance, which is in part a parable about how “woke” people can sometimes get caught being prejudicial of a new situation. It’s also a story about a love affair between a sculptor and a beautiful, truly androgynous being who was “born yesterday” as an adult. I guess it’s also a story about how our pasts cripple us in the present.

I feel a need for more ideas. Short stories this time, because I have enough novels, or so I’ve been told. My idea of stories, though, are mystical, mythical, and at times provocative.

I need some good, weird dreams as material to write. That’s how I’ve gotten my best novels. I need something new to write stories about — most of my short stories are about the world around Barn Swallows’ Dance (the fictitious ecocollective that keeps many secrets); one takes place in the Kringle world. I need to write some standalones to submit to journals and other outfits.

What I need is some time to think. I should have some of that this summer.

Editing into the Future

On my second editing pass through Whose Hearts are Mountains, I realize the story reads better than I thought.

My first edit is for word use, and I mostly eliminate as many of the passive verbs — have, had, has, was, were — with some fixing of awkward sentences as I see them. This gives me at best a choppy feel for the story.

My second edit is a reading edit, where I read to hear the sentences in my head and make sense of them. The book sounds good in my head.

Whose Hearts are Mountains isn’t even the next book I’m sending to developmental edit. I’ll send Apocalypse, which is the merciless edited version of three novels, first. But I have good feelings about Whose Hearts are Mountains that I didn’t expect I would have.

I still have to start writing a new novel soon. The only novel I have left to edit is Reclaiming the Balance, and that one has some necessary stylistic divergence (use of gender neutral pronouns for an intersex character) that I’m afraid will get in the way of its success.

I’m still wondering what I will write next. I have a few leads but do not feel passionate about any of them, mostly because they’re sequels to things already written but not yet accepted. Perhaps I’m looking for a new idea.

Pronouns

I dusted off a manuscript that I had written a couple years ago which is in line for developmental edit. The name of the novel is Reclaiming the Balance, and one of the main characters is Amarel, who is balanced on the point between young and old, wise and foolish, human and Archetype — and male and female.

In other words, Amarel was born genderqueer, complete with ambiguous genitalia.

When looking through the story, I realized that I had used the word “him” to refer to Amarel, which was first and foremost offensive, because the pronoun boxed him into a binary Amarel didn’t belong to. I misgendered Amarel.

So I introduced gender-neutral pronouns for Amarel — ze for he/she, hir for him/her and his/hers, hirself for himself/herself. I wrote a lot of substitutions, given that Amarel is one of the main characters.

The revised novel is a bit harder to read, because I am not used to gender-neutral pronouns. This might be a good thing or a bad thing for the reader — good in that the reader feels the discomfort of the people around Amarel; bad in that this might make it more difficult to read.

The gender-neutral pronouns also tend to add a feeling of isolation to Amarel’ s situation, which is accurate. Amarel is the only person referred to as hir and ze. We still treat the gender queer as “other”, as people who purposefully isolate themselves from society through their rejection of the binary gender construction of society.

If the story had been written in first person, Amarel may have seen everyone as ze/hir/hirself, which would make a pretty inescapable point to the reader. Alas, Reclaiming the Balance is a third-person novel, so it will only convey so much of the point.