However…
This is only one segment of the plan. Just the start.
Once these Tales are released (English versions, up to and including the anthologies/print copies), I turn my attentions to The Greater Good. This is a series of novels which I have been working on for some years, the first of which is entitled The Care Industry. Unlike The Lesser Evil, these novels are set firmly in our world and, for the first two in the series, in our time. The series are related in some ways, especially through themes and ideas and, in others, they are utterly separate.
Crucially, unlike The Lesser Evil, I intend to send these to agents, rather than independently publish them. I think The Greater Good fits better with an agent/traditional publishing house, rather than the route I have taken for the The Lesser Evil.
The Care Industry has already been written and already mostly edited — although that was some years ago and, quite frankly and honestly, I am a much better writer now. As such, it will be revisited with a heavy, comprehensive edit, then sent to my Alpha Reading Squad, before more polishing and then on to the agents I have already identified as perhaps best for the series.
Throughout this period, The Tales of The Lesser Evil will continue to be marketed and sold. I have some plans for this too, which I will no doubt discuss in the near future, as I keep sharing news here and on my soon-to-be-relaunched website.
After The Care Industry is out and about, waiting for an agent to like it and sign me,** I will return to The Lesser Evil to plan the next novels.
There will be three, a classic fantasy trilogy, with rather a high number of words per volume. I already know big chunks of the story, including the ending and, if you have any of the published Tales, then you will have read certain hints and clues and cunningly hidden secrets there… You will also have met many of the characters who comprise the primary cast of the novels.
Readers of this trilogy, The Lesser Evil (not Tales of…), do not need to have read the preceding novels, novellas and novelettes, but the plan is they will want to. Have you ever read a book and wished you knew more about the origins of a character? Or wondered when two others met? Or how, exactly, did she get so damned good with a knife? These are the sorts of questions I have pre-emptively answered with The Tales of The Lesser Evil. Essentially, they add value and, of course, the idea is they add more money to my proverbial coffers. (EDIT, please note, I have no coffers.)
After planning and outlining, I shall begin with some drafts of sections of these, before returning to The Greater Good, and the second novel in the series, The Town at the End of the World. Again, much of this is already crafted, but it will need more editing and more polishing. Once it is ready, I will begin the full draft of the first novel of The Lesser Evil (no working title as yet and, as I’ve mentioned before, it will NOT be three words, with ‘death’ as one of them! By then, that will have been done to death. Sorry for the terrible pun.).
At some, unknown, point, I suspect I will take a break from the fiction and draft my nature book. I have sketches and notes and drafts of parts of this, and I have a good idea of how I want it to look. It is different to much of the other nature writing out there. I have yet to decide what to do with it and, I suspect, much of that choice will depend on The Greater Good, and how well that is received. Time will tell. (If I could, I’d love to include some of the photos of the natural world I have taken over the years. It seems a shame to waste them. But perhaps that will be another, further project?)
I will curtail this section here, rather than listing all the books of The Greater Good, or the ideas I have for a further fantasy trilogy, for example. I do have them planned, but I am guessing when it comes to my sharing this with you, you may have reached the point of exhaustion already! Thanks for staying with me.
* At this point of my life, I was still sitting down to work — now I stand all day and feel a million times better for it.
** (I’m fully aware the process of finding an agent could take some time, or it might not. Who knows? I am quietly confident it WILL happen, however. It took me a long time to be able to say it, but I know my stories are good, and my craft only continues to improve.)