April 2021: Writing Projects

The arrival of April means that it's once again time for Camp NaNoWriMo. Last year, my camp project was writing the first draft of Dawn of the Jackalopes in the Crossed Lines series. It was published last month. This year my project is Set in Amber, a Caffrey Conversation story. With amber in the title, some of you may wonder if it has anything to do with a certain music box. That's a canon element we haven't touched on yet. Has its moment finally come? The story is set in late 2006, roughly 3 years after the start of Caffrey Conversation. Penna and I have let the characters evolve over the years onto different paths. One question that has been much on my mind lately is what the future paths should be for Raquel and Alex. Perhaps writing this story will help answer it.

In March, I finished the first draft of a Crossed Lines story. She was a persnickety little trickster, every week deciding on a new name only to change her mind a few days later. In her current version, she's known as Bewitched, but who knows what she'll call herself by the time she's posted. She also presented many dangling threads for me to resolve as well as one major complication, and that is the Yellow-Eyed Demon. He was very much a factor in the early seasons of Supernatural. Since this is AU, I could ignore him, but should I?

Today I posted the final chapter of my latest Six-Crossed Knot story—Winter's Rages. In the fourth novel by Deborah Harkness, Time's Convert, Marcus remarked that Philippe conducted French affairs as though they were an orchestra, and had a spy stationed on every corner. At the end of my story, it's clear that Philippe intends for Jack to be one of those spies. In my next story, Players' Drift, we'll check in on Jack to see how it's working out. That story is set in 1666 and parts of it will take in the court of a young Louis XIV. I'll post Players' Drift in late 2021.

I've been publishing the Six-Crossed Knot stories as collections on Wattpad. Dream's Shadow covers Jack's youth through Walking Shadows when he becomes a vampire. Lion's Gambit includes the subsequent stories through Winter's Rages.

My introductory story in Crossed Lines has also been added to Wattpad. Whispers in the Night is the first story in Crossed Whispers, a collection that will eventually also include Witches' Sabbath.