Hackwork Dept.

Time for a bit of an update on the projects-in-progress front.

• After a little too much time in the "is that wordcount or water torture?" department, Tokyo Inferno is finally back on something laughingly resembling a schedule. I hope to have the bulk of it done by the end of the month, with June and July spent on editing and touching up, and with it off to the printer's by the 2nd week of August. I already have most of the design work done for the outside, so that I could probably do between sneezing fits on a lunchbreak.
• Several new possible projects are on the horizon. One is a collaboration, about which I will only say three things: a) its working title is Down the Drain; b) it is what I hope to be a daring new take on a tired old trope; and c) it is the first collaboration I have seriously entertained in a long time. I couldn't tell you when it would get off the ground, but I'll have more to say about it when things are firmer.
  
• Another possible new project is in gestation. Again, I don't want to ruin too much, but the basic idea is an alternate take on the concept of the pantheon, of many gods as they relate to a human world. One of the major decisions I need to make is whether or not the pantheon / society I use is something I invent or something I simply take from history and society. I'm leaning towards the latter simply because I don't think I could ever invent anything as fascinating as the real thing — and so far I've been hard-pressed to find anyone else who has, either.
  
• Other stuff still in the pipe for "eventually": Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope, the "samurai story" (so named because that's what it is for the most part, although it's more like that plus GoodFellas or any other story about how good it was to be bad), the perennially-unfinished Mapmaker of the Dream (previously Vajra), the follow-up to 4DW, the "new religion" story (something about paganism/Wicca the way 4DW was about otaku-dom), and ....
• ... the hero story. About which I have nothing new to report, as it remains as frustratingly amorphous as ever. It might end up being melded with the "pantheon story" above, but that's not something I can safely say is a winning combination.