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What's Coming Out of The Pond Next?
Drake and I are constantly thinking up new stories. Living with such a creative duck, it's hard not to. In fact, it's more unusual these days, to have a lack of ideas. Each time Drake comes up with another great story, he dictates and I frantically type, getting down all the notes I can... and then we return to our regularly scheduled writing project. Even though we try to write every day, our Summer Writing Hermitage is when we dedicate an entire month to moving these projects forward before he can think up any new ones! Sometimes I'm successful at focusing his attention... sometimes not.
If you're even a little bit curious about what's swimming around in the little flipper's brain, check out this page occasionally. I'll post sneak peeks of our WIPs and perhaps a few beta cover designs. It's the most effective way I know to keep the little quacker accountable.
Listed below, you'll see the cover art for the projects that are closest to publication. Also in the works are the following:
~The Last Strand (a science fiction novel)
~Anonymous (a suspense novella)
~American Plague (a political thriller series)
~Splinters (a western novel)
~The Crimson Key (a swashbuckler fantasy novel)
~Hot Cocoa (a collection of anecdotal essays)
~Take The Reins (a young adult novel)
~The Passionate Plotter Guidebooks (Indie Author Guidebook series)
~Chloe Chimpanzee's Clutter (a children's picture book; book three in the Smart Ears Safari Club series)
~Tears Remember (a paranormal novel)
~The Scribe's Apprentice (a historical-fiction novel)
~ The Trial of Snow White (a fractured fairytale)
Tremendous gratitude flies out on the wind to Kate McNeil, Andrew Allen Smith, Marianne Wieland, Kristoffer Gair, Mandy Jo, and Deborah Reed for their continuous kindness and support of my writing journey.
Drake quacks his special appreciation to Caroline Topperman, one of the few humans in this world who speaks directly WITH him rather than about him.
If you have the time, please visit these wonderful writers at their websites (the links in green). Their creativity is a gift of wonderment, and the kindness of their souls is beyond exceptional.
Drake and I are constantly thinking up new stories. Living with such a creative duck, it's hard not to. In fact, it's more unusual these days, to have a lack of ideas. Each time Drake comes up with another great story, he dictates and I frantically type, getting down all the notes I can... and then we return to our regularly scheduled writing project. Even though we try to write every day, our Summer Writing Hermitage is when we dedicate an entire month to moving these projects forward before he can think up any new ones! Sometimes I'm successful at focusing his attention... sometimes not.
If you're even a little bit curious about what's swimming around in the little flipper's brain, check out this page occasionally. I'll post sneak peeks of our WIPs and perhaps a few beta cover designs. It's the most effective way I know to keep the little quacker accountable.
Listed below, you'll see the cover art for the projects that are closest to publication. Also in the works are the following:
~The Last Strand (a science fiction novel)
~Anonymous (a suspense novella)
~American Plague (a political thriller series)
~Splinters (a western novel)
~The Crimson Key (a swashbuckler fantasy novel)
~Hot Cocoa (a collection of anecdotal essays)
~Take The Reins (a young adult novel)
~The Passionate Plotter Guidebooks (Indie Author Guidebook series)
~Chloe Chimpanzee's Clutter (a children's picture book; book three in the Smart Ears Safari Club series)
~Tears Remember (a paranormal novel)
~The Scribe's Apprentice (a historical-fiction novel)
~ The Trial of Snow White (a fractured fairytale)
Tremendous gratitude flies out on the wind to Kate McNeil, Andrew Allen Smith, Marianne Wieland, Kristoffer Gair, Mandy Jo, and Deborah Reed for their continuous kindness and support of my writing journey.
Drake quacks his special appreciation to Caroline Topperman, one of the few humans in this world who speaks directly WITH him rather than about him.
If you have the time, please visit these wonderful writers at their websites (the links in green). Their creativity is a gift of wonderment, and the kindness of their souls is beyond exceptional.
Tears Remember: A Michigan Ghost Story...
Moira’s spirit is trapped in the century-old Whitefish Pointe Lighthouse off the northern coast of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Mired by a tragic history, she struggles to escape the demons that bind her to the Light, awakening her fears and threatening the lives of a group of reluctant collaborators.
A writer's retreat at the Light brings together the creative strengths of a group of aspiring novelists. To save themselves, they must finish Moira's story, imagining an ending that will allow her to let go of the past.
But first, the writers must endure the memory of her tears.
A writer's retreat at the Light brings together the creative strengths of a group of aspiring novelists. To save themselves, they must finish Moira's story, imagining an ending that will allow her to let go of the past.
But first, the writers must endure the memory of her tears.
Coming Out of The Pond Soon...
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Henry Hippo’s neighborhood is growing more crowded and noisier every day. The Hippo family does their best to share the watering hole with the Zebras and Flamingos who just moved in. But one day, cranky old Mr. Alligator moves in and does not want to share the beach. Instead of getting into an argument he knows he cannot win, Pappa Hippo moves his family to a new home. Henry is frightened about moving. Who will he play with when he gets to the new neighborhood? On moving day, Henry finds himself all alone, but not for long! He makes friends with The Smart Ears Safari Club, and they invite him to be a member. Henry learns that moving to a new home isn’t so scary after all. |
Splinters is a western novel, and Drake promises me that this is the project we'll be working on during our 2022 Summer Writing Hermitage... so look for it in Autumn of 2022.
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Anonymous is a suspense novella, written entirely in second person POV, with just five characters. It's fun, but complicated. Drake intends to have this finished in late 2022.
Here’s a short excerpt from Anonymous… just for fun. Remember, this book still needs to be completed and go through a final edit, so what you are about to read is a rough first draft excerpt, snatched from somewhere in the middle. But, perhaps it’ll give you a glimmer of the story.
You awake from a restless sleep at three o’clock in the morning, haunted by memories of the day. The monochrome cry for help shrieked through the color of your routine without identity or understanding. Like the mew of a kitten trapped in a sewer drain, you could only hear the distant echo, unable to pinpoint the true location of the sound. It was a single voice penetrating the shadowed darkness... but you wonder, the way sounds bounce, could there be others trapped as well?
Sweat pours from your brow as you sit on the edge of the bed, panting with a labor you haven’t felt since the training drill three years past. This case, this one voice, reached you through the din of all the others. It demanded to be noticed. You cannot ignore it now. It has reached into your throat, clamping off any chance of normal air flow with the grip of a thousand strangling psychopaths. The pressure denies any comfort your years of experience might suggest.
You snap on the bedside lamp, trying to erase the images of dire marionettes as they dance behind your eyes. The effort is worthless. The despondent purr of the wounded reflects in your memory. It began with the sound of a similar mew. It ended in a failed liberation. You are panicked with the thought that this ending will be the same. This time, you must do better. Be better.
Walking across the room, you retrieve the single slip of paper from your jacket pocket. Torn from a tabloid newspaper, and soiling the line art of a political cartoon, the plea for rescue screams into your retina. The blue ink lays near incoherent among the lines and negative space of another’s redundant complaint. Scratched across the page in an unsteady hand, the seven simple words tug at a place deep inside you, disavowing the ignorance you’ve been feigning for far too long.
You drop the page on the bed as you pass through to the bathroom. Relief is short-lived as your body responds to the eviction, but your mind cannot. Lost in the ritual, and assailed by cold water on your face, your expectation of sudden inspiration is disillusionment without remorse. You flip off the bathroom light and move back to the bed, no closer to having disentangled your pain than you were a half-hour ago.
You reach for the paper again, studying it with all the frustration of a parent with a colicky infant. Of all the tragic and desperate voices you’ve heard in the last week, the last month, the last year, why does this one scream louder than any other? Why can you ignore, or at least subdue, the rest while this one nags at your sleep and infiltrates nearly every waking thought? Logic defies you to explain the instinct trapped between your pillow and this one page. You cannot. What you know is that you must find a way to destroy the predator and allow the prey safe passage to liberty or mortality, wherever the greatest respite might be found.
You tuck the piece of paper under your pillow, pull the blanket to your ears, snuff the light, and plead with the darkness for just a few hours of ignorance before you reload to confront tomorrow’s hunting. You have zero confidence that your appeal will be heard.
You awake from a restless sleep at three o’clock in the morning, haunted by memories of the day. The monochrome cry for help shrieked through the color of your routine without identity or understanding. Like the mew of a kitten trapped in a sewer drain, you could only hear the distant echo, unable to pinpoint the true location of the sound. It was a single voice penetrating the shadowed darkness... but you wonder, the way sounds bounce, could there be others trapped as well?
Sweat pours from your brow as you sit on the edge of the bed, panting with a labor you haven’t felt since the training drill three years past. This case, this one voice, reached you through the din of all the others. It demanded to be noticed. You cannot ignore it now. It has reached into your throat, clamping off any chance of normal air flow with the grip of a thousand strangling psychopaths. The pressure denies any comfort your years of experience might suggest.
You snap on the bedside lamp, trying to erase the images of dire marionettes as they dance behind your eyes. The effort is worthless. The despondent purr of the wounded reflects in your memory. It began with the sound of a similar mew. It ended in a failed liberation. You are panicked with the thought that this ending will be the same. This time, you must do better. Be better.
Walking across the room, you retrieve the single slip of paper from your jacket pocket. Torn from a tabloid newspaper, and soiling the line art of a political cartoon, the plea for rescue screams into your retina. The blue ink lays near incoherent among the lines and negative space of another’s redundant complaint. Scratched across the page in an unsteady hand, the seven simple words tug at a place deep inside you, disavowing the ignorance you’ve been feigning for far too long.
You drop the page on the bed as you pass through to the bathroom. Relief is short-lived as your body responds to the eviction, but your mind cannot. Lost in the ritual, and assailed by cold water on your face, your expectation of sudden inspiration is disillusionment without remorse. You flip off the bathroom light and move back to the bed, no closer to having disentangled your pain than you were a half-hour ago.
You reach for the paper again, studying it with all the frustration of a parent with a colicky infant. Of all the tragic and desperate voices you’ve heard in the last week, the last month, the last year, why does this one scream louder than any other? Why can you ignore, or at least subdue, the rest while this one nags at your sleep and infiltrates nearly every waking thought? Logic defies you to explain the instinct trapped between your pillow and this one page. You cannot. What you know is that you must find a way to destroy the predator and allow the prey safe passage to liberty or mortality, wherever the greatest respite might be found.
You tuck the piece of paper under your pillow, pull the blanket to your ears, snuff the light, and plead with the darkness for just a few hours of ignorance before you reload to confront tomorrow’s hunting. You have zero confidence that your appeal will be heard.
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Dedicated fans of the writings of Diana Kathryn Plopa and Drake The Duck Muse... Send an email message to me through the form below,
and I'll add you to the team!
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