Kevin Harkness

There will be a City of Demons announcement in a few days, but to hold you until then I present the following:

file: Some of the Wards of Shirath

This is a crude map of wards 5, 6, and 7 in the city of Shirath.  The green shapes are buildings, the red ones are warehouses and workshops, and the yellowish-orange parts are stockyards and barns.

Yes, I have been working on the sequel, a book with no current title, though I am leaning towards “City of Masks.”  After weeks of pacing back and forth and muttering things like, “Of course, the guardhouses would be there,” and, “No, no, I already wrote in the first book that the Fourth Ward had three-story courtyard tenements!” I finally settled the geography of the city in my mind.  The history is also coming along, though with six-hundred years to cover, I might skip a decade or two.  As for the story, another hour or two of pacing brought about a plan, and I am currently hammering away at chapter three.

In case you were wondering, Garet and Salick are still an item, but forces rising in the city will test their relationship as Garet chooses between loyalty to the Banehall and belief in his own ideals.

I haven’t posted in a while – sorry about that – but I’ve been wrapping up some projects.  And really, just posting that your in the middle of things doesn’t bring anybody closure.  I finally finished a rejection-worthy (or maybe acceptance-worthy) version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, my second YA fantasy novel.  I also completed a wretched draft of Luck, my non-YA science fiction comedy that I started during NaNoWriMo.  That last one will have to marinate for a while, maybe years, before I can work on it again.

On the short story front Wily Writers editor, Angel McCoy, tells me they are publishing my horror story, The Talking Box, on their website in July.  I hope readers enjoy it, or are at least satisfactorily repelled by the horrible events of the tale.

All new projects revolve around the sequels for City of Demons.  I have three more books floating around in my head (with some of that down on paper), so I am trying to flesh out the world of Shirath and surrounding demon-infested real estate before I get tripped up on details.  Turns out that the city is bigger than I thought, maybe around 250,000 people, but I have to check my math.

Aside from that, I am desperately awaiting the English version of Haruki Murakami’s new novel.  A garden chair, a shady tree, a cup of Assam tea, and two hundred pages of incredibly complex themes and ambiguous prose.  Ahh, summer.

Eleven thousand words so far -and in only three days!  Of course, I had one chapter and part of another already written.  However, I did have to rewrite those pieces extensively to fit the outlines I’ve been slaving over.  And then there’s the fact that I will probably cut a fair amount out of what I’ve written when it comes to editing and revising time.  Meh,  I’m still a few thousand ahead of the game, and definitely on track.

Go, go, go NaNoWriMo writers!

NaNoWriMo approaches (like a freight train), and I am going to participate for the first time.  There is a comic sci-fi novel that has been tickling my brain for years.  The tentative title is “Luck”, and I hope that doesn’t jinx it.  Well, the time to commit it to paper is here(ish – actually in two more days).

All of this is in service of becoming a more productive writer.

It’s strange.  When I was teaching, writing was an escape.  I looked forward to the time I could steal from other things to finish my first novel.  Now that I’m retired and have a lot of free time writing seems more like a chore.  The human brain (or at least my brain) is very odd.

I will post updates in November.  Good luck to all writers participating in this creative marathon.  50,000 words or bust!

Thank you to the Richmond Public Library for choosing my book for their collection.  Seeing it on a library shelf took me back to when I was a kid prowling the stacks looking for an Andre Norton or Heinlein I had missed.  I hope the first person to borrow it writes their own book one day.