Here's what I've worked on and not finished since May 1, 2018, with whatever I worked on most recently at the top regardless of when it was started, and getting older as you go down. (Originally the start date was July 1, 2015, but nothing on the current list goes back that far.) There's also a list of finished works from that time period below.

Until the summer of 2015 I was absolutely abysmal about keeping this up to date; it ought to be updated at least monthly, and I'd been averaging roughly once every two years. I'm making an effort to do better; I managed to keep it up for some time, but there have been some multi-month gaps. I'm getting better. I hope.

In recent years I've been free to work on whatever I like, and I've often been hopping from project to project rather than focusing on just one or two stories. I keep hoping one will catch fire and grab all my attention; sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't. Of late I haven't been trying very hard to be productive; I don't know if it's a temporary slump, or if I'm easing into retirement.

Works in Progress:

• Once again I've hauled out a long-neglected project and done some work on it. Meant for Each Other is now on page 37; it's a fantasy novel intended to be a YA romantic comedy set in the world of the Extermination, where the short story "Arms and the Woman" was set. Whether that's how it turns out remains to be seen.

• Someone on Bluesky challenged me to write a YA detective story in the Nancy Drew/Trixie Belden mold, but starring Dorothy Gale. I'm two pages into The Mystery of the Silver Slippers. (It's set in San Francisco, not Oz, and Dorothy, who was an un-aging eleven-year-old in Oz, is now fifteen.)

• Another long-neglected project: Myth America, a contemporary fantasy novel I started in 1987. I hauled it out, wrote a new page, looked over the outline, and decided it wasn't going to work as originally planned. I've therefore cut it back from page 14 to page 11 and thrown out the original outline; I'll need a new outline before resuming work.

• I'm on page 38 of the major Ethshar novel now known as The Rational Magic Society.

• Assassin in Waiting, a Bound Lands novel, is now on page 43.

• I added a bit to The Innkeeper's Daughter; it's 52 pages now.

• I've been revising Graveyard Girl. I decided on a drastic shift in the storyline, starting with Chapter Seven; I'm five pages into all-new material, and haven't yet connected it up to the old version.

• The Wizard's Key is a story set in the Walasian Empire maybe twenty years before A Young Man Without Magic -- I think; the date may well change. It involves a pair of sisters with certain magical gifts. The idea is older; I resisted the temptation to actually start writing it until October 19th, 2016, when I produced the first three pages. I'm on page 38, in Chapter Four.

• I'm on page 259 of On A Field Sable. This follows the two volumes of "The Fall of the Sorcerers."

• The Dragon's Price is on page 96.

• In a fit of insanity, I started writing Johnny Derringer vs. the Crime Lords of Atlantis. I'm on page 6, but I can't write most of the rest of it yet because it's a sequel of sorts to Tom Derringer & the Floating Fortress, which comes after Tom Derringer & the Sinister Statue, which still has a long way to go.

• Tom Derringer and the Sinister Statue is on page 20. (I'd gotten a bit further, then realized I'd made a mistake and backed up.)

• Earthright is a science fiction novel I've had on the back burner for years. A proposal was out to market but doesn't seem to have drawn any interest, so I've moved it back to the "Works in Progress" category. It's on page 60 now.

• I'm up to page 52 (again; I cut a piece) on Veran the Fair and the Thieves of Borgran.

• Stormchildren is a fantasy novel set in the Quandish Archipelago, beyong the Bound Lands. I'm on page 33.

• I've plotted a new story (I'm guessing a novelet) called "Home Town Villain." Haven't started actually writing it yet.

• I'm on page 35 of "Uncle Jack," which was called "Uncle George" when I started it back in 2018. I originally thought it was going to be fairly short, but now it's looking like a novel. It's also drifted pretty far from the original premise.

• I'm on page 7 of the short story "Halos."

• I've pulled out a story called "Fast Times" that dates back to 2004, maybe earlier. It started out as a comic book mini-series proposal I hoped to sell to DC, then in 2004 became a novel proposal. Looking it over now, though, I think it's more likely to be a novella. I'm on page 16, with a ten-page outline of the rest.

• I'm on page 13 of The Multidimensional Adventures of Victoria Jane Nesbitt, and I still don't know for certain whether this is going to be a novel or something else. It's related to "Uncle Jack."

• I'm on page 4 of a new story of indeterminate length called "I Didn't See You."

• I've put together some notes for a new story of indeterminate length with the tentative working title "Leaf on the Wind." Might be YA.

• I'm on page 8 of a story called "Must Apply in Person," which I started several weeks ago but apparently hadn't mentioned here until now.

• The third Carlisle Hsing novel, The Ruins of Mars, is on page 6.

• Some time in the 1990s, I think -- it might have been as late as 2003, but I don't think so -- I started writing a short story called "To See the New Jerusalem." In May 2023 I finally finished it. It's garnered one rejection so far.

• I started yet another new story on April 15, 2023; it didn't have a title, but it's now called "Twilight Flo." I'm on page 5.

• I'm on page 7 of Kelder the Small, an Ethshar novel.

• The Siege of Vair is a Bound Lands novel set in the Cousins, and I'm on page 10 after recently pulling it out and adding a few paragraphs.

• I'm on page 17 of Eleven Blades, in Chapter Two. Not related to any previous work, probably a one-shot.

• Elfshot is a fantasy murder mystery; I'm on page 22.

• I've plotted three more Tom Derringer novels beyond the four I've actually written -- well, not so much "plotted" as come up with premises for them and figured out how they connect to the series. I've started Tom Derringer and the Sinister Statue, and the other two are Tom Derringer and the Floating Fortress, and Tom Derringer and the Misplaced Metropolis, though that last title may change. (I've also plotted a shorter Tom Derringer story, "Tom Derringer and the Monster of the Mills," that takes place during Chapter Two of Tom Derringer in the Tunnels of Terror.) I have an idea for a story about Tom's son with the working title Johnny Derringer vs. the Crime-Lords of Atlantis.

• I probably shouldn't list it here at all, as it's really just another in my huge backlog of ideas and premises that may never go anywhere, but I came up with a new story with the working title "The Old Man" and wrote the first page. It may tie in with "The Multidimensional Adventures of Victoria Jane Nesbitt" and with "Uncle Jack." Or it may not. (I have at least two other new ideas that are still only ideas that I'm not even going to mention here.)

• On a whim, I pulled out an old fragment called "The Detestable Tenant of Greenwizard Street" and added a few paragraphs to it. It's on page 3.

• I'm not sure what's happening with The Dragon's Dreams (title still very much subject to change). I finished what's either a complete story at thirteen pages, or the first installment in a longer work. I was considering the possibility of using it as the first part of a serial on Amazon's Kindle Vella program, but that probably isn't worth the effort.

• I'm three pages into a rather silly short fantasy story called "Hammered."

• I did some work recently on a very old project, Mirrors and Shadows. I'm on page 23 of what's intended to be a trilogy. (I also have lots of notes and outlines.)

• Back in 2001 I wrote what amounted to a blurb for a story. I've started actually writing the story, under the title "Going Home." I'm on page 4.

• I'm on page 5 of "The Bone Wheel," a short story unconnected to any other work.

• I've plotted another Ethshar story with the working title "The Almoner." At this point I think it's a novelet, but I could be way off. It's set in Ophera, in the Small Kingdoms. I have a short outline of the first half of the story, and some notes on the characters, but haven't actually started writing it.

• I have completed a rough draft of a Harry's All-Night Hamburgers story called "Tales from the Crypt" that I started back in 1988, but I'm not happy with it and have put it aside for eventual rewrite. It's 20 pages, 4,800 words.

• I came up with an entirely new Harry's story for the first time in decades, and wrote it in a single day. "One-Hit Wonder," 2,500 words. Didn't sell the first place I sent it, so I'm taking my time to decide what to try next. I'll probably revise it before sending it out again.

• "The Whispering Bandit" is the working title for a short story I was writing for an anthology, but it ran much too long, so I re-thought it and wrote "An Interrupted Betrothal" for them instead. However, I saved the original version, which had reached 4,500 words without even introducing one of the major characters; it's sufficiently different I think the world has room for both. It seems to want to be a novella. I'm still on page 17.

• "The Dancing Teacher" (formerly "The Dance Lesson"): A short fantasy story about a court magician and a prince's dancing teacher. After cutting back several times because of plot problems, I'm now on page 15 of an estimated 25-30, but did not get it done in time for the anthology I had been aiming at. I have now set it aside indefinitely.

• "Double Agent": A parallel-world short story I hoped would interest an anthology editor who suggested I send him something. I wrote three pages of an estimated 20-25, then decided I had a better idea and put it aside.

• Scattered Sparks: A new fantasy novel project that I came up with late on January 28, 2016. I wrote about fifteen pages in my initial burst of enthusiasm, but seem to have stalled out on page 27.

• I seem to have plotted a superhero novel, but haven't started writing it: The Rise and Fall of the Emerald Eagle, set in the same city as "One of the Boys."

I have literally dozens of other projects that could be considered works in progress; see my future projects page for information about several of them. This list (including both the above works in progress and the stuff below that I'm no longer working on) is everything I've actually worked on since July 1, 2015, though.

Incidentally, I welcome feedback on which of these you'd like to see finished; feel free to e-mail me with your preferences.

 

No Longer in Progress:

Let me quickly summarize what happened to stuff I'd listed on this page previously:

• The audiobook of The Summer Palace is complete and on sale.

• Tom Derringer and the Electrical Empire, fourth in the series: published by Misenchanted Press, December, 2022.

• The short story, "The Girl Who Couldn't Fly," is complete at 22 pages, and included in the collection The Final Folly of Captain Dancy and Other Tall Tales.

• "Three Days Late for the Hanging" is complete -- 6,800 words, 26 pages -- and included in the collection The Final Folly of Captain Dancy and Other Tall Tales.

• At a reader's request I wrote a short Ethshar story. It originally had the working title "The Well," but wound up as "The Harvest." It's complete, at 28 pages, 7,300 words, but I haven't yet tried to market it.

• The short story mentioned here under the working title "The Wizard's Captive" is now "The House of the Spider," and is included in Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2022, now available.

• The audiobooks of The Wizard Lord, The Ninth Talisman, and The Summer Palace, all narrated by Shawn Saavedra, are now available from Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.

• Charming Sharra (the next Ethshar novel) was published in Decembe 2023, and is available from the usual sources.

• "The Jurors": Short story written for Three Time Travelers Walk Into.... Published June, 2022.

• Tom Derringer and the Steam-Powered Saurians, third in the series: published by Misenchanted Press, October 2020.

• The audiobook of Touched by the Gods was released on Audible in August of 2020.

• "Paul is Dead": Short story written for the anthology Across the Universe, published October 2019.

• "Personal Space": Short story, loosely based on a never-filmed story treatment I sold the CBS "Twilight Zone" series back in the 1980s, sold to Asimov's, published in the October 2019 issue.

• "The Night People": Short story, sold to Amazing Stories, published in the Fall 2019 issue.

• The audiobook edition of Dragon Venom is complete and has been released, as of February 2019.

• "Valedictory": Short story written and sold entirely between updates of this page; is in the anthology Release the Virgins! published January 2019.

• "An Interrupted Betrothal": Short story that began as an abridged version of "The Whispering Bandit," but wound up its own thing. Sold to Lace and Blade 5, published February 2019.

• "How I Found Harry's All-Night Hamburgers": Sold to Asimov's, appeared in March/April 2019 issue.

• "Harry's Toaster": A short story about Harry's All-Night Hamburgers. Appeared in the first issue of the most recent revival of Amazing Stories, Fall 2018.

• "The Prisoner of Shalott": Published in the anthology I wrote it for, By the Light of Camelot, summer 2018.

• The audiobook editions of The Dragon Society and With A Single Spell were released in 2018.

• "Sorcery of the Heart," a novelet set in the Bound Lands, is in Lace and Blade 4, published February 2018.

• Stone Unturned: Published by Wildside Press, January 2018.

• The audiobook editions of Dragon Weather and The Misenchanted Sword were released in August, 2017.

• "An Evil Opportunity Employer": A short superhero story. Included in an anthology called Unidentified Funny Objects 6 published in October 2017, and reprinted a couple of places since.

• Tom Derringer in the Tunnels of Terror, second in the series: Published by Misenchanted Press, July 2017.

• The Lawrence Watt-Evans Fantasy Megapack: Collection. Published as an ebook by Wildside Press, March, 2017. Trade paperback released in 2018.

• "On the Border," a story for a licensed anthology, has been abandoned permanently. It wasn't working.

• The novel I referred to here as Bravo Foxtrot (probably not the actual title) has been completed and delivered to the game company that commissioned it. I have no idea if or when it will be published; since it's work-for-hire that's not my concern.

• Hazmat & Other Toxic Stories: Collection. Published by Misenchanted Press, 2016.

• Our holiday card for 2015: The story is available free on Smashwords under the title "The Abduction of Ebenezer Scrooge."

• Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship, first in the series: Published by Misenchanted Press, 2014.

• Ishta's Companion: Completed and published as Relics of War by Wildside Press, 2014.

• The Sorcerer's Widow: Published by Wildside Press, 2013

• Vika's Avenger: Funded through Kickstarter and published by Misenchanted Press, 2013.

For anything not listed above, see my future projects page.

That's it; here's your list of handy exits:

The Misenchanted Page
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