Hello, again! Been a while. I've been busy. Working at the regular job to pay the bills while I try to keep up this hobby.
As the title of this post says, I've been working on a variety of things. While actually working on the third novel in the Dolly Games Series, I've had a werewolf origin story on the backburner that I've titled Everyone Dies as well as plotting a third book in my Post-Apocalyptic series, Gulf of the Plains. Add to that the fact that a friend wants me to write a zombie novel and that my nephew has suggested a collaborative effort, you can see that I've been quite busy.
Let's take these one at a time, shall we?
The book I'm working on right now, is titled DG III: Savage Gambit and picks up the story where I left it at the end of the previous novel, Laying Ghosts. I have some surprises in store for a lot of you. Marta returns, but not the way you think. Carl Tanner gets on with his life and tries to remain among the living. This is a pretty general description because I'd rather not give away too much of the story.
The werewolf origin story is an alternate worlds type story in which a part of one universe impinges on ours. The werewolves are bestial things that prey upon the humans of the locale in which their little part of their universe appears. That they are also able to move from one universe to another makes it just that much more complicated. A small group of humans is caught in their part of the universe and have to stay one step ahead of thousands of the creatures.
The Post-Apocalyptic novel will throw John and Beth Sheaves, Paget Redpath and others back into the meat-grinder the world has become after the great polar shift and subsequent earthquakes, tsunamis, fimbul-winters and societal upheavels that we saw in the previous books.
While playing around one day, I composed a paragraph for the zombie novel during a post on FB that I like quite a lot. Here it is:
Stumbling over a jumbled pile of slowly moving bodies was what awakened Will Talbot. His hand sank into a mushy sludge that he dimly realized was the brain that formerly resided in the cracked-open skull, the jagged edges of the bone which scraped the back of his hand. In horror, he jerked his hand back and stared at it. Filthy, as though it hadn't been washed in weeks, it stank of rotten meat and other offal and his stomach nearly revolted at the thought of what he had been handling.
The second sentence is a bit run-on, but as with all new work, it needs fine-tuning. Still, it's a good beginning. I think it's pretty good for an impromptu effort.
In any event, this is the stuff I've been working on. I hope it meets with your approval.
Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Dolly Games, The Empty Heart: A Collection and Gulf of the Plains.
