Next book...?

Turning in THE COMMANDING STONE fulfills my three-novel contract with HarperCollins. Well, technically it's not fulfilled until my editor reads and is happy with the manuscript, no matter how many edits from me that takes. Once she's happy with it -- called "delivery and acceptance" -- I get paid the final portion of my advance (yay!) and the book goes into the pre-publication process.

Right now, however, I'm done with the book until Diana, my editor, gets back to me with whatever changes she would like.

So what's next?

A couple of things.

Once the book is accepted, I'll need to talk to my agent about what my next proposal will look like. There's one more book to finish out the series, so that's a given. But if they want a three-book deal like the last time, what are the other two?

I have a proposal for another novel set in the same universe as my other fantasy novels but with a totally separate group of characters. It tangentially relates to THE AMBER WIZARD, but just barely. It's a cool idea and I already have the first and last line of the book completed!

I have a young adult novel called FOREVERNESS (if you're up for it, you can read the entire manuscript here) with my agent that I'd like to package in as part of a multi-book proposal. It's my favorite book of all that I've written so far. I also have a sort of weird supernatural/horror story about what really happened when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden!

At the moment I'm working on a mainstream novel called LIFE LINE. I'm about 45 pages into it and enjoying it immensely. No outline for this one, just pages of notes. I'm flying by the seat of my pants on this one, though I again have the very last line all done. It's based very loosely on the relationship I was in last year that crashed and burned in October. I have no feel for it at all right now and can't tell if it will even be publishable, but it's one of those books I need to write.

So for I'm going to keep plugging away at LIFE LINE and wait for my editor to get back to me with changes for THE COMMANDING STONE.