I love finishing a project, especially one that I’ve been working on for a while. Sureshot the King was a project that culminated about 20 years of sporadic effort beginning when I bought binder paper and a package of pens while on temporary assignment at Fort Carson in Colorado. It feels great but now what?

I have some more to write in my Goblin Brothers story and even have a great Dwarf fantasy story going and, to be honest, a dozen other fantasy stories that I have seeded and even drafted. There are a lot of options.

One of my goals as a writer is to develop a much stronger voice in my work. There are times in which I feel my wit and humor show through but they seem fleeting. Some of it is related to the genre however. I started with the fantasy genre in which stories tend to be serious (although not always). And I was young when I started so my voice wasn’t especially strong yet. I was basically mimicking other writers. But that still doesn’t answer what to write next.

I would love to continue to work on my “medieval stories, modern problems” collection because it can showcase my voice well. But I think before I do that, I will work on another nonfiction piece.

That’s right, besides writing fantasy, I wrote what would essentially be considered a self help book, This is Crazy: Finding Who you are and what you want. Long title/ sub title, I know. I wrote it when I was exploring being a life coach and figured I needed a product. So I wrote a book. Covid came and essentially killed that endeavor but months later a few people read it and loved it!! So perhaps I did something right there.

Since I’m a high school teacher and father to a pile of kids it seems like a good fit to write about raising teenagers and perhaps even a guide for teenagers to navigate high school and adolescence. So there it is. This winter break I’m going to start working on that project and see how I like it. This is crazy: Raising Teenagers (working title) is next up. I’m excited about it.

Happy reading everyone. Cheers!