One Hot Mess

So I've got a couple of ideas in mind for my next writing project. I really want to go back to Night and Chaos, which started life last year as a novella, but now feels more like a novel. It's a dark urban fantasy - the darkest thing I've written, I think, and having re-read the 9k I wrote last year recently, I'm keen to dive back in.

And I'm halfway through a novella I'd quite like to submit to Harlequin's Nocturne Bites line once it's finished and polished up. I love short story writing, and I think it's a great exercise for any writer - if you learn to craft a short story properly, it will show in your novels. Your prose is tighter, and your pacing is better. You don't have time to arse around in short stories, so every word counts and you quickly learn to pick your words for maximum effect. You learn to eliminate the "telling, not showing" problem, and you get used to working to specific word counts and making best use of them. Seriously, I could go on about this subject all day if you let me. But anyway...

Really, the priority for me right now is SILVER KISS and it's sequels. I had a long chat with chaostheorya couple of nights ago about the direction I want the sequels to go in, as well as the overarcing themes of the series (tentatively called Wolf City at this point). One of the themes that kept cropping up, both in Wolf Strap and SILVER KISS is the idea that fertility rates are low amongst werewolves. The obvious problem with this is that, say your wolves are only producing one child per couple, your population is halving with every generation, and you're on the fast-track to extinction. Not great.

I talked this problem over with both my writers' group and chaostheory, and brainstormed some scenarios that will tie in nicely to a plot strand of the second book (tentatively called Bad Dogs). It does mean I have to do some in-depth research on the causes of fertility problems, which I imagine will make my brain hurt. But I'm determined to do this idea justice, even if it requires learning science, and then trashing what I've learned and mixing it up with Eastern European werewolf folklore, a bit of stuff I'm just making the hell up, and maybe some cannibalism too.*

*I'm joking about the cannibalism.**

**Or am I?

( PS... ).