'Fracking Justice' - and those other novels I want to write

WATKINS GLEN, New York - Next week the last rewrites, edits and plot shifts will be made on the final draft of Fracking Justice before it goes to my editor for a serious look-see.

But even as that process finishes up, I can't take my eyes off the list of novels I want to write, all of which are swirling around in my brain simultaneously.

I once read a magazine article about a prolific science fiction writer who used three typewriters, writing three novels simultaneously, moving from machine to machine every so often.

He said it was somewhat like what we would call channel surfing today. Except that he had three distinct stories in play, all of which seemed to me to hold together quite nicely.

Unfortunately I believe I am way too linear to do that. Though I understand how tempting shifting like that might be. Each novel might help inspire a story line in one of the sibling novels on the other machines.

And I do have three working computers. Hmm...

So what are these under-consideration novels? Here are four working titles: 18 Hours to Madrid, Fracking Evil, The Talking Mime and Some Enchanted Evening.

Some Enchanted Evening was started nearly 15 years ago with the first of three segments completed before university life intervened and I couldn't focus on it anymore. The first 12 chapters of The Talking Mime were published - online - five summers ago but halted when a fatal flaw showed up in the plot that I just didn't have time to fix. The readers who read the early chapters of that serialized book are still waiting for the family on a sailboat to solve a perplexing mystery off the Central California coast. The novel 18 Hours to Madrid is a fresh work, in outline form. And no, it is not a Tom Clancy-like adventure novel.

Fracking Evil will be the third (and most likely final) book in the series that started with this year's The Fracking War. Its premise is so dark, I get shivers every time I start doing research. Looking straight into the face of evil is dangerous business, even for a novelist.

Fracking Evil - one cover art concept