When projects attack…

Anyone who follows me in any social media venue knows that I’ve got a new project chewing on my synapses lately.  I’m one of those unfortunates who can’t shove ideas away because they just keep coming back again.  They become relentless and won’t let me work on anything else, regardless of how much I may need to.  This was the case a few weeks ago, when I started working on an UNSETIC short.

At least, it was supposed to be a a short.  It was also supposed to be freewriting, something to just get the tale out of my system so I could get back to work on Redeemer, When All’s Said and Done, and other various projects.  Instead, it’s become all-consuming.

It all began with this:

            “There are places in the world, Doctor, that we leave off maps because no one can get inside in the first place,” the Canadian G-man shouted over the sound of the wind.  “You try to drive into them and suddenly pop out on the other side.  We don’t understand how it works, we just know it happens.”

            “I’m aware of the phenomenon,” El Stone yelled back over the sound of the rotors.  The former crime scene investigator held on to one of the oh-shit bars as she peered out the helicopter’s window at the trees below.  “But that doesn’t tell me why I’m here.”  Here was the ass-end of Alberta, somewhere up in forests so damned thick that no one would’ve noticed if they’d missed a twenty-mile stretch even if they’d been looking for the gap.  The sort of places they were discussing were rarely that large–mostly, the places omitted from the maps were two to five square mile areas, tops.  In the business, they called them Brigadoons when they reappeared, for the musical.  She knew that because she’d read the files on the flight up to Edmonton from the States.  There had been little else to do on the flight.

            The G-man pointed to a clearing that hosted a small village and a narrow roadway that spiraled out of the forest.  It hadn’t been on the maps she’d seen before they’d left the RCAF base.  Her heart began to beat a little faster.

            “One of them just opened up.”

Now, let’s be honest, I’ve tweaked it a touch since I wrote that first bit, but that’s literally how it began.  The dialogue and the images caught me in the side of the head, much like the idea for What Angels Fear did a couple years ago.  Unlike What Angels Fear, however, I knew fairly quickly who the story was actually about.  It took me until this past weekend to come up with a title, however, and the title is Girl from a Brigadoon.

The story, of course, is about the titular girl–a woman, actually–who’s been missing for fifteen years.  It’s a paranormal yarn, a mix of mystery, fantasy, and suspense.  In other words, it’s something that I’m a bit out of my depth trying to write, since mysteries have never been my bag.  I don’t tend to read them and I’m feeling a bit beyond my ken trying to write one.  But the idea has been persistent and it won’t let me not write it.

I keep having to revise my word count goal upward as the ideas trickle in, because there’s no way it’s going to be anything under 40k words at this point.  I’m already nearing 14k words, and it’s only chapter three.  It’s going to be some hard work, but it feels right.

For people who have known me for a long time–as a writer and as a gamer both–there will be some familiar faces in the text.  Brigid O’Connell figures prominently in the story as one of the investigators and AJ McConaway is playing quirky, perky sidekick every so often, thanks to an (annoying) absence of her twin brother Tim.  Then of course, there’s Rebecca Reid, who the story really belongs to.

She is, after all, the girl from the Brigadoon.

Keep an eye on Twitter and such for ranting, whining, and occasional progress updates.


You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

She offers two free fiction serials @ http://www.embklitzke.com/e557 and http://awakenings.embklitzke.com.  Stop on by and check it out.

New release ramblings

Good news!  What Angels Fear, a Lost Angel Chronicle, is now available on Smashwords, Amazon (UK, DE, FR), and Barnes and Noble.  It is the first installment of the Lost Angel Chronicles, a universe that includes my once-touted When All’s Said and Done.  I had anticipated releasing it after Epsilon: Broken Stars, but that’s tied up in editing this week (the people I tapped couldn’t look at it until this week).  The editing on What Angels Fear was faster–thanks again, Krinny!–and so I was able to start publication on Monday.

The end result was it being fully available on the three front-line venues as of this morning.  It will hopefully be distributed to Kobo Books, the iBookstore, Diesel, and other ebook retailers soon (through Smashwords wonderful Premium catalog, which Falling Stars is already available through).  It’s also already on GoodReads, where I appreciate reviews and shelf-adds.

So what does this mean?  Simply that I’ve gotten a third “world” of my writing established in digital ink.  Anyone who’s read back on this blog a little bit knows exactly how many things I’ve developed over the years and either abandoned or simply shelved for later.  There have been two women in my life (incredibly supportive best friend type women, one mostly during my teenage years and one during my adult life) who have urged me to go back to certain projects over the years, or not to completely abandon something, and occasionally told me to focus down on one thing, finish it, and only move on after that’s done.  As a general approach, that only occasionally works for me.

Of course, sometimes it does work.  This was one of those times.

I finished off What Angels Fear after I wiped out the final of Broken Stars.  I didn’t dare touch it while I was in the final push, largely because the scenes I was working on for Broken Stars were so difficult and because Julia Kinsey and Ridley Thys are very, very different characters from Aaron Taylor, Sam Cooper, Mac Desantis, and Lucas Ross.  Their worlds are also very different.  I’ll admit that at one point I’d considered making it all the same universe, but my conclusion was (and still is) that it just wouldn’t work, due to the number of supernatural elements extant in the Lost Angel universe, elements that don’t exist in the Epsilon universe (or any of my science fiction universes as of this writing).  Turning back to Julia and Ridley’s world, and by extension Ky Monroe, Matthew Thatcher, and Hadrian Bridger’s world, was a welcome shift.  Of course, it was helped by the sudden desire to write something with vampires that seized me.

No, What Angels Fear doesn’t involve vampires.  But they’re in the world, right along with secret agents and people fighting the good fight.  More of that will come up in When All’s Said and Done, which features Angel Kyle Anne Monroe as its narrator.  I anticipate turning to that project in the near future.

Unfortunately, Nanowrimo is looming, and while When All’s Said and Done was my inaugural Nanowrimo project back in 2004 (coincidentally, also my first win), I can’t exactly turn around and redraft it for my project this year.  Instead, I’ll be working on the second book of the Epsilon series, Epsilon: Redeemer.

My retail job looks like it might keep me from traveling this November, so I might just have a shot at getting something done.

Wish me luck.


You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke
And on Smashwords @ 
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke