…pick a bale of cotton.

This last week has been a rather intense swirl for my writing. I moved my blog to here (erictolladay.com), found my stride with a middle school novel I’ve been working on, and–I’m very happy to say–started the sequel to The Peaches of Saint Ambrose. Those of you who are fans of Brother Barnabas, all I can say is he’s back, and better than before.

There is still a lot of maintenance and cleanup needed for the new site. I need to make an about page, a page specific to my fiction, and find a way to make it easier for you to read my stories on your e-reader, especially the kindle. All of which should be happening soon. So please excuse the mess while I organize.

About that middle school novel… I’ve been working on a novel called Order, The God of Small Things. Its a story about your typical middle school boy who accidentally creates a god, and then has to deal with the very adult consequences of his actions. It has very short (1200 word) chapters with lots of action, which is typical of the genre right now. My goal has been to write a chapter a day, which is a nice length for me. Enough to make it interesting, but not so much that I beat myself up at the end of the day if I didn’t write enough. Twice this week I’ve managed to finish two chapters in a day, which because I set a goal at a level I can manage, feels like icing on the cake.

I’m thinking of serializing the novel here, posting a chapter at a time, but to do this I need to set up the pages and the underlying webpage structure for it. That and write far enough ahead that I can manage it all the way to the end. Look for it in the future. You won’t want to miss this. The story is fast paced and features a lot of smart-aleck humor. And, if all goes well, it will have 2 or maybe even 3 sequels. Yes its intended to be a series. I’ve joked often enough to friends and family about Freon being the goddess of air conditioning, that I think its time I brought her to life. That and the Parking goddess, which will no doubt make my buddy Clark smile from ear to ear.

Something else I’ve done different with Order, I have purposefully tried to not think about finding a market for it, or tried to work in any angles which will make it more sellable. My goal with this was just to have fun, and let ‘er rip. And to do so at a pace I can easily manage. So far I’ve been able to meet both goals.

Now, about the sequel to The Peaches of Saint Ambrose (PoSA) All I can say at the moment is it will feature murder, intrigue, and mystery in that future post-apocilyptic Catholic California. Oh, and a super-human, insane, blood-thirsty, avenging, angle of death, that just so happens to look an awful lot like a werewolf. “Werewolves?”you say. Oh yes. Some very ugly church officials are going to learn first hand why its not a good idea to fuck around with Santa Muerte. See, unlike her sister, Saint Mary, Saint Death doesn’t play nice. She plays fair.

I’m already rubbing my hands in anticipation of this one. I love the PoSA universe and have been looking forward to getting back into it, and I know I’m not the only one. PoSA seems to be the most liked story I have written, based upon the feedback I’ve received. It happens to be one of my favorites as well. In addition to writing this second story, I plan on making available a better version of PoSA. One with a cleaner intro (the language was too stilted, especially in that first sentence) a bit of actually editing if I can swing it (no more typos) and a version that is easy to place on your kindle of other e-reader. You can expect to see both (knock on wood) before the end of the year.

Those of you who are curious, the title is in reference to a song I first heard performed by Harry Belafonte. You can listen to the song here. Ignore the video, which appears to have been cut from a Bollywood movie. I’ll admit the juxtaposition of Bollywood dancing and plantation slave song is fascinating. Its just not exactly the point I was trying to make. But there is lots of spinning.