The Next Big Thing

Many thanks to Tammy Jo Ekhart for tapping me to do this.

What is the title of my current work in progress?

Blackhall's Transtemporal Medicine Show

Where did the idea come from for the book?

A friend and I were goofing around, dong some roleplaying and I asked “What would happen if a bunch of my characters ended up on a cooking show judged by your characters?” So, we pulled a bunch of my more popular characters from a variety of books and dumped them into an episode of “Chopped.” We played with the concept and made it something other multi-universe Chopped fanfiction.

What genre does your book fall under?

Contemporary fantasy

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

There are a lot, so I'll just hit some high points.

Phineas Featherstone, our medicine show man turned mayoral candidate is Jason Carter, especially after meeting the man at ConTraception.

Kathleen Gallagher, our fire mage, is Allyson Hannigan.

Eliza Masterson, poisoner extraordinaire and mayoral opponent, is Thandie Newton

Donal Gilroy, who was Phineas' boy and is now working for Eliza, is Aaron Stanford

And Mark Strong is Drael, aka Mr. Blackhall, the god of blood, pain and fertility, who has sent this motley crew (and their cohorts, including Tommy Flanagan as a post-apocalyptic Scottish priest and Ron Howard (ca 1972) as his boy) to stop a human supremacist movement.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Atlantean god assembles cross-time team to fight human supremacists and save the aliens who have lived alongside humans since dawn of time.

Is your book self-published or represented by an agency?

Neither. It will be small press published, without an agent. We're submitting it to Storm Moon Press as a serial.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

We've been at it since September and still aren't done. Of course, I took a break in the middle to finish a short story and write a space bounty hunter novel.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the most common one. There are elements of The Dirty Dozen, and of Robert Lynn Asprin's Myth Conceptions. Except with more Gay Scottish Priest Wing-sex.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Cat Emerson, my co-author.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Gay Scottish Priest Wing-sex wasn't enough?

We have a dozen people with deeply different life experiences and conflicting goals stuck together for several years to take on one of the biggest, most brutal organizations on the planet. A teacher, a terrorist, a flim-flam man and his assistant, a pair of priests, two escaped slaves, a mercenary, a wheel-chair bound hacker, and a redneck mechanic against a secret society of rogue Vatican agents, and getting help from aliens and gods.

To see what some of my writer friends are doing, I’m going to tag.

Gabriel Belthir, Elizabeth Donald, Stephen Zimmer and Sara Harvey

All of these folks are up to something exciting. Smetime around next Wednesday, I'll put a link to their tales.