Are You Ever Going to put out another book?
Here's where I'm at: I had one false start after Mount Char that got abandoned. The working title was That Isn't a Giraffe. The first chapter wasn't too bad, but I never did figure out where I was going with it. I gave up at about the sixty page mark and moved on to something else.
Fast forward about two years. In October 2018, I turned in a draft of something called The Lost House. It's a new story, independent of Mount Char. I talked about it in a couple of interviews--it was sort of a noir take on Scooby Doo. The gist was that a very hard-boiled monster hunter who happened to be a dog came into town to stir some shit.
It got as far as a completed draft, read by four people: my wife, my agent, my editor and me. I liked it okay. Other people, less so. And talking dogs are a tough sell in adult fiction. Anyway, rather than put out something that everyone would agreed would be disappointing, we agreed that a major rewrite was in order.
That, thank god, is going well. As I type this (August 2019) I am about three working days from having a completed draft. The people who've seen it (three so far) seem to think the first couple of chapters are pretty good.
Better late than bad, I guess? Thanks for the interest.
Will There Be a Sequel to Mount Char?
The short answer is that I'd like to but (current as of August 2019), there are no firm plans.
Here's my thinking:
When I was a kid, HBO played the movie Mad Max II / The Road Warrior pretty much every night. I was a huge fan, in the way that only a fourteen-year-old boy can be. When the 1986 sequel Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome came out, I was hyped for weeks, had a ticket opening night, etc.
It wasn't the best. Honestly, it wasn't even mediocre. I don't think Beyond Thunderdome was a straight Hollywood cash grab or anything--as I understand it here were some production issues--but fourteen year old me was crushed. It was bad enough that it kind of turned me off the Road Warrior for a while.
That's what I'm trying to avoid here. I have noodled around with a couple of ideas for a sequel, to the point where there's an outline and a maybe a dozen sample pages. I'm going to be vague here to avoid spoilers, but coming up with a suitable bad guy is tricky. So, sincere thanks to everyone who's asked, but I think everybody would be happier if I let it percolate for a bit.
That said, I would very much like to revisit those characters if I can come up with an idea that feels viable.
So maybe one day.
A Third Question
A third answer