Like any good writer, I’ve always got several projects on the go. Here’s where I’ll keep track of them as best I can and hell, who knows, I might even finish* some of them!

* I have, in fact, finished a few projects. But they’re under a nom de plume and I’m not linking them from here (yet). Contact me if you’d like the link though.

NO ANGEL is a crime novel whose protagonist is a pseudo-hitman ne’er-do-well named Harlo Payne. Well, that’s the name he likes to use anyway. He’s got a few identity issues, as well as Multiple Sclerosis, but he stopped being confused by his sexuality when he realised that rather than have a particular preference, he just wouldn’t rule anybody out.

Wise-cracking and snarky (yes, I used those terms – Harlo’s a different generation) he has a pet rabbit he loves more than anything in the world, and he kills people for a living. Only scumbags though, if he can help it. Problems arise when he’s killed the wrong scumbag and how has to figure out who he’s pissed off and what it is that they want him to do about it.

LOVEMITE is what I like to call a “false memoir” (a phrase I first came across with Jim Harrison’s Wolf) and is a re-imagining of my own personal journey from the rural splendor of the Rockies to the coastal lifestyle of Western Australia.

Jarrah is essentially a good kid that manages a large enough fuck-up that his father exiles him to live with his Uncle Terry, his father’s life-long best friend who’s essentially family. Life couldn’t be more different between life in a small Montana town and the beach-side serenity of Rockingham, but it’s the oceans of difference between his father and his Uncle Terry that continually keep Jarrah on his toes.

While he struggles to simply find his place in any world, let alone the one he’s landed in, Jarrah gets sneak-attacked by a love he’d never imagined right before his world is rocked to its core. He’ll need to figure things out in a hurry before everything gets thrown into the air again, and he’ll have to decide what love is truly worth.

THE PRESENTER was yet another idea borne from a dream I had about a vigilante and would ideally be another crime novel with an anti-hero protagonist.

The basic premise is that the Main Character is a bit of a nobody who, like all good vigilantes, gets fed up with watching yet another criminal get away with it because they’ve either got enough money for the lawyers or the cops were hamstrung by the idiosyncrasies of the law. The Presenter will stalk the guilty parties and then “present” the police with a perfect crime scene, where there is no question about the guilt and no issues with evidence.

The kicker is that there’s also a copycat vigilante who admires the Presenter so much that they attempt to put some much-deserving bad guys away too. The problem is that they bit off a bit more than they could chew, and are now in more trouble than they could have imagined.

There’s also a HUGE twist at the end, where… well, I’ll just have to write it and you’ll have to read it.

ANGELS AND DEMONS is yet another crime novel featuring anti-hero vigilantes. I would appear to have a bit of a thing going on…

This idea was the product of one of those nights where Wifeage and I have finished a particularly good TV series and are out on the back patio, probably on a Saturday Night, having too many ideas and a few too many glasses of red wine.

So this time it’s a pair of troubled souls, a hitman and a hooker, and they are somehow trauma-bonded in a way that isn’t clear. What we do know is that the hitman does his best not to kill innocents and the hooker does her best to try and extricate herself from the life. The two are intrinsically drawn to each other, though not in an explicit love affair, and together they target those that are truly willing of a mortal send-off.

The hooker typically picks the targets for the hitman to pursue when he’s not taking on new contracts, and they are particularly interested in those that would prey upon innocent children. The first story (hoping this to be a series) will centre around the hitman’s over-enthusiastic expulsion of a high-ranking Catholic Priest.

This one is another false memoir but I’m not ready to share too many details about it yet as I’m not sure if I’ll try and publish it under another, separate, nom de plume. It’s heavily based on the true stories of someone close to me, and the real challenge won’t be writing it in a compelling and impossible-to-put-down way, but to do it proper justice.