I have trouble finishing long writing projects, which is why it felt so great to complete the final edits of my latest novel last week. First drafts take me no more than a couple months to write. I’m in the zone, obsessed with the words I’m putting on the page. The problem comes later.

I’ll be halfway through editing a novel or novella when my interest wanes. I’m too excited about the next project and so I abandon it. Months later, I’ll return, do a little more work, and abandon it again. Thus, nothing ever gets done.

I’m changing this. There were many times while I was editing M: The Plastic Prometheus that I wanted to put it down, but I fought through that and managed to finish it.

I thought I’d share the novel- and novella-length projects I’ve written over the last 20 years. All of these made it past the first draft and a couple were even submitted. I hope to return to some of them soon.

Thalamus the Great (a.k.a. The Swordmaster)

Length: ~40,000 words

Year Started: 2004

At age 14, this was the first thing I ever wrote beyond the scribblings of my childhood. It was an incredibly derivative high fantasy novel. I had just discovered the genre and wanted to write my own epic trilogy. My freshman English teacher mentored me through it, showing me important things like subject-verb-object sentence order. I continued tinkering with it for a couple years, making it more original and tightening the writing. This was the most fun I’ve ever had writing and it changed my life in incredible ways.

Kingdom Amongst the Clouds

Length: ~100,000 words

Year Started: 2009

I’ve had this story in my head for most of my life and I thought it deserved to be written. It’s in a genre known as Bangsian fantasy, meaning it’s set in the afterlife. As I wrote it, I kept the novel a secret from everyone. Afraid that if I talked about it, I wouldn’t finish it. I had learned a lot since I wrote Thalamus the Great, and it was this novel that made me want to be a professional writer. I’ll never submit it, though. It was just for me.

Zonk

Length: ~60,000 words

Year Started: 2014

I stopped writing in my early twenties as I embraced the club scene. When I finally burnt myself out, I returned to the pen and wanted to tell a story in the spirit of those raucous years. Thus, I wrote Zonk. This novel contains probably my favorite cast of characters I’ve ever written. I re-read it recently and it still holds up, though the prose is a bit sloppy. This is a project that I hope to return to sometime in the near future.

Snap

Length: ~70,000 words

Year Started: 2016

This is the story of an insecure young man who discovers that he’s omnipotent. I worked as hard as I could to polish the heck out of this over the course of 23 drafts. Ultimately, though, it just wasn’t that good. The first half of the book was much stronger than the latter half, which slowly fizzled out into inanity. I submitted it to three publishers and received three polite nos. And in the end, I agreed with the publishers.

The Preposterous Theater

Length: ~25,000 words

Year Started: 2018

This novella may the worst thing I’ve written as an adult. After the rejection of Snap, I was eager to write another surreal story and submit it to Eraserhead Press. But in my haste, I completely ignored the characters, turning them into one-dimensional automatons who passively observe the plot. That said, I love the title and I’m hoping to steal it for another project.

M: The Plastic Prometheus

Length: ~50,000 words

Year Started: 2019

Originally titled The Autobiography of M, I wrote it shortly after I discovered horror. However, it wasn’t until I read the first draft that I realized how disturbing it is. So much so that I abandoned it in fear. If people read it, I reasoned, they might think I was messed up in the head. It wasn’t until I attended KillerCon, an extreme horror convention, that I realized there was nothing wrong with messed up fiction. As you know, I pursued this and now it’s ready to submit to publishers.

Generica

Length: ~35,000 words

Year Started: 2019

As a voracious fantasy reader as a teen, I learned all the clichés that plague the genre. I realized that these clichés put together could make a hilarious novella. It is my one and only attempt at satire and humor, which I thought turned out well considering I’m not very funny. Rather than mock, I wanted to celebrate the fantasy genre, warts and all. But when my editor presented me with the multitude of changes needed, I was intimidated and moved on.

Palindrome

Length: ~95,000 words

Year Started: 2021

This is the closest I’ve ever come to literary fiction. In fact, there isn’t even a plot, just the characters. To be honest, it might be the best thing I’ve ever written. But for some reason, I abandoned it shortly after the first draft and never returned to it. The central theme is the beauty of destruction. At that time in my life, everything that I knew was being destroyed and this novel helped me to accept that.

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I still have a long way to go, but the above novels and novellas are part of my identity. And even if I never publish them, they’ve helped me grow so much as a writer and as a person.

Tchau,

Zé