Daphne

I haven’t made any progress on RUSTY’s memories since last week. But I will be adding a scene here and there as I get time. This past week was rough for getting my production in. I was in the midst of planning my new cozy mystery. Now that I’m deep into the rough draft of that book, I’ll be spending some extra time to add to the Daphne book.

I ordered a custom cover for the new book (by WarrenDesign, the same guy who did all the other Daphne book covers). As soon as the cover is available, I’ll turn on the widget to track progress and put up the thumbnail image on the right side of this blog.

A Trail of Clues

So, “A Trail of Clues” is the tentative title for the first cozy that I’m working on. I’ve altered the origin of the robot dog, but the story is the same. A 20-something nerdy guy is given a robot dog by his friend. His friend’s father is the CEO of a robot company that manufactures robots for the military. The dog was one of several beta test units from a line of robot pets that didn’t pan out. So, the company canceled the contract. His dad was able to bring a couple home, and he gave one to his friend, who is allergic to dogs (well, most dogs). That’s the basic premise at the moment. Nobody knows the dog is a robot except him and his buddy. That’ll be a running theme throughout the series. That he has to keep the fact that the dog is a robot a secret.

I’m just over 10k words complete, and I plan to write between 50k and 60k for this book. According to my conservative estimates, using 2k per day, including weekends, I can have this book written by Halloween. If I add on a week for editing, then it’ll be ready by the first week of November.

I still have some side work I have to do for this series. For one, I need a pen name (I gotta get crackin’ on that one). Then, I’ll create a subdomain for this website and start a new blog for that book series. For those not interested in cozy mysteries, you’ll stop seeing my posts on this blog (so, yay). I need to come up with a series title as well. I’m zeroing in on that. My protagonist’s name is Quentin, but everyone calls him Q. So, I’m toying with a subtitle like: “The Q Mysteries.” It’s like trying on a new shirt. You put it on and go, “eh?” As you wear it for a minute to see if you get used to it and just end up buying it. Or, you put it back on the hanger and look at a different shirt. So far, I don’t have a better shirt in mind.

I looked at some things like “The Robot Dog Mysteries.” Now, that could be a good subtitle. But there’s a possible problem: it could get categorized as SciFi, or people might think it’s an actual robot-looking dog. So, I decided to pass on that subtitle.

“The Trail Mysteries” was another one, but that would limit me to only solving murders and other crimes that occur on the trails (this series is set in Draper, Utah, and involves the trail system). The first book will be about a couple of murders that do occur on the trails. Hence the pithy name “A Trail of Clues.”

I don’t have a cover for this book yet, and I’m toying with the idea of thinking up five blurbs for a complete 5-book set, then having five covers created at the same time. The reason I’m not jumping on that first is because I don’t have a pen name yet.

I just checked, and it looks like WarrenDesign does cozy book covers. I was going to send him an email to ask about that, but my question has been answered. I’d prefer to keep my cover designer since I know his work. So, that task can be checked off my list.

Well, it’s back to the typewriter…