I've always got a dozen stories I want to write in my head. Of course, I also have to make my publisher happy by getting my manuscripts in and keeping my existing readers happy with new chapters each week. This keeps me from suddenly abandoning everything for a new story.

But the pressure is building. Here are my current ideas.

Scrapyard Hero:

The story keeps evolving, but in general, I want to wander down the roads where Manly Wade Wellman took Silver John. Wellman wrote amazing weird tales of strange things happening in the Appalachian Mountains. I want to mix a little of Silver John, a little Supernatural, and the first years of Dungeon and Dragons together and anchor the story around an old scrapyard and the steel belt of Pennsylvania around 1990. If you haven't read Who Fears the Devil, it's worth the read. Great stuff.

Allentown PA was home to Allentown Steel on the Lehigh River, a few miles down from the larger steelworks in Bethlehem. The scrapyard in the story will be next to the river near Allentown Steel, and the surrounding area of dilapidated houses is known as Rust Town. Not the best place to live.

This story has a lot of ideas and half plots formed already and a few test chapters on Patreon. The MC, Huck, is a young man with few options. The bank wants to foreclose on his uncle's house and the scrapyard. His Uncle is delusional and Huck spends a lot of time caring for him and trying to keep him from leaving the house without wearing pants. They have little money and Huck spends more time taking in recycled metals than he does in school. Which is fine by him since he has trouble reading in the first place. He goes to school some days for free breakfast and lunch, and to talk with his few friends.

One night, he'll find out about the things lurking in the darkness that most people can't see. And those things aren't happy with him.

Gutter Magic

A fantasy Litrpg story set in a world where people lucky enough to have classes have to work to discover them and eventually reveal a tattoo somewhere on their bodies. (Too late, I realized the similarity to the Cuteymark Crusaders in My Little Pony, oh well.) The MC has spent years training hard to be a top-ranking member of the thieves' guild, doing things the hard way with no special abilities revealed, and slowly sliding down the ranks as those around him gain their mark and perks. As the title hints, his talents lie in other areas and are forcefully revealed against his will. He has magical talents but not those respected by any elemental wizard. Which is fine, since he doesn't plan on being one, he'd rather go back to his home in the thieves' guild. But studying minor spells is better than going to prison for five years as an accused thief.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Get off my Lawn (Planet?)

The War has come to Earth, the latest battleground in an age-old fight where three Alien races fight to stop the invading horde from gobbling up the galaxy. Scavengers take advantage of the chaos to raid new worlds ahead of their destruction and the local sentient are encouraged to join the fight.

And Rufus doesn't give a shit. The fireworks up in the sky are pretty to watch at night and he's thankful that lost tourists aren't driving down the road to his beat-up ranch. He does wonder why his two ranchhands never came back from a night on the town, but suspects they got drunk and the Sheriff is making them work off some community service. He doesn't care. Fences will get fixed someday, he has plenty of whiskey and cornmeal in the pantry, and meat in the pigpen.

Until the night two ships come crashing out of the sky on top of his barn and pigpen, disgorging people shooting at each other in fancy costumes. Pissed off about losing his bacon and beef, Rufus joins the fight, deciding to start with the bugs with tentacles rather than the folks with two arms and legs in fancy armor. He's having fun until the house blows up.

Out of whiskey, he decides to head to town for more supplies and a load of lumber to fix the roof, arguing with his old Ford pickup all the way into town. When the hell did his truck learn to talk?

System Apocalypse with a grumpy old man

Wilbert's Horrible Adventures in the City of Chaos.

I want to start a Writathon with a bare-bones idea and just write as much as I possibly can in five weeks. Normally the goal is 55,555 words, but I'd be shooting for closer to 120k and a full book. To do this, I'll need a backlog for my regular stories and all of my editing caught up. (So maybe November 2024.) This story revolves around a single person, tossed into a chaotic ruined city with a lot of other people he mostly tries to avoid as they all struggle to survive and kick the shit out of the monsters hunting them.

Definitely a progression story with a system. Also, Rude Vending Machines, Intelligent meat-eating squirrels, Competitive Quests designed to get him killed, fewer and fewer resources in the starting area and more monsters the further you go away from there.

If I do this, I'll have a system laid out, a lot of random encounters thought up, and be doing a lot of dice rolling as the story progresses to make some decisions on what happens. Then pantsing the hell out of the chapters.