Progress on New Books & 2018's Good Start

It seems that joining the 2017-2018 new year countdown has given me an auspicious new start to a whole new year.

As I've reflected last year (probably... Must be the alcohol), I have completed the next installment to The Keeper of Pulau Purba close to the end of 2017, or at least the first draft.

What's interesting though is that in the last few hours before the new year countdown, I was able to sit down during a lull in the celebrations (yeah, I'm a bit of a party pooper) to actually do an outline for a book that I feel I should write. It covers about 75% of the plot and story, and is about 700 words long. It will serve as a guide to writing my next work.

It's going to be a science fiction, but with generous streaks of horror painted on it. I just love to make matters complicated. I can't really write pure genre fictions at all, it seems.

Anyway, this year is off to a good start. I'm starting to go back to my usual speed again. On the first two days of 2018, I was able to average at 500 words a day. Not too good, but better than 200 or 300. Yesterday, I wrote about 750. Nearly there. I'm going to try to return to 1,000 words. It helps a lot that I'm breaking new grounds here. No matter how much I'm in love with Pulau Purba, I guess I just need to sate my curiosity and desire for new lands.

To give a quick summary of this new book, it's basically about a new app that came out mysteriously, forcing users to stay glued to their phones, with both their eyes and hands. It gets worse from there, much, much worse... The story follows a 38-year-old accountant who's sick of the life and work he couldn't get out of. But there's going to be something he'll hate much worst. A primarily Sci-Fi novel, it will be set in the near-future.

Project Shadolure (The installment to TKoPP), as per my plan, will be put on developmental hold until after the second installment is completed, which will involve a foreign young girl (American) visiting Pulau Purba with her priest uncle to surprise her aunt, who is a very familiar USMC observer there.

Outside of writing (which is just as important), my career as a professional tutor has taken off. My early fears of abandonment by the parents who retained me proves to be self-torture. Most of them have resumed my service, and I'm back up to regular pay again, and more. I believe my monthly salary will even total $3000 with less effort than last year. I just need to keep it that way.