#wip: the ruby of ranpur

[sarahlizziewrites]

WIP Pre-Intro: The Ruby of Ranpur

Motorboat races, hidden bombs and a gem worth dying for.

That's right! The Crime-Fighting Husbands are back for Unnamed Novel Writing Challenge 2024! I will be writing a 50k word follow-up to Til Death Do Us Part over the course of October and November (averaging 820 words a day), set a few weeks after the first story at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.

Expect more reluctant detective work from Williamson Jones, more campy shenanigans, and much! more! backstory! Plus, Nazis, flirting photographers and a very suspicious mime. The spy vibes in this story are immaculate, though at its heart, it's still a goofy, gay whodunnit.

TDDUP taglist (+/-): @vacantgodling, @imsoveryveryconfusedatlife @mrbexwrites, @hippiewrites

[sarahlizziewrites]

Where my WIPs are at:

Chrissie's of London - ~70% of the way through a second draft of Book 1 (Chrissie's, Strand), hopefully to be completed by start of September. I had promised I'd either start querying or get a Patreon set up by the time I finished this, but... I haven't done any querying at all. Motivate me?

Book 2 (The Electric Pavilion) is my go-to project at the moment when I'm sick of editing - currently 17k words.

The Adventures of Sitora Lux - Book 1 (Honesty's Cost) is still out for beta feedback after draft 2. I haven't really worked on Book 2 (A Different Kind of Courage) since last year (currently sitting at 13k words). This series is functionally on hiatus until I work out what to do with it. I think I need to pitch it solidly as YA even though it wasn't written that way.

Grey Sky Lark - this has always been a back-burner project and I haven't worked on it much lately. It's at about 12k words.

Brazen Sparrow - I got some good work done on this in the last few weeks, but I have to be in the right mood for my pirate girlies. Currently sitting at 12k words.

Crime-Fighting Husbands - I finished 'Til Death Do Us Part during NaNo 2023 and haven't really touched it since then. I have had two alpha readers provide feedback, but nobody has really been brutal enough about it. I know it needs more meat to the mystery but I can't figure out what. If there are any seasoned mystery readers/writers out there who are willing to give me brutal feedback, lmk!

Book 2 (The Ruby of Ranpur) is in the planning stage and I intend to start this for a chilled NaNo-esque challenge over October and November. Tbh this is a better mystery as a whole, and I learned a lot from my first one. I'm excited! Check on me by Thanksgiving lmao.

The Melody of Your Gravity is on hiatus. Sorry. I haven't updated since like, April, and I've also slipped out of the fandom a little. I'm not caught up on Campaign 3 and I'm lacking the motivation. I do want to finish this story, though. Maybe more news about the Mighty Nein Animated will get me excited. Fingers crossed!

Dawn Meeting - my interactive fiction thing over at @tell-me-a-poll-story. I know some people were really jazzed about this, but the pressure got to me. Idk. I don't hate the story so I might carry it on. But I remember crying over the outcome of the polls at times so it wasn't really healthy tbh. I didn't have a healthy relationship to writing in 2023 at all so it was good that I took a step back. On hiatus - not dead.

Anyway this was long lol. I want to make Chrissie's public so you all can finally read it, maybe with a goal of getting it self-published, but I know that something like a Patreon will stress me the fuck out and make me avoid it (as evidenced by the manufactured pressure of NaNo and the false accountability of publishing a fanfic and my own interactive story being really unhealthy for me). I'd love any and all advice about doing this shit professionally and not losing your mind lol.

Thanks for lending me your dividers, @saradika, they are so cute.