And speaking of sneak peeks...

Here is the cover for the/a next book in the Ross Family Saga. I have realized that my fiction all works within a unified context. Here are the next books - not necessarily in order. I work at them simultaneously though one is typically way at the forefront.

• Chiaroscuro Bums (The tale of Jadwin Ross continues as he awakens in an Amsterdam hospital. A sequel to The Missionary and the Brute - 10% complete)
• The Blue Man (Alwyn Ross, younger brother, is an animation historian who discovers not only a long lost African American animation studio from the 30s in his research, but also a cold case murder - 60% complete)
• The Straw Man (Dotty Ross, middle sibling, is a midwest housewife on the run. She catches a ride with an eccentric English professor who is obsessed with the thought that cows and hay bales are engaged in an apolcalyptic battle - 40% complete)
• Animated Lives! (A series of interviews with real animators conducted by fictional Alwyn Ross - 100% complete)
• Believer: a political fable (An Oral History Tale of Alwyn - Before, during, and after Blue Man in sequence - 30% complete)
• Reject (Alwyn/Dotty story of their youth - 80% complete)
• Ira and the Seeker (Middle era story of Alwyn researching his familial roots - 90% complete)
• Untitled (Short stories that have been pulled together featuring the Ross family. - 25% complete)
• Lifecycle (One segment of this complex, compilation work features a Ross family member - 60% complete)

I liken these stories to Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Saga, wherein some characters repeat, themes repeat and we get to know concepts, themes etc. Sometimes they will cover the exact same timeframe - Blue Man, for example, is contained within a single chapter of Believer, but even that chapter has more and less details from differing perspectives (not all reliable narrators) that add to the characterizations. It is interesting in that the stories are not written in the same style. At all. But I like it that way. The way they are written, they allow me to truly take them pretty much anywhere I want to go. And I want to take them pretty darned far...