My wildfire/terrorist novel.

I'm sort of itching to write my wildfire/terrorist novel. I'd like to try to finish it before the height of the fire season, August or September.

The current title is: Devil's Forge. It kills me that it is so fucking topical. What am I waiting for?

I've already written 100 pages. The 100 "Kick-ass" pages that a big agent and mainstream publisher asked for last year.

The agent rejected the manuscript outright and the publisher has never gotten back to me. This is the same mainstream publisher who said about Led to the Slaughter: "It's a brilliant premise and beautifully written." And who said, "I'm sure we can find a premise we both like--I'm sure of it."

I thought I was in like Flynn.

But...no answer. I kept sending him little updates, because he seemed so gung-ho at first, but I'm finally ready to give up and do it myself.

I knew going in that it was going be difficult to meet their standards."100 kick-ass pages?" What does that even mean? A book, is a book, is a book, and it isn't a book until it's a book, and I'm just not the kind of writer who can pre-think a book so much that I've figured it all in advance. I gave it a try, but I could tell I'd probably fallen short. I was just hoping they could see the promise.

I've already made a huge change in the first few chapters that will dramatically improve the story, but I didn't think of it before I sent off the proposal. I have no doubt that in the course of actually writing the book, I'll make similar improvements.

I've stockpiled a bunch of firefighting books for research. I've also clipped out articles about wild-fires from the paper, and it turns out there are a lot more of those kinds of features than I realized.

This is getting to be a big deal, what with the climate change, and I'm just adding the match of terrorists to the plot.

It is going to be a Crichton-like techno-thriller set slightly in the future, with as much science as I can stand to add.

It's a great story and very topical, and I'll just get it done.