Back Burner Novels - Books We Haven't Gotten to Yet

Tim Archer

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I think most writers have been slammed in the face by a great idea for a novel, but due to life and current WIPs they end up on the back burner for a few months (years). I thought I'd share a few ideas I haven't really dug into yet but am hoping to, and invite others share their own. My main back burner novels are:

- The daughter of a convicted serial killer and the daughter of one of her father's victims team up to rescue the former's kidnapped brother.

- A newly graduated twenty-something year old god is assigned a local forest preserve as his domain. When the forest is threatened by a development project he must protect it from greedy executives and overambitious gods alike.

- A gay teenager plots to escape from a Christian conversion therapy camp in Costa Rica, only to end up lost in the jungles with a fellow queer campmate.

- A tortured ghost and cinnamon bun loving zombie, once the body and soul of the same individual, team up for wacky adventures on the way to the afterlife.

- A first century historical novel centered on a young half-Roman, half Iceni warrior who joins Boudicca's rebellion against the Roman occupation of Britain.
 
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Taylor Harbin

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Ho boy, do I have some back burners. At the top of my list is a space opera quartet combining everything I am at this point in life: my love of history, music, and some philosophical/theological questions I've wrestled with. It's kinda my "Moby Dick" project, the one I want to be remembered for. I've only outlined a little bit, and the more I meditate, it becomes clear I'm going to have to do an immense amount of research.
 

neandermagnon

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I've got two WIPs ongoing at the moment and really need to buckle down and get them finished.

One that I want to start once I finish those would be set in Southern Africa just after the Toba supervolcano (approx 70,000 years ago), which caused a volcanic winter that is thought to have reduced the population of early Homo sapiens down to about 1000 breeding pairs.
 

KTC

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I have several backburner novels that have either been started or are floating around in that vast empty space above my Adam's apple and below my hair. The most fully developed is a young adult novel where a group of kids get put into a program to walk the Camino de Santiago in France/Spain over a summer as community service, rather than going to juvenile detention. It's Breakfast Club meets The Long Walk.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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I have several backburner novels that have either been started or are floating around in that vast empty space above my Adam's apple and below my hair. The most fully developed is a young adult novel where a group of kids get put into a program to walk the Camino de Santiago in France/Spain over a summer as community service, rather than going to juvenile detention. It's Breakfast Club meets The Long Walk.
What happened with your evil book novel? I still want to know how it ends.
 

KTC

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What happened with your evil book novel? I still want to know how it ends.

Haha! One of the more than a dozen that I have that are ALMOST finished. I'm a heel.

PS: I'm reading your State of Love & Trust right now and LOVING it! Unfortunately, my reading time is minimal at this juncture in my existence. I am reading it only when I'm on the subway in a forced state of suspended animation. I can't wait to get back to the subway!
 

cmi0616

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I wouldn't call it an "idea," but I've wanted to write a novel about the porn industry for a long time. Doing research for an academic thing, I stumbled across some correspondence between David Foster Wallace and an editor of his, in which Wallace was trying to get a similar project started, but ultimately found it too difficult and wound up losing interest (he did however go on to write an essay about porn).

Every time I've tried to get the ball rolling, though, the story seems dead on the page. One day, maybe.
 
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Maggie Maxwell

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Tim, I gotta say I love your ideas, but the ghost/zombie one just sounds amazing and I hope you can get to it soon! I'm just dying to know how one person split into two bodies interacts with himself. Also, cinnamon buns.

*looks at list of 60+ novel ideas* Well obviously I could go on for a while here about mine, but I'll limit myself to the biggest ones.

- A sickly boy gets "kidnapped" to the moving city-sub of Atlantis by an overeager little thief and has to live as an Atlantean for a year until the city circles back to his hometown. Kind of an underwater, magicless Harry Potter.

- After a car accident, a young woman finds herself trapped in her own subconscious, racing her evil childhood imaginary friend for control of her body.

- Superheroic Odd Couple, where a straight-and-narrow, orderly Evil Lair Analyst has to play host to Frankenstein-type mad scientist Dr. Preposterous after the analyst accidentally allowed Preposterous's heroic adversary to destroy his lab.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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Haha! One of the more than a dozen that I have that are ALMOST finished. I'm a heel.

PS: I'm reading your State of Love & Trust right now and LOVING it! Unfortunately, my reading time is minimal at this juncture in my existence. I am reading it only when I'm on the subway in a forced state of suspended animation. I can't wait to get back to the subway!
I'm so happy that you're reading it!:hooray: And that it's making your subway rides something to look forward to.
 

Ellis Clover

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- A tortured ghost and cinnamon bun loving zombie, once the body and soul of the same individual, team up for wacky adventures on the way to the afterlife.

I'd read that.

Once I get my current WIP out of the way (dog knows when that will be, the last one took three years and is still 'resting' while I muster the energy for revisions), I'll have to choose which of my two percolating ideas to tackle first:

- A dying woman must come to terms with her role in the failure of her marriage.

- A group of people who grew up on the same street are brought together years later at a funeral, and their lives begin to re-intertwine, with tragic consequences.
 

Emermouse

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I have so many ideas that I haven't written because they scare the crap out of me. So I love this thread. I'd thought about doing something similar, except I'd title it "Plot Bunnies for Sale or Adoption." :)

Like I have an idea for an alternate history, where the White Russians manage to rescue some of the Romanovs (not the Tsar and Tsarevitch, that's the only part I've decided on) and they are brought to the states where, rather than fund a secret civil war against the Reds, the US decides to openly get involved and use the surviving Romanovs as fodder for promotions, to sell bonds and remind the public what the boys are fighting for. But alternate history would require so much research and I'm totes intimidated by the prospect of having to create distinct voices for each Romanov.

I also had an idea for a short play involving Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong-Il meeting in a coffee shop in the afterlife and talking. The idea came to me because Havel died on December 18, 2011, and Kim Jong-Il died on December 17, 2011.

For those who don't know their history, Havel spearheaded what was called the Velvet Revolution, kicked the communist regime out of Czechoslovakia without firing a single shot, and would come to serve as first president of the Czech Republic. Havel managed to establish a democracy in a country that had known nothing but a long series of strongmen, which is pretty damn difficult to pull off. Too often with revolutions, overthrowing an autocracy or a dictatorship and putting in a democracy in a country that has known nothing but strongmen, results in a short-lived democracy and an even worse autocracy down the line. Or as I sum it up, you overthrow the Czar only to pave the way for Stalin.

Kim Jong-Il on the other hand, served as the dictator of North Korea. It's tempting to laugh at the antics of that country, but after reading Nothing to Envy, really all you can do is go, "Holy crap, what did these people do to deserve such a horrible government." Because the people there are suffering in ways you can't imagine.

I thought the contrast between the two men was interesting. I see the coffee shop as kind of like limbo, where the deceased hang out, sip coffee, and talk, while waiting to be sent onward. But the idea of writing this short play scares the crap out of me, because these are real people we're talking about, people who still have friends and family who are still alive, which has the potential for so many screw-ups/unintentional offenses.
 

Tim Archer

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Emermouse, have you ever read or seen the play Copenhagen? If you're unfamiliar, in 1941 two physicists with a long-standing working relationship, Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, met secretly in Copenhagen for a meeting of unknown purpose. Bohr, a Jew, would go on to work for America's atomic development project, while Heisenberg would do the same for Nazi Germany. No one knows exactly what happened in that meeting, but Copenhagen presents several possible scenes between Heisenberg, Bohr, and Bohr's wife Margrethe. It really is a stunning work and its an excellent example of creating fictional scenes between historical characters (even though this meeting actually happened). I would definitely recommend checking it out as a reference.
 

Cindyt

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A DEADLY SPILL OF SCARLET
NIGHTMARE IN MAGNOLIA
PANT
THUNDERBIRD
ALONG CAME CINDY (memoir)

I planned to write a sequel to my WIP, but I'm done with historicals. Haha.
 

mrsmig

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My fantasy series is eating up all my time, but once it's finished :ROFL:I have a couple of projects that I'd like to get moving:

1) A bunch of actors down on their luck head from NYC to rural Kentucky to produce an outdoor Passion Play (great title and plot but no characters yet)

2) An aging, badass warrior woman does something (no title, good characters but no plot yet)

3) A play about Typhoid Mary (no title, good start and a great final image but a muddled middle)

Just writing those down makes me want to run screaming back to the fantasy series, where I know what the hell I'm doing.
 
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StoryofWoe

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Since I'm not actively working on a novel, all of my current ideas are on the back burner. I've developed and abandoned a few over the past year, but these are the ones that have stuck. All single-title romances or romantic erotica with some paranormal/supernatural/fantastical elements.

1) A modern-day siren with the power to drive men to self-destruction wants to be promoted from music teacher to program director at a remote all-girl's school because it's the only place where she can live a semi-normal life without putting anyone in danger. When the last man she seduced is hired to the position, she must find a way to push him out before he loses his mind and/or takes his own life. Have characters, some plot, some backstory.

2) A massage therapist with mirror-touch synesthesia meets a man born with a rare genetic disease who can't sense physical touch or temperature, yet is somehow able to feel when she touches him. Have basic concept, vague characters, no plot.

3) A woman who involuntarily teleports in her sleep unless someone is constantly watching her awakens in the bed of a reclusive man with severe social anxiety and/or agoraphobia. Have some backstory and motivation, no characters, no plot.

4) Paranormal vampire romance set in a zombie apocalypse where safe, healthy blood is scarce. Starving woman vampire stumbles upon an ex-military human man. Rather than drain him dry, she agrees to protect him in exchange for a regular supply of blood. Probably the first in a series. Have basic concept, vague characters, no plot. On long-term hold. To be revisited when vampires are cool again. *sighs wistfully*
 

Varthikes

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Books I have lined up after I finish my current WIP:

Draconia 4
Book 4 in my Draconia series. This book will focus on the developing telepathy of the children, the result of growing up around telepathic dragons, a Human commander who attempts to get Draconia back under Earth's jurisdiction, and a renegade Norseen (lizard-like alien).

Galactic Odyssey
A six-book series that follows the Earth Alliance Ship Ulysses. Books 1-3 deal with the last war between Earth's nations, divided into Earth Alliance and Soviet Federation. An alien general, preparing for a coup against his own government, secretly supports the Federation. In Books 4-6, the Ulysses and a Federation ship are thrown to a distant part of the galaxy. Books 2-6 will be made up of a collection of chapter-like short stories.
 

Marumae

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Oh man so many different untold story ideas that I would read! All of you need to create some way to teleport your ideas into fully formed novels and release them so I can buy them all!

- A sickly boy gets "kidnapped" to the moving city-sub of Atlantis by an overeager little thief and has to live as an Atlantean for a year until the city circles back to his hometown. Kind of an underwater, magicless Harry Potter.

- After a car accident, a young woman finds herself trapped in her own subconscious, racing her evil childhood imaginary friend for control of her body.

- Superheroic Odd Couple, where a straight-and-narrow, orderly Evil Lair Analyst has to play host to Frankenstein-type mad scientist Dr. Preposterous after the analyst accidentally allowed Preposterous's heroic adversary to destroy his lab.

If you ever get any of these finished let me know. I will be first in line!

So I have quite a few myself, all of them begging to be written but I suppose I'll narrow it down to the ones I think have the most promise.

-A story about a young college student living in a small, seasonal "tourist trap" type town who gets a job at a brand new tea shop. A tea shop whose owner is 3,000,000 shades of odd, may or may not be the child of a god and owns a talking cat. There's more but I haven't mastered the art of quick, intriguing summarization.

-A secondary world fantasy about a race of horned, humanoid beings we can only think of as Trolls living in their isolated homeland with a complex social hierarchy that is shaken when a wandering clan find an orphaned human baby. This story just kind of exploded in my brain after I saw one picture on pinterest and I ended up writing 500 words by the seat of my pants (something I almost never do).

-Another fantasy novel about a group of friends who must find the shattered pieces of their friends soul, which is manifesting itself in reality altering ways around their kingdom. Not surprising considering he's the King and is the very soul of the land, the problem is it may or may not have been their fault this happened to begin with. I've wanted to try an unreliable narrator story for a while and while most of my heroines are very....Snow White? I wanted one who was a bit more realistic, a bit more flawed and whose motivations were more human. That is, while she thinks she was doing the right thing that caused all this trouble, perhaps she was doing so for her own selfish reasons instead? I wanted to leave that up to the reader.

-A play taking place during the US Civil War where a Northern army deserter finds himself lost in a forest, being tortured by the ghosts trapped there by it's Guardian Spirit, a fallen Angel. Each spirit would help him grow and over come his own demons as he tried to free them from the bonds of the place.

And finally, A television pilot that's a modern day retelling of Robin Hood in a very, VERY fictionalized version of Nottingham in England (Robin Hood doesn't exist in this universe's history and mythology. That'd be far too meta for me). The problem is I know next to nothing about how small scale English politics work or about cultural norms beyond what I've gleaned from television, along with slang and such. But darn it I want this to take place in England because my brain literally cannot see it anywhere else. I need to do research.
 

Emermouse

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I have something of an image really, more than a story: four werewolves raising a baby girl. But I don't know enough about Werewolf lore to really do anything with it. In my vision, the four wolves are dudes. I know I don't want to do the tired Alpha-Omega mythos, because those studies were based on wolves raised in zoos. Wolves in the wild tend to be family groups, Mom and Dad and the kids living and working together. So rather than there being one Alpha to which the pack must obey, the relationship between the four is more like brothers. They pick on each other and tease each other, but there's a difference between that and abuse. They may attack and drive off other packs, if said packs pose a threat, but on the whole, they don't fight with each other that much.

But if I'm going to have them raising a baby, I'm going to have to explain why they don't tear the infant to shreds. In what I've sketched out, as a general rule, werewolves may attack werewolves outside their pack, especially if they're stray wolves, but they generally recognize each other by scent and no matter how crazy things get during the fool moon, they seldom if ever attack each other. So maybe Baby Girl has a familiar enough scent that they feel compelled to take her in and raise her, even though they aren't sure why. From what I've sketched out, werewolves cannot reproduce. New werewolves are made only by maiming humans; they can have sex, but no reproduction will result. Werewolves do have an increased lifespan as compared to humans, but the longer they remain alive, remain werewolves, their memories of their human lives start to slip away. So Baby Girl is the result of an affair one of them had before being turned or something.

But again, so much stuff to work out regarding the mythos. Because you can play with tropes a little, but you don't want to go too far and make them unrecognizable as werewolves.
 

frimble3

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- A tortured ghost and cinnamon bun loving zombie, once the body and soul of the same individual, team up for wacky adventures on the way to the afterlife.
Joining others in saying this one sounds intriguing. Reminds me of the old line 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak'.
 

Frankie007

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I had an idea...about a regular every day woman... who would randomly teleport to someone in the world--after that someone says a phrase and is in need of some otherworldly help.

it's kind of a mix between those State Farm Commercials...and that one 90s disney movie Kids of the Round Table.
 

kaylim

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I've attempted three novels in the past and the only one I would even consider continuing writing is a young adult fantasy novel called the 'Necklace of Tears' about a teenager who stumbles into an alternative world and saves a girl from an evil soldier who is trying to get a hold of various artifacts including one carried by the girl. It seems a little cliched but its the type of novel I enjoy reading. The ones I don't think I'm ever going to finish include a fantasy novel that I started writing when I was 15 years old and another fantasy novel that I thought was a complete rip off of Gene Wolfe.
 

Myrealana

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I have several planned novels that I haven't gotten around to finishing

Untitled Spaceship Novel (1 chapter (badly) written): A group of people wake up on a spaceship without their memories and have to figure out where they are, what happened and how they're supposed to get home.
The Exorcism of Mineral Springs (7 chapters written): A young woman sheriff of a small mining town has to stop an evil wizard who plans to use the town as a focus to summon a demon and wreak havok
Disenchanted (7 chapters written): A middle-aged divorcee is taken on as an apprentice to a fairy godmother who spent the last 200 years trapped in a genie's bottle
Deadly Embers (1 chapter written): A follow-up to my first novel, Deadly Nightshade
Our Second Baseman is an Alien (4 chapters written): MG novel about a 4th grade baseball team who signs up the new kid from out of town. WAY out of town.
Alex Deacon and the Nemian Dilemma (NaNo book from three years ago): YA science fiction based on the labors of Hercules

I have a really hard time getting traction on any of these.
 

kaylim

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Disenchanted (7 chapters written): A middle-aged divorcee is taken on as an apprentice to a fairy godmother who spent the last 200 years trapped in a genie's bottle

This sounds really interesting. Maybe you should consider giving it another go?
 

Kjbartolotta

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After putting away my Sci-Fi Comedy Detective Novel (for now) and completing/getting too grossed out by my 2016 Trump erotica project, I'm actually in a good place to start working down the list on some of my sci-fi and fantasy stories.

-My dearly-loved and oft-neglected fantasy project, set in an Enlightenment era world with guns, gods, kings, and a little but not a lot of magic. Need to research sword fighting more, and finish the conlang! Plus, I have books 2 and 3 plotted out but can't get happy about the outline for the first one.

-My far future space opera project, somewhat in the vein of Neptune's Children, with immortal AI successors to humanity in a faded, pulpish setting. Lotsa big explosions, melancholy, and space porn weirdness. After tomorrow, provided we still have a civilization to look forward to, I plan getting starting on this.

-A nearer future, more localized space opera set on a vaguely Chinese-themed colony world, looking forward to that one with for its rather unlikable protag and the fun I can have with a futuristic, non-Western setting.

-My City of the Dead story, an attack novel idea that threw my other plans in disarray this summer, gonna grind on if I want that one to be one novel or multiparter.

-Plus, I never finished my projected third Trump novel, it stopped being funny! Provided it does become funny to me again once the dust has settled, I might write a non-erotic but still comedy reboot, about a young-but-good-hearted Russian lad moving into Trump Tower and getting caught up in the whirl of the election.
 
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Emermouse

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I had an idea...about a regular every day woman... who would randomly teleport to someone in the world--after that someone says a phrase and is in need of some otherworldly help.

it's kind of a mix between those State Farm Commercials...and that one 90s disney movie Kids of the Round Table.

Oh that's a cool idea. I wonder how the other people in her life deal with her sudden disappearances. Are they all "Holy shit, where is she?!" or have they become kind of jaded by it "Mom, Aunt Becky just vanished in a puff of smoke!" "Oh, it's okay. Someone in another realm needed her help. She'll be back in time to tuck you in bed tonight."

I've thought a bit more on my Four Werewolves and Baby idea. I'm starting to consider the idea that maybe werewolvism, over time, eats at the brain matter. So when someone is first turned, for the first few transformations, they'll be able to hold onto their sanity and control themselves, even in wolf form, but with each subsequent transformation, it wears more and more at them, until towards the end, where they are slavering maniacs who would attack anything that isn't a fellow werewolf.

The pack has lost a few of its members due to this, and the leader of the pack, who is the eldest member, has started to notice the signs that he has it as well. He has asked his lover and second-in-command to, when it sets in too deep, kill him before he tears apart or turns some poor humans. Initially, he is opposed to having the baby around for obvious reasons, but after a while, starts to notice that while he and the others still turn into werewolves every full moon, the madness that has gripped him, not only has stopped infecting his brain, it has actually started to recede, making him wonder if there isn't something about this baby girl who can change everything not only for their pack, but all other werewolves as well.