playing tag, hair aflutter (Photo credit: cafemama)

I just got “tagged” by Vikki of The View Outside with the Work In Progress Challenge. I’m supposed to answer the following ten questions about my Work In Progress (WIP).

Like Vikki, I don’t have a WIP per se. That is, I haven’t starting writing. It’s still in the planning stage. But I’ll tell you what I can about it, hopefully without giving too much away.

1. What is the title of your book/WIP?

Hydra

2. Where did the idea for the WIP come from?

A technology news article about the Storm bot-net.

3. What genre would your WIP fall under?

Techno-thriller.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I haven’t thought about that at all. No one in particular immediately comes to mind. I’ll tell you more when my movie deal comes in 8^).

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your WIP?

When a US government security researcher stumbles across a bot-net unlike any other, he finds himself on the run from mysterious assailants, his life and the lives of those around him suddenly in danger.

6. Is your WIP published or represented?

Kind of hard to do when I haven’t started writing it yet 8^). But actually I’m planning to self-publish to begin with. If any interesting offers come out of that I’ll consider their merits.

7. How long did it take you to write?

I’ll let you know when I get that far. It’s been in planning for nearly a year.

8. What other WIPs within your genre would you compare it to?

I haven’t seen anything similar. The closest I’ve found are Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress: A Thriller and Leslie Parrish’s Pitch Black, but these aren’t really close to my concept. The movie Enemy of the State is the most similar plot I can think of.

9. Which authors inspired you to write this WIP?

This specific WIP wasn’t really inspired by any particular author. The innumerable authors I’ve read over the years have probably all played a role.

The recent success of the Kindle and Kindle Direct Publishing, and some posts by self-publishing proponents such as Joe Konrath of A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, David Gaughran of Let’s Get Digital, Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn and Joel Friedlander of The Book Designer convinced me that it was possible to be a successful author via self-publishing (I’m not sure I could have handled the traditional publication route emotionally).

The many writing blogs out there have helped me to learn what’s required to become an author and become a better writer, including (but not limited to):

• The Write Practice
• Wordplay
• Daily Writing Tips
• Edittorrent
• Storyfix.com
• The Bookshelf Muse
• The Other Side of the Story
• TalkToYoUniverse
• Writing Forward

10. Tell us anything else that might pique our interest in this project.

I think it’s a fairly original concept, and is borderline plausible.

One last thing… Tag, You’re It

Now I’m supposed to tag other writers who are then “it” to write a blog post about their WIPs.

I don’t really know any other novelists that well, so I went through some of the people who have commented on or liked my blog posts, and came up with this list:

• Deb E
• Joe Bunting at The Write Practice
• Ritika Upadhyay at Le Blog
• Cristian Mihai
• Sharmishtha (Trisha) Basu at My Cyber Novels

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