TGTD - What are you writing? (Responses)

Alien in the Family by Jeanne Cook

Katherine "Kitty" Katt and Jeff Martini are tying the knot. But this means Kitty's extended family will be meeting Jeff's for the first time. While trying to keep her relatives in the dark -- about Jeff's family all being space aliens from Alpha Centauri, her new career as a super-being exterminator, and that their wedding will be neither traditionally Jewish nor Catholic -- a new threat from outer space comes to Earth. Now Kitty and Jeff have bigger worries than seating arrangements and registries -- they have to save the Earth and save each other, while under orders to take direction from the head of the C.I.A.'s ET division, Charles Reynolds, who would still prefer it if Kitty were marrying him. And they have to save the world and order the flowers before the head of the Alpha Centaurion religion retracts his consent for their marriage.

A Change in the Weather and Articles of Retransmission by Arachne Jericho

Arachne will begin this competition working on A Change in the Weather. When that is complete, she will move on to Articles of Retransmission.

A Change in the Weather: My new name is Proust. My new family is the Academy. My new partner is a nameless psychopath I've just watched gut a man.

At the Academy, you're here for life. And that life is to commit heinous acts in the name of government and society.

Back home, my wife Jody needs me. Things are not going well in the third trimester.

Do you honestly think the Academy has a family medical plan?

I'm getting out.

Articles of Retransmission: I don't remember who I am, and I don't remember what I did. It must be important, because these damn people keep trying to hunt me down and force me into one thing or another. Some of them can punch through brick walls and turn invisible, no joke.

I want to find out who I am, but unfortunately I suspect it must involve these idiots.

This would all be difficult enough, mind you, if I didn't have a passenger in my cracked head.

He calls himself Sherlock Holmes.

Child of Fate by Lori A. Basiewicz

Child of Fate is the story of an elite military team whose members possess paranormal abilities. Led by Mickey, they are dedicated to fighting the monsters that most people believe exist only in myths and legends. As Mickey struggles to come to terms with the loss of his beloved wife and train her replacement, Sybil, a young woman who denies the paranormal yet is gifted with a rare talent, evil threatens to annihilate the team. Can Mickey overcome his grief and teach Sybil to use her abilities before the forces of darkness overwhelm his team? Or will the darkness destroy them all?

The First Ghost by Mary (Soccer Mom)

Portia Mahaffey is the only woman in a family of clairvoyants without a "gift." Following an accident, she wakes up with the ability to see dead people. The girl in the hospital bed next to her doesn't wake, but dies instead. She was murdered and she wants Portia to help with some unfinished business such as calling her aunt, seeing her dog is provided for, and solving her death.

This is no haunted house tale. Ghosts are everywhere. So are soul-eating demons, mercenary Reclaimers who forcibly cross over souls-- and a little, old lady who tells Portia that she's Death. But you can call her Hephzibah.

In An Ageless Sky by Kristine Williams

What if you discovered your past -- and all of humanity's history -- was the result of a madman with a time machine and illusions of godhood? Could you learn how to use highly advanced tools from a past you never knew, to find the courage to save a future you'll never see?

Into the Abyss by Cath Smith

At 10.49PM on October 21, 2269 the last star on the horizon faded from view, and Captain John Reynolds (damn you Whedon) and his crew officially left the Universe. But 100 years in cryostasis hasn't erased the memory of his son's death or his wife's betrayal. And there's evil in the darkness...

Jericho Road by Carrie Jacobs

When Natalie Willard is attacked by a crazed couple claiming to be her parents, her life is turned upside down. Her own parents reveal that she had been adopted. Digging for the truth, she finds that not only had she been adopted, she had been abducted as an infant.

Her path leads her to the doorstep of the couple who had accosted her, and to the investigation of the missing sister she hadn't known existed.

Natalie struggles to come to grips with the secrets of her past, while fighting to save her sister from the brainwashing of a religious cult.

No Other Man by Melissa Golden

What's a lady to do when her husband announces it's time for an heir? Most properly bred ladies would hie off to the doctor or ton matrons for advice on fertility. Rachel Maitland can't do that. You see, her husband's also declared he won't be participating in the process (or maybe he's unable since he hasn't bothered her in that way since the first few disastrous months of their marraige). Can she bring herself to take a lover, then steal his child? Much sex and angst ensues, as with any really great romance. ;)

Queen of Legends by Tori Osban

Pregnant and not far from her due date, Leja is drug up from her refuge and thrust into a mission with the father of her child and a Librarian apprentice. Little does she know she will learn more about her past than she ever intended.

Escaping from you father is no easy task any day, especially when he's the king. But Erisa must escape to safety with the help of her mother's personal bodyguard and a little assistance from the King of Thieves.

Working together, these six people must find out how to stop a magic they didn't know existed and how to conquer their own secrets.

Terella by Celina Summers

When a dreaming god forgets her divinity, a new world is created. Terella springs from the void in mid-history, populated with people and political systems that Ananke played with like dolls in her eternal half-sleep. She walks upon her creation as a mortal, completely unaware of her divine origins. As she travels across the kingdom searching desperately for her past, she challenges the organized religions of the five kingdoms. As a self-proclaimed atheist, she preaches her particular theories of independence from ritual. As more people believe in her words, the weaker she becomes. Garnering the animosity of the temples, Ananke must flee in order to preserve her mortal life. Will Ananke reconcile her divinity and take her rightful place as the goddess of Terella? Or, will her own dismissal of the gods insure her--and Terella's-- destruction.

Where Sea Meets Sky and The Nondescript by Pete Tzinski

Pete will begin this competition by completing Where Sea Meets Sky, an alternative history novel set in the ancient Roman Empire. When that is complete, he will move on to The Nondescript.

The Nondescript is the story of a young man in the year 1940, one of the last years that the traveling carnivals and freak shows made their way around the country, one of the first years of the draft for World War II. Our hero evades the draft and joins the carnival in lunatic disguise and travels across America with them. It's a road trip, and a murder mystery and a story about accounting, and America, and wars. Mostly, it's a love story.

The Wizard Orbs, Bad Rune Rising, and The Astral Doorway by Ed Pahule

Ed Pahule is starting this competition working on The Wizard Orbs. It is his official The Great Tea Debacle novel, but, just in case, he also has Bad Rune Rising and The Astral Doorway waiting in the wings.

The Wizard Orbs is a high fantasy about Ashtar, a half-elf child. Raised by a wizard, who is also a guardian of one of the mysterious wizard orbs. The wizard orbs, the trapped spirits of the Ancient Gods, are sources of occult energy the human wizards use to tap into the supernatural. Ashtar has been training for the day he might have to take the wizard orbs to safety. That day is now.

Bad Rune Rising, a sequel to Road to Rune, Ed's novel currently in submission, is the continuing saga of Alex Tromonte, a widower, father, stage magician, and son of Apollo, who has been charged by the gods with the responsibility of Hero or Protector while the gods are all on vacation. Alex is called to Iceland by the huldufolk, or hidden people. Three of the Icelandic Guardians have been kidnapped by a rogue rune magician and they are worried the fourth will be next. They explain that despite the legend that the Guardians are there to protect Iceland from attack, they are also there to guard something from escaping. There is an entrance to a long-forgotten dimension where Ymir, wrongly thought dead in the myth, was hidden away by the Aesir gods. If the fourth Guardian is captured, the door will open and a very pissed Ymir will be freed bringing about a very real Ragnarok, or Doom of the Gods. In this case, however, it means the End of All.

The Astral Doorway is a Burroughsian send-off, about a guy who finds a book on astral projection, bets a friend that he can learn how to do it, and ends up transported to another world, another dimension.