Since my last post in August, I worked through through a complete draft of the novel Dashboard Hula and through a fourth draft of Blood Cries.
Dashboard Hula now consists of three separate sections. 1) The Experimentalist - follows a Lucien Steinmann, a.k.a. Steimy, a precocious, peculiar, and hopeless experimentalist, from the second grade through college, at which point he creates a psychedelic drug and inadvertently helps launch a religious movement. 2) The Blue Whale -Siam Sam is Steimy's roommate, helper, and guinea pig for Steimy's hallucinogen, who embarks on an Alice-in-Wonderland style quest for truth in his bathroom, makes friends with a colony of cockroaches, and confronts their God, the Blue Whale in the Bathtub. 3) The Bible II: Philosophical Boogaloo follows the third roommate, Paul Tarson, a reformed drug dealer intent on starting a new religion.
For the first time in twenty years, I feel like I have a draft that holds together. At present I'm thinking about publishing them separately at first and later under one cover.
Right now though, I'm working exclusively on Blood Cries. I am four drafts in with eight more passes to go. I've set a deadline of mid-February 2018, at which time I will begin exploring routes to publication. Look for another update at that time.