I looked over the poll results, and I did a lot of thinking about what I really want to write. (I even added a novel idea that I forgot about, got attached to it for a while, and then ultimately cut it.) Ultimately, I told myself that there’s a decent chance that all of those will get written at some point, so I just had to decide what I really wanted to live with right now for a month straight.

The Bureau wasn’t particularly popular, and I just spent a couple of weeks working on a superhero RPG anyway, so I cut that pretty quickly.

Writing two projects at the same time means I should probably diversify, or else I’ll get sick of writing horror/mystery after November, which isn’t fair to Whitechapel. That meant cutting As The Devil Drives and Do The Job (which was the professional wrestling/murder mystery idea I remembered after I posted last night).

Thy Kingdom Come was surprisingly popular (both in the poll and to me personally), but references to steampunk actually decided it for me. TKC was an idea I had long before the steampunk craze came along, because I love 19th century literature. However, I’m kind of sick of steampunk right now, and a check of my gut made me go "blech" when thinking about it. I do want to write that book at some point (maybe even next year), but I’m just not in the brainspace to do that now. If I were freelancing, I’d suck it up and deal with it, but since I’m primarily writing this for me, I gave myself a pass.

Besides — I think I really want to stretch my skills and try comedy. And that pretty much narrowed the field to Terrifying Disappointment and Night Fall.

Both have some characters I’m intrigued by. Both have some rough basics of the background sketched out. Both have some vague plots in my head. And both have huge gaps of personal knowledge that terrify me. It’s a balance of comfort and fear that’s probably good for me.

Thanks to everyone who gave me their thoughts on this. Now I have to push this to the back of my head, read up on a couple of things, and lay the groundwork for next week, so I can make a decision and (if I decide I’m crazy enough to do this), start outlining and researching after my surgery.