The Novel Vault:

A timeline-ish list of E. G. Diehl novel-length manuscripts/publications

If the book is linked, then it was at some point  published by Drollerie Press, which has since, regrettably, gone out of business. Sad, but true!  Now, Kinlea Keeper and Curse are published by Woven Weird Press.

–         The Oracle Trilogy (3 books)  Sci-fi

–         Inheritance of Black Fire (5 books)  High Fantasy

–         Better Halves (5 books. Sequel to above) High Fantasy

–         Best and/or Worst of Times (3½ books.  Prequel to above two) High Fantasy

–         And Heaven Laughed (1 book- incomplete) Horror

–         Emiline the Unstoppable (Series of indeterminate length) Mid.-Reader Mystery

–         Kinlea Keeper (1 book) Folklore Fantasy

–         An Exercise in Bad to Worse (1 book) Sci-fi

–         Cargo (1 book- incomplete.  Sequel to above) Sci-fi

–         Curse (1 book.  Sequel to Kinlea) Folklore Fantasy

–         Every Time/“NowHere in NoWhere” (1 book- incomplete) Urban Fantasy

–         A Terminal Cocktail (1 book- incomplete) Historical Mystery

–         Anna Marie Anomaly (1 book- incomplete.  Sequel to Curse) Folklore Fantasy

–    After Avalon (1 book planned thus far- incomplete) Fantasy-Leaning Steampunk

That’s pretty much it, if you don’t count the short stories and poetry, etc.  Now, it’s time for explanations!

Early Stuff: The Oracle Trilogy is three books in spirit, though all three together are only a little over 100,000 words.  That particular writing experience nearly inspired me to stop writing.  Way back in my sophomore year of high school, I was addicted to notebooks and pencils in the worst way, but I was so sorely disappointed with how absolutely TERRIBLY the ending of that series turned out that I might have thrown the notebooks to the four winds had I not already started writing Inheritance of Black Fire, which I happily still like 13 and a half books later.  Granted, Inheritance and its subsequent serieses are written like a 16-year-old wrote them (a 16/17/18 year old did, incidentally), so I don’t intend to try to publish it in the foreseeable future.  It makes me cringe just to *think* of all the editing work that would have to go into that particular project.  I guess the last order of business in the “early stuff” section is And Heaven Laughed, which is the only horror I ever attempted.  It isn’t finished in large part because it is incredibly creepy, which makes me less eager to write the ending.  Interestingly, though, I really love the syntax.  It’s a memory story from the first-person POV of someone who has been rendered omniscient, and I’m sure you can imagine the formatting-fun inherent in that sort of thing ^_^.

Emiline Books: I started writing Emiline mysteries my freshman year at the University of Tulsa, starting with Emiline the Unstoppable or Keep Off the Grass.  Emiline is a fifth-grader who sets out to find trouble and adventure in a sleepy, mid-western American town along with her sidekicks, Peter and Jan.  Peter’s an eight-year-old inventor who favors the Erector Set as a medium, and Jan is not only the president of the sixth grade, but a skilled martial artist.  Emiline’s father is the chief of police, so there’s also a comforting adults-solving-cases/law-enforcement element.  I like this series a lot because I will never run out of fun kid-mystery material (heck, I spent most of the first book making fun of canned lima beans ^_^).

Kinlea Books: The actual, official name of this series is “For Keeps,”and I built a website dedicated to this one: http://kinleakeeper.com.  I started writing Kinlea Keeper the summer before my senior year at TU, which didn’t start at TU, but rather Goldsmiths University of London.  This made for my writing the book over the course of the next two years on three continents and in four cities:  Albuquerque (NM), London, Tulsa (OK), and Tatebayashi (Japan).  Its sequel, Curse, was written almost entirely while I was working in Japan, but I finished the last half-ish in Albuquerque ^_^.  Anna Marie Anomaly is the sequel to Curse, and it is a work in progress.  As for the stories, all three books are set in a mixed-myth-folklore version of turn-of-last-century Europe.  You can find synopses and excerpts for the first two books on the website ^_^.

Bad to Worse Books:  I started writing An Exercise in Bad to Worse entirely by accident.  I opened a window on my laptop with every intention of writing an e-mail home from my flat in London and several hours later I was gaping open-mouthed at the first three chapters of a gritty, zany, hard-core sci-fi “space opera.”  I marched downstairs to the flat under mine and informed my friend Laurel that it was, on no uncertain terms, her fault for having sent me her sci-fi story manuscripts earlier that week.  Years later, I finished the monster-e-mail-invader in my apartment in Tatebayashi, and I’ve fallen very much in love with it.  It isn’t the sort of book I often like to read, so I probably wouldn’t have read it if I hadn’t written it, but it sure is interesting!  It’s violent, one of the characters swears and swills alcohol like a sailor, and it is strongly implied that several characters (*GASP!*) have loose sexual morals.  Crazy stuff, huh?  Anyway, the sequel is a recent baby of mine because a character from a four-episode audio series I wrote in high school is the main-viewpoint character… due to the fact that between books he has married the first-mate of the ship.  This story’s world-system is one of my all-time favorites in which to write.

Every Time: I wrote this one in Japan.Every Time is a gritty urban fantasy set in Nowhere, WY, U.S.A.  It is told first-person from the point of view of an alcoholic, chain-smoking, self-styled “cheap trick witch” who insists loudly in my head that my preferred title of “NowHere in Nowhere” could be grounds for her committing Elisa’s-brain-icide.  I’m sure the other authors of the world understand.  Anyhow, it’s a very dark and twisted story that is not suitable for children of any age.  Far be it from me, though, to define the age at which a person is an adult ^_^.

Terminal Cocktail:  Terminal Cocktail is my first experiment in writing a story based on a dream I’ve had.  I have a lot of extremely vivid adventure and mystery dreams, you see, but I don’t generally bother to do much more with them than enjoy them while I sleep.  This one is a first-person cold-case murder mystery from the point of view of Eli, an Edwardian lord with a townhouse in London.  It’s a dark romp through the underbelly of Edwardian London with a strong focus on early Egyptology, as well as on the aftermath of British colonization around the world.  This is another one of those books that would probably earn an R rating if it were a movie (meaning it is not a book I’d want the kids I know to read).