Over the last year, my creative life has shifted in a major way. I’m writing steadily, finishing work, and starting to see how all my books — memoirs, fiction, and strange hybrid projects — fit together. For the first time, I’m choosing to treat writing like a long-term career rather than a string of isolated bursts.
The biggest change?
I’m moving to a six-month (or less) release cycle.
Every six months, I’ll release something — a memoir, a novella, a novel, a short nonfiction book, or a hybrid experimental project. Not everything will be huge. Some will be 35,000–60,000 words. Some will be intense little books. Some will be wild, weird, metafictional experiments. But the key is momentum and consistency.
I’m doing this because:
- writing keeps me healthy
- finishing books helps me grow
- every book teaches me what the next one needs
- readers deserve a consistent experience
- I finally have enough projects in motion to sustain the rhythm
Below is where each major work in progress stands — clean, simple, and readable.
CURRENT + UPCOMING PROJECTS
1. The Lying Years
Memoir · Finished draft · In final edits
This is my second memoir, a follow-up to The Cancer Diet but not dependent on it. It explores heartbreak, bipolar disorder, friendship, reinvention, and the lies we tell ourselves to survive. It’s my most emotionally honest book so far. Target release window: 01/01/2026
2. Grammar for the Dead
Metafiction / Recursive literary horror · Deep revision phase
A story about grief, language, mirrors, recursion, and the way narratives rewrite us. Poe, Crowley, Tesla, Caldwell, Lenore/Clara — all the threads of my big recursive universe finally take shape here. This is the book I’m taking most of my time with. It has morphed from an experimental piece of fiction to a six book cycle, but the books will be on the short side and all tie together to form one story. This first is on track to feature Nicola Tesla being introduyced to the world and rules as he asks if what is happening to break the world is science or mystical. Target release: Once it’s done.
3. “HAPPY”
(Neo-noir psychological drama · trauma unmasking · tender, unsettling, human)
Harper “Happy” Lively has spent his whole life surviving with a smile.
In 1987 Greenville, he’s the harmless man everyone mocks — the man waving at school buses, humming pop songs in a thrift-store suit, and apologizing for things he didn’t do. People laugh at him, ignore him, insult him. He takes it. He always takes it.
Because Happy learned early that smiling is safer than feeling.
But when a robbery, a stranger’s kindness, and the sudden reappearance of his abusive mother all collide in the same week, the mask he’s worn since childhood begins to crack. For the first time, people see Harper — frightened, gentle, aching Harper — underneath the smile he was trained to live behind.
What follows isn’t a crime story.
It’s a deprogramming.
A broken man begins learning how to feel anger without fear, sadness without shame, and tenderness without getting punished for it. As Happy and Laura grow closer, he must unravel decades of emotional conditioning just to understand who he is — and who he might become if he chooses himself for once.
A slow-burn emotional thriller, “Happy” is a haunting exploration of abuse, love, identity, and what happens when a lifelong smile finally collapses.
It’s dark, gentle, unsettling, and ultimately redemptive — a story about the courage it takes just to be real.
4. Think Stoopid
Satirical dystopian novella · In active drafting
A gifted boy in a society where intelligence is illegal gets sent to a prison secretly run by kids. It’s funny, sharp, fast, and weirdly heartfelt. Elber’s story is turning into a kind of YA-for-adults fable about identity, family, and rebellion. Target release: Soonish. It needs expansion and development, and I come back to these all as inspiration hits, not to fulfill a deadline.
4. Firepit: The First Kill
Slasher horror screenplay
A backwoods camp, an urban legend born out of the real-life “Manly Manor,” a masked killer built from scavenged camp gear, and a twist involving a journalist seeking revenge for an accidental death years earlier. This is my “fun” project — lean, brutal, atmospheric. This one is early in development, but I am excited to try my hand at a classic horror vibe. Target: Very early in development.
5. Montage of Joy
Memoir / vignette collection · In development
This one may never come about. I said all I had to say right now in The Lying Years. This will be the title if I ever release a third memoir. Target release: Maybe never.
7. Blackwater Key
Novel / Southern Gothic mystery · Mid-draft revision
A coastal family, buried secrets, a ledger, inheritance, a violent past, and the slow unwinding of generational guilt. I’ve been restructuring recent chapters to deepen Freddie’s protectiveness and shift the emotional weight. Target: Future release cycle — likely 2026.
9. Camp Chaos (Fritz Abercrombie)
Middle-grade series · Ongoing
Not goofy MG — real stakes, real feelings, real consequences. Kids making choices with social impact. This continues as a slow-burn project under my pen name. Target: Intermittent releases.
BLACK WIND: Money, Guns, and Chaos
(Southern crime saga · literary grit with pulp heat)
When a simple job goes sideways, the Anderson brothers are pulled into a storm of money, betrayal, and backroads violence stretching across the Deep South.
What begins as a quick score becomes a deadly scramble through crooked cops, family secrets, outlaw alliances, and the ghosts of old decisions. As loyalties fracture and bodies stack up, a single question surfaces: how far will you go to protect the only people who ever had your back?
Part Southern noir, part family tragedy, Black Wind is a breakneck crime tale about blood, survival, and the price of choosing chaos.
AIN’T NO BOOTLICKER
(Political journalism noir · electric contemporary nonfiction)
A journalist sets out to expose the power structures strangling the modern South — and discovers the fight is far messier, funnier, and more dangerous than she ever expected.
From labor battles to local corruption to the quiet wars waged in boardrooms and backroads alike, this book pulls back the curtain on who really runs the South — and who gets crushed under their heels. With sharp wit, raw interviews, and the urgency of lived reality, Ain’t No Bootlicker challenges myths, dismantles narratives, and asks what it means to stand your ground when the system expects you to kneel.
Part investigation, part personal reckoning, it’s the book for anyone who knows the South deserves better — and refuses to shut up about it.
WHY SIX MONTHS?
Because I’m finally ready for it.
I’ve survived cancer, survived myself, survived heartbreak, and rebuilt my life piece by piece. I’m in a creative season where finishing feels natural. Releasing work gives me energy. And I want readers to come along as each phase unfolds — not wait three years between books.
This schedule also lets me:
- keep each book focused
- rotate between memoir and fiction
- avoid burnout
- maintain excitement instead of perfectionism
- build the “Francis Anderson Universe” one clear step at a time
It’s not about rushing.
It’s about rhythm, recovery, and momentum.
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 
Leave a comment