Although I've been extremely busy trying to marketing the book with no money, I have been finding a little time here and there to slowly pluck away (pun intended) at the next book. The working title is Cluck. There's a small snippet from a very early draft here if you're interested. It's basically a parody that mixes up some comedy, some horror, and some "one-word-title thriller" type adventure.
It's hard to describe. I'm shooting to have it categorized as a mystery; even though it has elements of horror in it, those elements are countered with comedy, leaving the story to stand mostly on the merits of the underlying mystery.
The preliminary feedback that I've gotten on Cluck is even better than the original feedback for Out of Place Out of Time. It's in the very early stages (a complete outline and almost a complete first draft), so I would expect to be finished with it by next spring. However, as it might stand to benefit from an October launch, I might delay publication until 10/1/2005.
It will appeal (I think) to the same crowd of adults and young-adults that admire the Harry Potter stories, and/or anyone who has read and enjoyed Terry Pratchett. Right now, it's probably a little bit too "adult" (read: graphic, not porno-grpahic) for any mainstream market, so I'll try to tone it down a bit during upcoming re-writes and drafts.