Writing Projects Update

This is as of July 17, but still pretty much current.

I'm working on about 4 books now, with two others in the chute (one of which I will write in November).
They're all about relationships, families, healing and recovery, mental illness, addiction, the existential struggle of the individual vs. society, gender relations, etc., etc.  It's hard to describe, I guess.  The two I'm actively working on now are EXODUS (possible alternate title: "Starfall") and SABINE (aka "Between Laughing and Crying") -- these are each about 300 pages long right now.
The other two I'm working on are THE LITTLE ANT WITH THE CRIMINAL MIND (which I originally "published" back in the 3rd grade, it's kind of a psychological exploration allegory kind of in the spirit of Orwell's ANIMAL FARM) and MIRI AND THE SATURNIAN (a children's book, but the storyline ties into the book I'm probably going to do in November).  LITTLE ANT is an individual vs. society, addiction and recovery faerie tale, and MIRI is a little girl goes on an adventure of a lifetime with her family -- it actually has a Harry Potter-esque feel in a way -- and ends up turning into a young woman along the way and discovers what it really means to be in charge of her own life.
EXODUS is technically science fiction -- it's set in a generation ship on the way to the next star -- but otherwise it's just about human relationships: marriage, splitting up, parenting, childhood, dysfunction, regrets, death, etc.
SABINE has been loosely described as "the manic-depressive nymphomaniac high school (?) girl".  Like the other books, it's about not fitting in, individual vs. society, trying to make a life and a place for oneself in the world in the face of  sometimes ostensibly well-meaning indifference and sometimes hostility.  Many of the main characters are inveterate nerds, so I try to explore that culture.  Gender relationships. Dysfunctional families.  Living with, coping with, and maybe even thriving with, mental illness.  The characters are deliberately non-descript as to their ages and occupations (and living situations) -- so far, anyway.
Oh, I'm working on a couple of COMIC STRIPS as well, which have their own ongoing storylines (and which sometimes overlap somewhat). One of them is published on my blog and on Facebook.  I guess they would be entitled something like MR. PEABODY AND THE MERMAIDS or MR. PEABODY AND THE MERMAIDS GO TO THE FULL-SERVICE NATIVE AMERICAN BANK and PORCADIS or maybe THE POETS OF PORCADIS.
The book I plan to work on in November: KLAUDIA (aka THE SELENIAN WARS) is set in the early colonization of the inner solar system.  The Earth (The Oceanian Confederacy anyway) and basically the Moon and its allies are in a state of cold war which is on the verge of becoming hot since the first Selenian War was concluded in favor of the Lunans, who now control extraterrestrial trade and the exit stations of the space elevators.  Main character decides to leave Earth to go to university, studies what he's supposed to instead of what he wants to, leaves school to become a roving consultant cyborg programmer (van Neuman stuff, etc.) which takes him all over the inner solar system and allows him to explore all of the various cultures there -- there's a lot of linguistics stuff going on, as in EXODUS (the main characters are American, Japanese, and French), the Chinese and Americans primarily colonized Mars, the Europeans and Russians are working on Venus, the Moon is a mish-mash, and the inter-Earth-Venus orbital farms have a lot of Exiles (native peoples such as native americans, Palestinians, et al), and the 'roid miners and their traders are also a mish-mash.  The Felixians and other races genetically engineered by the Others (tie-in to MIRI) are peppered around.  Our terran protagonist, also an outsider, has common ground with them.  Other main characters are Klaudia Sakamoto, a kind of hands-on agent for her mistress who represents a kind of shadowy Lunar Lagrangian conglomerate which tries to preserve the peace and keep the Earth (the Confederacy, et al) off-balance and has interests reaching throughout the inner solar system (which kind of brings Klaudia and the protagonist together).  Also a terran soldier who was "killed" in the first Selenian conflict, more like MIA, since he was nursed back to health by the Lunans, but he was presumed dead back on Earth and his mind was backed up in a terran computer system, a kind of computational "Dante's Mainframe" and may actually meet himself on the field of battle in the next conflict.  There is also the mysterious former presumed dead ex-president of the Confederacy (and its founder), Jack Denning, vignettes and flashbacks to events of his administration and the unanswered questions surrounding his sudden mysterious illness and death/disappearance.  Rumors are that the Others or the Lunans (or both -- they were in cahoots in the last war) actually found Denning's body in cryogenic suspension floating in space and are plotting to bring him out to somehow upset the legitimacy of the current Confederate government and sway the course of the impending Second Selenian War.
Anyway, brief synopsis.  Something like that.  Might be a trilogy or something crazy like that.
The other book which will probably be NaNoWriMo 2014 is unnamed, but a kind of fantasy allegory of the hero's journey of a young woman's path into motherhood, set as a kind of Frodo-in-Lord-of-the-Rings quest in which she seeks not only to rid herself of some burdens, such as obsessions with the unreliable father of her child and their off-again, on-again relationship, but also to find other things, such as herself, her independence, and hopefully a meaningful relationship with her child which she carries with her through many strange lands full of many strange and different people who teach her, help her, and challenge her in many different ways.  The Quest will probably involve something along the lines of "finding her child's potential" or "helping her child reach its 'potential' " and probably in the end seeking her own potential in a temple in a distant and holy land, and realizing that the father, other people, can only help her so much in this journey.
That's about it for now.  I guess I've got about 700-800 pages that I'm editing, with much more to write.

One thing about the to-be-named heroine's journey is that one of her companions along the way may be a young female (woman) from a species of people with no birth canal, maybe they're hermaphroditic as well, so they die when they give birth (advances in surgery later may make surviving birth possible), but I may just put this into my comic strip (Poets of Porcadis).